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And today, the final installment of the Watchmen Video Journal comes our way with a look at the Minutemen, the progenitors of the Watchmen and the costumed vigilante movement.

What you have to understand, in case you weren’t a Watchmen reader, is that the Watchmen are not unique to the story’s continuity.  Back in the 1940s, there was a group of costumed superheroes called the Minutemen.  They did much the same things the Watchmen did in the more modern era, specifically running around in costumes and capturing bad guys.

It’s especially noteworthy to pay attention to the concept of “antiquated costume design methods” mentioned in the clip. There’s actually a segment where stars are manually ironed onto a cape, which is a downright reliquated method of costuming, but is oddly appropriate for costumes made in a 1940s setting.  It’s just one more bullet point on that big list marked “attention to detail”, and you can count on that phrase being part of lots of reviews on this movie when it finally makes its emergence.

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For those of you who haven’t sensed a central theme running through the last few days of Watchmen Video Journal discussions, this one, second to last from the mobile site, will actually sum it up.  It’s all been about the attention to detail, and that’s exactly what number nine covers.

You may not know that Zack Snyder draws his own storyboards. You may not know that the actors all handle props.  You may not even know that the crew, from the costumers and the hair designers and so on were partially selected based on their knowledge of Watchmen.  Pretty much everything seems to have been decided by committee, where everything was discussed and rediscussed between Zack Snyder and the crew.

It’s deep. It’s complicated. It’s heavily detailed.  And it’s only a matter of time until we get to see how it turned out.

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We’re coming down to the wire with the Watchmen video journal series, and today’s installment is all about the ladies of Watchmen, most notably the Silk Specters, both mother and daughter.

The really interesting part about the whole thing is Carla Gugino, who plays Sally Jupiter, is about the same age as Malin Ackerman, who plays Laurie Juspeczyk, Sally Jupiter’s daughter.  It takes more than a little solid acting, that Carla sure looks like she’s providing, and some solid makeup work, which also looks to be in evidence.

For those of you who are wondering why mother and daughter don’t share a last name, let me spare you the trip to Wikipedia that I already took–turns out that, back in Sally’s day, Polish names weren’t looked on with favor, so she changed it just slightly to spare herself a lot of trouble.  Mother and daughter have plenty of issues that you’ll see throughout the film, and that lends an extra note of humanity to a film so deeply involved with superheroism.  This is, as far as I’m concerned, a very upbeat note that gives a film already looked forward to that extra something that makes waiting for March very, very difficult.

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So today’s installment of the Watchmen Video Journal is devoted entirely to possibly the most difficult character to bring to life, Doctor Manhattan.

For those of you who aren’t already familiar with Watchmen, Doctor Manhattan is the result of a scientific accident that winds up destabilizing the power balance between the United States and the Soviet Union at the height of its power in the 1980s.  He actually has the ability to manipulate matter at the atomic level, which of course allows him to, essentially, do just about anything by just altering the matter around him.  Put him in a freezing cold room and he’ll just cause the molecules to spin faster, warming it up.  Lock him in a room and he’ll expand the empty spaces between molecules and walk out through the nothing.  And forget about trying to poison him–he’ll just turn it into chocolate by shifting some carbon atoms around.

And man, does it ever take a lot of juice to put this guy on screen.  He’s almost totally CG, with Billy Crudup serving as his human side, a model for the computer to work with, and occasionally at least some of his voice.  They’re planning to do some pretty amazing things with the Doctor Manhattan character–let’s just hope they’re worthy of the character himself.

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This particular installment of the Watchmen Video Journal, depicting the Owl Ship, is especially exciting for me, folks, because it’s within striking distance of something I’m very personally fond of.

When I first started catching up with the Watchmen, the first thing I could think was how similar it was to George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards series.  And when I heard about the Nite Owl (or more appropriately Nite Owl II) all I could think was, this is the Great And Powerful Turtle without the psychokinesis.

And yes, this installment once again shows the level of detail they’re exhibiting throughout and really gives me a lot of hope, but now I’m personally involved in this movie.  My personal favorite Wild Cards character was The Great and Powerful Turtle, and looking at the Owl Ship, it looks so much like I pictured the Turtle Shell to be, like a squat, cylindrical sort of figure covered in heavy armor.  Sure, the Owl Ship has more weapons and such, and the Turtle Shell is really just a VW Bug covered in old battleship armor, but the parallels are still clear and present.

It’s great to see something so close to something I enjoyed deeply depicted on the big screen, and now, I’m really excited for this to come out.  Nothing I’ve seen yet has dampened my enthusiasm, and it’s going to take something really bad to blow this beauty out of the water.

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Today’s Watchmen Video Journal installment keeps us up close and personal with Dave Gibbons, one of the creators of the original Watchmen graphic novel.  He was actually one of the artists, so he had a lot to do with the film’s overall appearance.

Gibbons seems very enthusiastic about how the sets and costumes and such are shaping up–details that he had actually forgotten about are coming to life in the set, and he’s very specifically pleased with the kind of “attention to detail” being shown by the Watchmen production.  It’s definitely a good sign when details even the original creator forgot about are coming back to light in this release.

Though I have to admit, I have some misgivings about director Zack Snyder that Dave Gibbons doesn’t seem to share.  It’s true that, when put with a comic book, Snyder can do a decent job.  300 turned out entirely too well to not notice.  But deep in the back of my mind, a nagging fact remains that Snyder is the same guy who so badly bungled Dawn of the Dead.  I remain optimistic about the whole affair, however, and try to keep my doubts under rein.

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