The Black Freighter and Under The Hood are part of the book(s), but not part of the Snyder film.

The motion comic disc does feature the Black Freighter material as part of the main story (as in the original comic), but as far as I know the upcoming BF disc is something completely new (different style of animation and the Gerard Butler voicework). The motion comic animation is very minimal, but obviously the gist of the story will be the same.

So the short answer is Under The Hood won't be "ruined" by either the motion comic dvd or the feature film, but it will be by the original comic. You will get the Black Freighter story arc in the motion comic, but apparently it's not the exact same presentation as the Black Freighter DVD.

Make sense?

yup. thanks.

Review up for Black Freighter / Under the Hood. The Under the Hood feature looks cool:

http://dvd.ign.com/articles/961/961607p1.html

just to re-iterate...it won't matter which i watch first...Watchmen: Motion Comic or Black Frieghter? i plan on renting BF and didn't want to spoil the story if i watched one before the other. i know they show it a different way in the different medium, but if i watched BF first i am wondering if it will spoil some of W:MC...

They don't spoil each other. They have parallel stories, but watching the Black Freighter isn't going to spoil the fact that Rorshach is actually Santa Claus.

Ooops.

I haven't watched the motion comic, but in the non-motion comic, Tales of the Black Freighter is a story within a story. One of the characters is reading the Black Freighter comic, so over the course of the Watchmen story, you see the Black Freighter story a few pages at a time. So -- assuming (as I understand is true) that the motion comic of Watchmen includes the Black Freighter portion of the comic -- if you watch the Black Freighter DVD, it will spoil the story-within-the-story of Watchmen, but not the main story of Watchmen. On the other hand, if you watch Watchmen first, it will spoil the Black Freighter DVD.

Personally, I would watch Watchmen first. Black Freighter was intended to be viewed interspersed with the main story of Watchmen, and up until now, that's the way people encountered the story. It's one thing to view the Black Freighter as a standalone once you've already seen the big picture, but I wouldn't want that to be my first exposure to the story.

This is basically selling more of the same though I can see the potential for people that don't like to read much.

What Jason just said.

Despite being a huge Watchmen fan, I'm going to try to wait to buy both of these releases, as they seem like the sort of thing that will be $5 or less used pretty shortly. May rent them next free Monday though.

What Jason just said.

Despite being a huge Watchmen fan, I'm going to try to wait to buy both of these releases, as they seem like the sort of thing that will be $5 or less used pretty shortly. May rent them next free Monday though.

The Motion comic has the Black Freighter story within it, just like the comic.
It does not, however, contain the Under The Hood stuff.

I'm not sure watching Black Freighter on its own - without having seen or read any of the other Watchmen material - will be nearly as rewarding.

My advice is the following sequence:
read the graphic novel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
watch the theatrical movie
watch the Motion Comic disc
watch The Black Freighter disc

Has anyone noticed that Netflix doesn't carry this for some reason? I would like to watch this, but not go out and blind buy it. Haven't seen any rental place carry it.

i saw it at BBV.

If you're interested in this a blind buy and you haven't read the comic, I would just spend that money on the comic instead. That said, the Watchmen motion comic is actually pretty well done, despite the narrator reading the female parts and a few other voice acting nitpicks I had. It's slightly abridged, where some bits of dialogue from the comic were trimmed out, but before I saw the Snyder film, I started watching the motion comic as a refresher, and ended up being quite entertained.

It doesn't include some of the extra text bits from the end of each issue such as the Under the Hood excerpts) that add a lot of background to the story, so as I said, if you're new to Watchmen, I suggest reading the comic first.

Wal-Mart has this for $14.95 now I picked one up last night