It was likely the fact that I had never read the Watchmen graphic novel before that I rather enjoyed the Watchmen theatrical film, unlike many of those legions of fans of the graphic novel. I still haven't read the graphic novel as of yet, and I've found that many times watching the movie first and reading the book second is beneficial to the overall experience, since the film will lay down the general story and the book will go into more detail and add to the experience of the film. That being said, I still had to do a little research before watching this Tales of the Black Freighter DVD because I wasn't really sure how this whole thing fit in... and I found it to be an intriguing little tale that might not add more understanding to the film, but give you a different perspective on it.

This DVD features two separate supplemental tales, actually, with Tales of the Black Freighter and Under the Hood, two separate shorts that clock in at just over an hour altogether. Both of these are quite vastly different, with Black Freighter as an animated sequence of this story-within-a-story that was originally supposed to be a part of Zack Snyder's theatrical film, and Under the Hood, a half-hour live-action piece formatted as a TV news magazine piece that gives us some bonus insight into the theatrical world Snyder created, based off the influential graphic novel. Since these two are both so different, I'll talk about them separately.

Tales of the Black Freighter was a fictional comic book that appeared in five of the 12 parts of the original graphic novel, and this 26-minute short film tells this whole story, Marooned, in one straight shot. The short was written by Watchmen screenwriter Alex Tse and director Zack Snyder and this tells the tale of a ship captain (Gerard Butler) who wakes up amidst the devastation caused by the seemingly unstoppable vessel: the Black Freighter. The unnamed captain is the only survivor and is determined to reach the shores of his home, Davidstown, before the Black Freighter's scurvy pirates get there and will likely murder his family. Although his crew is all dead, his delusions grow deep and as he binds a ship made of the carcasses of his own men, he even starts to hear one of his beloved crewmen Ridley (Jared Harris) speak to him, even though his corpse is decaying . Most of this is just animation with Butler's voice-over narration and, while some of the lines that Snyder and Tse feed him are pretty corny, both Butler and Harris do a fine job voicing and this is actually a rather intriguing story that has a few nods to the material in the feature film - some rather obvious (the crude sail the captain fashions appears in a familiar form after he unwraps the sail from underneath a dead Ridley) and some much more subtle. It's a pretty cool little story with some great animation and solid voice work by two wonderful pros. What's a bit ironic about this, though, is that apparently Butler was promised a role in the Watchmen film by Snyder and this story was actually supposed to be a part of the film until it was cut since the film was over three hours. Apparently this was the only role Snyder could give Butler for the film, but I think it worked out pretty good.

Under the Hood is a little bit longer at 38 minutes but this is definitely worth a look since it takes us back to the history of masked vigilantes in this incredible world. This whole short is formatted as a news program called The Culpeper Minute, which sees Ted Friend reprising his role as Larry Culpeper, set in the 80s world that the film and graphic novel were set in, but this actually takes us back to a 1975 "segment" they did with Hollis Mason (Stephen McHattie), after he wrote his tell-all book Under the Hood, as the first masked vigilante to come public with his true identity. While McHattie's character is in the theatrical film and they do talk about the book a bit, this really gets into the history of masked vigilantes in this amazing world and this news program even features commercials for such fake products as a fragrance called Nostalgia by Veidt. We even see the likes of Carla Gugino portraying Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre, Frank Cassini as Sally's ex-husband Lawrence Shexnayder, Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the Comedian and many many others who played smaller roles in the film reprising those roles here. We get an interesting history of these masked heroes including where some of them got their names from and why they wanted to lead this life, to the 50s and the heroes facing a "witch hunt" before the House Un-American Activities Committee and the incident between Sally Jupiter and The Comedian. This short film, written by Hans Rodionoff, is quite a wonderful little documentary-ish thing that brings quite a few characters from the theatrical film back in a different light, at a different time, and gives us quite a wonderful backdrop to the film.

Overall, I really enjoyed both these tales and both their connections to the film. I remember thinking, when this was first announced, why wasn't this coming out right before the movie, like the Watchmen Motion Comics DVD did, and now I definitely see why. It's a wonderful after-dinner mint to the theatrical feast of the movie.

We don't get a ton here, but it starts out with Story Within a Story: The Books of Watchmen. This is a pretty standard featurette that has a lot of the producers of this DVD and some of the original inception of these stories when they were originally conceived in the graphic novel and we have a lot of different people commenting on how ahead of its time this graphic novel was. However, a lot of this is just analysis of the book and these stories' roles in that book as a whole and it's a lot of glad-handing at times, but we do get some nice bits from the actual production of this DVD and some very interesting parts where they compare this Black Freighter story to that of the plight of one of Watchmen's main characters: Adrian Veidt or Ozymandias, which is actually pretty deep. I think it's rather humorous that this special feature is almost as long as the Black Freighter short itself, but it's a cool little piece that supplements this supplemental story quite nicely.

Aside from that we just get a few little extra goodies, first of which is the first chapter of the Watchmen Motion Comic DVD. This is pretty cool to see how they bring these panels to life, but the narration is a tad tacky and downright bad for some characters, but this 24-minute piece is definitely worth watching.

The only other thing we get here is A First Look at Green Lantern and this thing is a preview for the animated DVD, but it starts out for the first few minutes as an analysis of the origins of the comic book series. For a "first look" at this new DVD... they certainly take their time here with the first six minutes or so just talking about the history of this comic book. We do get into this new film project and we hear about how this new DVD differs from other Green Lantern projects while keeping the character intact. We also hear from Christopher Meloni, who voices Hal Jordan/Green Lantern and Victor Garber as Sinestro and it was cool to learn that they both did their recording sessions together in the same studio. We also hear from Michael Madsen, who voices Kilowog, Tricia Helfer, who voices Boodikka, but, while we get to see a lot of storyboards and such, we don't get any footage here at all. Oh well.

The Tales of the Black Freighter part is presented in the widescreen format, enhanced for 16x9 widescreen televisions, while the Under the Hood is presented in a "standard version" which "preserves its original aspect ratio" even though I don't know what that original aspect ratio is. Hmm.

The sound is handled through the Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound format on both stories.

They do a pretty good job here for this supplemental DVD. The front cover is what I presume is panel or reproduction from the graphic novel that shows a drawing of a tiny black ship in a murky, odd-looking sea with the title card up top, the big Watchmen title card in yellow going along the left side and, in the lower right corner, a little peel-away looking thing that says this DVD also comes with the Under the Hood tale. The back has another bigger shot of this ship along with a nice synopsis that covers both stories, a small special feature listing and billing blocks for both short films.

Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter is a terrific addition to your DVD collection that will fit nicely by the side of whichever Watchmen DVD you'll also have on your shelves.