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Tales of the Black Freighter is the companion piece to the movie Watchmen. It’s a complete standalone movie, although running at 22 minutes it’s not really eveningfilling. This movie tells the story of a Captain ending up shipwrecked with all of it’s crew dead after an attack by the Black Freighter. Now he must try to get home before the Freighter reaches his hometown and kills everyone, including his family. Now you might ask me; what has this got to do with a movie about banned superheroes in the 80’s?
Well nothing directly actually. Tales of the Black Freighter was a comic in a comic. It was read by someone in the Watchmen graphic novel and events in the comic were intertwined with events in the story of the Watchmen. One hint of that can be seen in TOTBF when a bloodstained sail looks a lot like Rorschach’s mask. The story is pretty simple, but considering it’s a 22 minute movie that was to be expected. It does have a small twist at the end though. The animation is good but not great. Gerard Butler is the main vocal star as he does the voice (over) of the Captain and does a decent job.
Tales of the Black Freighter is a welcome addition to the Watchmen movie but for those not familiar with the graphic novel it probably won’t have any value. It’s a nice piece of animation but you won’t link it to the Watchmen movie.
