Alan Moore's legendary graphic novel Watchmen is a rare work of art that has for years shown what can be done with the form of a comic book in both storytelling and art. It's an extremely political work that critiqued the idea of what a superhero means in the context of American society set in the backdrop of the Cold War, all illustrated perfectly by Dave Gibbons. The work has seen its fair share of new media with a Zack Snyder–directed 2009 film, a prequel comic Before Watchmen and quasi-sequel Doomsday Clock (none with the involvement of Alan Moore).
Now, its newest adaptation comes in the form of an original TV series on HBO created by Damon Lindelof (co-creator of Lost, writer of Prometheus) that claims to be "a modern-day reimagining of Alan Moore's groundbreaking graphic novel about masked vigilantes," and what he has previously called a "remix" of the story.
Today, HBO released the first teaser trailer of what's to come, and on first look it seems to deviate pretty far from the original in some pretty interesting ways. Most notably, the character Rorschach seems to have inspired a legion of new followers taking up copies of his mask, and all gather around to chant some of his dialogue from the original novel.
From there, the trailer launches into a montage of various scenes of action and drama going on, and some flashes into what looks like an aging Ozymandias and a strange cowboy. It's all set to a creepy, haunting score from the team of Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, which underscores the drama and tension seem throughout.
