Doom and Doomer: Watchmen
JIM DOOM: So did you see Watchmen yet?
DOOM DeLUISE: Yes I did.
JIM DOOM: I read Sunday morning that it had a three-day opening of $55.7 million. How do they know that on Sunday morning? Isn’t Sunday part of the three-day total?
DOOM DeLUISE: Sunday’s an estimate. Actual figures don’t come out until Monday.
JIM DOOM: Is there just some kind of formula where they can say “Well, if Friday this well and Saturday did this well, historically Sunday is x percentage of what we saw on Friday and y percent of Saturday, so if we average those two, we can reasonably assume Sunday’s total” or something like that?
DOOM DeLUISE: Yeah, that’s it exactly. According to the actuals, Watchmen only grossed $55.2 million. Still, 55 million dollars for a rated R movie with a two and a half hour plus runtime is pretty damned impressive.
JIM DOOM: So I already wrote about what I thought Tuesday night. Want to give me a similar overview of what you thought and we can jump into specifics after that?
DOOM DeLUISE: Sure. Like you mentioned, virtually every important part of the comic book is in the movie, oftentimes word-for-word or shot-for-shot. The amount of effort it took to hit all the high notes should be pointed out, to begin with, and applauded. Also, the fact that Snyder was able to convince the studio to go through with the ending, to give him so much leeway in terms of what he got to throw on screen, is also very commendable.
The guy who played Rorschach, also, should be noted as delivering a fairly amazing portrayal. Once he took the mask off, when he was really given a chance to act, he nailed it. Every little bit.
As for the rest of the movie, I really pretty much just hated it all.
JIM DOOM: You were really concerned about the ending — how did it compare with what you feared?
DOOM DeLUISE: Oh, I’m fine with the ending. The things they changed make sense. The things they left intact also work for the story they were telling. I’m not at all bothered by what was changed from the book to the movie. Like I always say, I don’t care if they’re faithful to the “source material” when they make an adaptation. I just want to see a good movie, and this, in my opinion, wasn’t a good movie.
JIM DOOM: Well, I’m not asking about your thoughts on the faithfulness. You were worried about the ending because of what they changed in the script.
DOOM DeLUISE: Oh, right. I read a script a year or so back that was supposedly the final draft that they were filming. In that, Niteowl killed Ozymandias at the end (crushed him with his Owl Ship), and there was some hokey scene where Ozy broadcast a message to the world disguised as Dr. Manhattan after the attack and told everybody to stop fighting each other, because He’d Be Watching. Thankfully, my fears were unnecessary, as none of those changed made it into the final film.
JIM DOOM: At least, not the theatrical version.
DOOM DeLUISE: Maybe they’ll include them in the sequel.
JIM DOOM: So want to talk a little about what you hated or what you thought made it a bad movie?
DOOM DeLUISE: Sure. When I was walking out of the theater, I asked my girlfriend how it was possible that they included every major story beat and line from the comic (more or less) yet ended up creating something so emotionally and intellectually flat. I still can’t quite figure it out, but it seems like they just had a list of scenes they wanted to shoehorn in, but then they didn’t think to develop them so that they’d have any sort of impact.
For instance, when Laurie finds out the Comedian is her dad.
In the comic, that’s one of the most emotionally wrenching scenes, but in the movie, they hadn’t established her hatred for him, so at the point when she figures it out, it just doesn’t matter or even make sense, really.
It seems like the movie made some demands of its viewers; that is, the viewer has to fill-in-the-blanks with the knowledge of the book that they bring to the table. So if you haven’t read the comic, I’m guessing you’ll probably appreciate the movie even less than somebody who has read it, and if you have read it, it’s sort of demanding that you remove yourself from the movie experience the entire time by making you fill in those gaps.
JIM DOOM: I’m surprised you say they didn’t establish her hatred for him. That was the whole basis of the scene with her mother.
DOOM DeLUISE: You mean that scene that lasted all of 30 seconds?
JIM DOOM: That was the subject of the argument that formed the terrible memory she always went back to.
DOOM DeLUISE: Yeah, but the scene with her mother seemed more like Laurie was trying to convince her mother that SHE should hate the Comedian, not that Laurie did
JIM DOOM: I had forgotten that part from the comic and the movie did enough to explain it to me. I’m actually glad they didn’t spend more time on it, given how much more there was to get to.
DOOM DeLUISE: Admittedly, I wasn’t paying much attention during the scene with the argument, because I kept thinking, “Man, that is some awfully shitty makeup”
JIM DOOM: Yeah, it really was.
So can you elaborate on what you felt made it intellectually flat?
DOOM DeLUISE: Unfortunately, a change they made in the ending. At first, when they said there wasn’t going to be a squid, I didn’t care. I mean, that doesn’t translate well. So they went with Dr. Manhattan-based bombs. Ok, I’m game with that. But then you stop and think about the plot, the purpose of the plot, for a second, and it kind of falls apart.
Dr. Manhattan is an American scientist. If he’s telling the world to stop all fighting or else, threatening everybody with violence, for all intents and purposes, it’s just an American. There would be no difference in most other countries’ minds, right? The squid threat worked because it was an extra terrestrial, so the entire world had to join together to fight this common enemy.
JIM DOOM: I think that’s why it was important that he had to destroy a huge chunk of New York too. Had the Americans not also suffered, I think you’d be totally right.
My problem with that scenario was that they’d already established Richard Nixon and his advisors as the “Better dead than red” gang who were really unconcerned with mutually assured destruction so long as they were safe in their bunker. It made his somber change a little less believable.
DOOM DeLUISE: Why did they even have Richard Nixon in the movie? He didn’t have any lines in the comic. He looked like Patrick fuckin’ Swayze from Point Break, with a terrible make-up job and terrible acting to boot. At least the scene in the war room gave me a chance to go to the bathroom without missing anything important.
JIM DOOM: My best guess would be just that he’s a face of the moral transition. It was a pretty simple device to use, and I can see the temptation to overplay the hand at first.
DOOM DeLUISE: All this stuff is just kind of skimming the surface, though. I mean, I don’t hate the movie for the ending. I don’t hate the movie for the lack of emotion in certain spots that I remember as being more emotional.
I hate the movie because of the acting and the fight sequences and the computer graphics work. And the soundtrack. That abysmal, disgustingly stupid soundtrack.
JIM DOOM: I thought most of that stuff was hit and miss. The main acting that stood out to me as weak was Silk Spectre Jr., and that probably stood out most because of how much she had to carry. It’s probably not too easy finding great actresses who want to prance around in spandex and get naked on screen. Otherwise, I didn’t mind the acting, and in cases like Rorschach, loved it.
DOOM DeLUISE: Oh, I loved Rorschach, too.
Except I kept thinking of that skit from Jiminy Glick where Martin Short is pretending to be Al Pacino, and he’s just growling and then starts choking and yelling for a lazenge.
JIM DOOM: Same with the soundtrack. There were times I didn’t care for it, but the “All Along the Watchtower” part was exactly what I was referring to in my earlier review when I mentioned Snyder incorporating some of the finer testosterone / adrenaline moments of “regular” superhero movies. It was a “Hell yeah” type moment that was able to happen without having to rewrite the end with the heroes standing victorious over the villain. He picked his battles.
I don’t think the movie would have worked as well without moments like that. I say that, of course, as someone who thought the movie worked well, so take that for what it’s worth.
DOOM DeLUISE: I liked “All Along the Watchtower,” especially because it reminded me of how the last lines in that song are one of the closing sentences in one of the chapters of the book, and another chapter is titled after a line from the song, “Two Riders Were Approaching,” so it was a nice little moment thrown in there.
DOOM DeLUISE: I didn’t think 99 Lutballoons or Hallelujiah or Desolation Row fit at all, though
JIM DOOM: Why not 99 Luftbalons?
That seems extremely appropriate.
DOOM DeLUISE: It just seemed way too poppy and out of place. I like that song, but it just didn’t feel right to me. Didn’t it play when Dan and Laurie went out to dinner? Like, it only played for about twenty seconds or something, so it just seemed jarring
JIM DOOM: It might have, but when I think of that song, I think “Bubble-gum sounding song with the darker undercurrent about the Cold War,” which I thought made it a great fit for the movie.
Not to mention the whole idea of something innocent triggering something deadly.
DOOM DeLUISE: Oh, another thing. Speaking of the Cold War aspect of the movie, by cutting out basically every single human character from the movie, I didn’t feel the Cold War threat as much as in the book. Small nitpick.
Let’s talk about something else I hated. The gore. Jesus Quincy Adams, this thing was gross.
JIM DOOM: Yeah, I didn’t like that. That was one of my big problems with it. Relatively speaking.
DOOM DeLUISE: Like the shot where Dr. Manhattan blows those guys up in the bar, and then it shows their dangling entrails hanging from the ceiling. Or when Rorschach takes the meat cleaver to the dude’s head, again and again.
JIM DOOM: Why do you think he used so much gore?
DOOM DeLUISE: I don’t know why he used gore. I think violence can be a lot more effective when it’s just implied (like the scene where Rorschach takes the Big Figure to the bathroom), but then we were given that huge rush of blood at the end. It seemed like Snyder didn’t really get why that scene was cool in the comic. It’s because Rorschach killed the guy and we didn’t even see it.
The movie just seemed really obvious to me. Like, all the subtlety of the book was taken out and we were given a big, loud flashy chest-bumping movie. The “Everyday Superhero” idea was cool in the book, but it’s not really in this movie. Instead, these are just your typical super tough superheroes, who can break arms with one hand and who can send a guy flying across the room with one kick or one smack to the stomach.
Warner Bros. is probably patting itself on the back today, congratulating Zack Snyder on how well he “gets” the fanboy community, but fanboys are idiots. If you’re a fanboy, you probably loved this movie. If you’re just wanting to see a movie based on a really great piece of fiction, though, you’re probably going to be pretty let down. And, Jim, while you may say that it worked, for the most part, the fact that a lot of it sucks as much as it does should be more bothersome, I think. I mean, this sucker is on how many top 100 lists for being one of the greatest works of American literature? And the best we can get is a movie that’s maybe 3 1/2 out of 5 stars, at most?
JIM DOOM: So I liked the movie the more I thought about it, and although I didn’t like the violence, I think I’m giving it more credit than you are. I was uncomfortable seeing how much the sympathetic duo seemed to be enjoying the violence they were inflicting, but then I thought about it, and started to think about it in terms of the unintended violent consequences of do-gooding, which is obviously a theme of the whole work.
So as far as interpretations go, the no-credit interpretation is that Snyder thought the kung fu gore was awesome; the give-credit interpretation is that he knew it was off-putting. I would’ve initially leaned toward the former, but the more I think about the movie overall, the more I shift toward the latter.
DOOM DeLUISE: That’s a fair criticism of me, though. I’m not giving Zack Snyder any credit whatsoever. I mean, he made 300.
JIM DOOM: The things I didn’t like didn’t bother me enough to affect my enjoyment of the movie. I think the slow-mo is gimmicky, but I had completely forgotten about it until someone asked me about it. The things I didn’t like did not stick with me at all beyond the moments they bothered me. The things I did like, however, did stick with me. That’s why I’m not bothered.
I would put this movie right up with The Dark Knight. I actually like The Dark Knight a lot less as time goes on. My fondest memories of it are as a fantastic series of Joker sketches. Things like the convoluted plot, Batman looking and sounding stupid and the dumb ending make me appreciate it less. Maybe the same will happen with Watchmen. But so far, I like Watchmen more as time goes on. So I just don’t share your assessment that this is some kind of turd that people are going easy on.
DOOM DeLUISE: Can you name me a single scene from Dark Knight that is as comparably stupid as the Hallelujiah Owlship sex scene, when the NiteOwl’s space ship spurts firey hot jizm all over New York City?
JIM DOOM: Maybe rebuilding fingerprints from a shattered bullet rebuilt via various gizmos from an apartment I never understood why anyone was there leading to a trap that implied the Joker would know Batman would pull that off.
This is, of course, assuming I’m agreeing with your premise that the best overall comparison of two movies is by looking at their worst scenes.
DOOM DeLUISE: Ok, fair enough. We don’t have to do that.
JIM DOOM: To me, the most important thing this movie could do is preserve the message of the comic. Doing that alone wouldn’t make it good, but I was impressed with how well it did that. I also felt like Snyder built a theme of hope on top of Moore’s despair. Pretty much anytime anyone talks about using fiction to probe the shades of gray in characters, they’re talking about looking at the ways in which good people are actually bad. But I came away from this doomsday movie with a surprising sense of hope, which came from the good that sociopaths like Dan and Laurie were doing by trying to help. It let the material make its point about the bad things that can happen when one person tries to decide what is right and wrong for the whole world, but it doesn’t let that condemnation snuff out the good things that can happen when one person tries to help another.
I thought that was very important, and it took a delicate touch that I didn’t expect from Snyder. It’s why I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt in the scenes I didn’t like. The studio spotted him when he was making 300, and I think they completely lucked out that he matured as an artist in the meantime. It would’ve been just as likely for him to continue in the opposite direction.
DOOM DeLUISE: I think he did continue in the opposite direction, but he somehow lucked his way into a really great gig. I’ll give him some credit. He had to make a lot of difficult decisions regarding what should be cut and what should be kept. And, in the end, I think he did a good job of that. But if you were to cut out all of the ridiculous over-the-top kung-fu scenes that he just seems to have a huge boner for, then make it so that everything is in regular motion instead of super slow-mo (this is a nitpick that’s been voiced everywhere, it seems, but why is there so much slow-mo? do we need slow-mo when the only thing moving is a guy’s hair?), you’d probably be left with a movie that’s about twenty minutes long. That’s an exagerration, of course, but you get my complaint.
I thought that both the ladies who played the two Silk Spectres were terrible (surprising that Carla Gugino did such a shitty job as the older version of her character but was so awesome at the younger one, oh wait, that’s not surprising at all).
Plus, I thought the guy who played the Comedian was laughable, but not in a way that he probably desired, and the guy who played Ozymandias had all the confidence of a cardboard box, which is one of Adrian’s defining characteristics in the book.
Plus, could they have possibly made Ozy look more villainous throughout the entirety of the movie? When they first introduced him, why didn’t they have him twirling a mustache and wearing a cape? I don’t remember the book being that melodramatic, and I remember thinking that the Ozy being the “bad guy” plot was quite a swerve, but this movie is nothing if not incredibly fucking obvious, so it’s no surprise that the guy playing Ozy just sneered his entire way through the movie with an occasional flashing of an insincere smile.
JIM DOOM: So I just want to make sure I’m getting you on this — you think there was no more maturity behind the presentation this movie than there was in 300?
DOOM DeLUISE: No, I don’t think there was. I think this source material was better, and I think the script was more intelligent, but you can still see the immaturity of the director in a lot of spots, most notably the aforementioned OwlShip sex-capade. Handled with all the maturity of a teenager’s wet dream
Overall, I think my thoughts on this movie can be summed up with a simple analogy. It’s like a really terrible punk rock cover version of my favorite song by some shitty band like Blink 182.
Interesting discussion. You both articulate your positions very well. I fall firmly on the side of Jim Doom, however. These couple of lines pretty much say it all:
“The things I didn’t like did not stick with me at all beyond the moments they bothered me. The things I did like, however, did stick with me. That’s why I’m not bothered.”
I actually haven’t been able to truly stop pondering this film since I saw it on Saturday.
I think it’s wrong-headed to dismiss people who overlook the flaws as idiot fanboys. That’s a self-defeating argument. To my mind, the flaws simply weren’t particularly significant (and some of the flaws mentioned here, e.g. the gore, weren’t flaws at all in my book).
I understand DeLuise’s criticism regarding the film’s dramatic emptiness, and I can identify that to a certain extent, but on the whole, I felt that the characters carried through even if they did so merely as archetypes rather than fully-realized characters. But hell, I even got a little choked up during the scene in which Rorschach apologizes to Nite Owl for being a difficult friend, so there were definitely some dramatic beats that worked really well for me. Enough of them that I can overlook the ones that didn’t.
Anyway, I liked it a lot, and I think I’ll probably enjoy the directors cut even more if it fills in the gaps on some of the supporting cast.
March 9th, 2009 | #
I was saying that idiot fanboys would love this movie, not that everyone who loves this movie is an idiot fanboy.
March 9th, 2009 | #
I’m going to have to side mostly with Doom DeLusie in this debate. The word I keep coming back to to describe this adaptation is “uninspired.” It wasn’t a terrible movie, but it was wholly insincere, and doing a shot-for-shot adaption really proves that he didn’t know what he was doing. He just copied a better artist. You need to finesse it. It was about as dry and boring as Ozymandias’s delivery.
The two highlights were the intro, and seeing the origin of Dr. Manhattan come to life, though if I recall, that was over-narrated (another big flaw in the idealized word-for-word adaptation).
As far as slo-mo and gore goes, I wasn’t really put off by either of these things, but that’s me. I actually enjoyed a lot of what Snyder did with 300 (and Dawn of the Dead) despite its flaws. The slo-mo is a bit gimmicky, but it’s a great way to translate comic book panels on the screen. If you notice in that movie, the slow-mo shots came mostly when figures were at their most dynamic positions, and the movie would speed up in the transitions, an awful lot like “How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way”. At any rate, at least he never tried to put panel borders into the movie.
Jim Doom Reply:
March 9th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
I have no interest in trying to argue against someone’s right to dislike the movie, and obviously there are articulate people who didn’t care for Watchmen, but this has got to be one of the most absurd logical leaps I’ve read yet.
It proves nothing of the sort. Doing a shot-for-shot adaptation proves he did a shot-for-shot adaptation (in parts). The end.
Doom Fritter Reply:
March 11th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Alright, so that was a bit of a logical leap. My intended point was that it backs up what I was saying about the movie feeling really uninspired. I felt like Snyder never really decided on his voice for the project.
March 9th, 2009 | #
I’m unsure which opinion I side with more. you both have articulated sides and points very well. So all I can add is my small nugget of knowledge.
I agree about the soundtrack for the most part. I really would have preferred a complete instrumental, but I felt like Snyder was trying to place some of his own layers upon existing layers of film. I just feel for the most part he was unsuccessful. With the exception of the hendrix song before entering the Antarctic lair. For some reason that really reasonated with me.
I’ve seen this movie 2 times, and I see more faults each time. But I also see more evidence that Snyder loved the book and really tried to make it worthy of film and comic fans alike.
I really think his female casting was terrible. The Original Silk Spectre is so awfully portrayed. The rape scene has none of the tension I got from the book. He face almost seems happy to be beaten.
With all that said. Rorschac was awsome. Truly the best part of the movie, I was actually happy to have Nite Owl witness his death and feel it first hand. That is one thing that I like better in the movie than in the book.
Wow, I got off on a tangent
March 9th, 2009 | #
I have one or two thoughts to toss in and I’m not sure where to start…
Ok, first of all, Doom, your comment about Ozy’s role as the villain being too obvious is, I think, a little off-base. Having read the book, you can’t HELP but already know his role. I watched the film with a couple of people who had not read it. Both of them kicked themselves afterward for not picking up the clues here and there (and both are usually good at doing that in films). So given that, I think that Snyder might have done a better job of presenting Ozy than you’re giving him credit for.
Also, I wasn’t bothered by the gore as much. The comic, I think, was equally shocking. Sure, it wasn’t as gratuitous, and yet it still was quite a bit beyond any other comic of its day in terms of its themes. Running it as is by today’s standards would have seemed tame. Maybe the excessive gore wasn’t the perfect choice, but I think it might have been Snyder’s way of preserving the shock value of the source. Superheroes just don’t DO that sort of thing.
Overall, I really liked the film. I will concede that it wasn’t perfect, and yet I think that what Snyder accomplished far exceeded any hope of bringing Watchmen to the screen. I do think it was a little slow to get started, and I also feel like some of the character and emotional development was missing — but not critically so. My nitpicks were outweighed by my enjoyment, so that made it a good experience. And as time goes on, the problems I have with it still won’t prevent me from seeing it again.
Finally, Snyder has already announced that he intends for the DVD / Bluray release to be a director’s cut. In fact there are also talks about re-releasing it to theaters in a limited run. It will restore over a half hour of material. Given that Hollywood needs to put out the most marketable film they can, it stands to reason that much of the cuts were “slower” scenes — i.e., some of the character stuff that was missing.
I already like the film, but I plan on reserving a final opinion until I see what the complete version was intended to be and how much more that extra half hour fills everything out.
March 9th, 2009 | #
I’m trying to save most of my thoughts to keep them fresh for tomorrow night when I film my part of Comic Book Crossfire’s Watchmen Update, but I just wanted to tell you both that it was very refreshing reading each of your takes on the film. So much of the criticism (and some of the praise) I’ve read has been very “fanboyish” so it was wonderful to see both sides presented so intelligently and respectful of each point-of-view.
I find it incredibly frustrating that I still feel so torn about this film and hope that a 2nd viewing can help clear things up for me. I’m a little tired of arguing with myself.
I think this movie made me scizophrenic.
March 10th, 2009 | #
The question of whether Snyder matured as a director after 300 is a key one, I think, and I’m firmly on Deluise’s side there.
The Owl sex scene is a good example, and the gore is another. But the biggest example is the fighting. Like Deluise said, all the fight sequences are completely over the top. Any time someone punches or kicks someone else, the punchee or kickee goes spinning and flying (to slo-mo effect). This runs absolutely counter to one of the central points of Watchmen the book, which is that these “superheroes” are really just people, with all the faults and weaknesses of people. Snyder wasn’t mature enough to recognize that and, instead, just made “cool” action sequences, which is what he’s done in all his movies.
If he doesn’t know how to adapt himself from one property to another, I can’t give him credit for being a nuanced filmmaker.
Jim Doom Reply:
March 12th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Well, unless - like I said in the review - part of the point was to show the damage that is done from anointing oneself as a ‘watchman,’ so to speak; that is much more of a point in the book than the “real people” aspect (which I would argue was more just the vehicle for the point than an actual point itself), and definitely one that lends itself to a visual translation. It was uncomfortable violence, and not “awesome badass” violence, which is what makes me think he was trying to say something with it.
Van Reply:
March 12th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
I think I found a good way to put this: When faced with a choice between staying true to the book or staying true to his somewhat juvenile, heavy-action directing style, Snyder consistently stayed true to himself (at least judging from his two previous films).
And to me and everyone else I know who’s seen Watchmen, the fighting and violence strayed more into silly, cartoony territory than “uncomfortable.” I didn’t find it uncomfortable in the least, I found it ridiculous, and it sucked me out of the on screen world.
As an aside, Alan Moore has said repeatedly that his intent was to ground the heroes in reality, which does mean that their actions have consequences. But telling stories about relatively “normal” superheroes was his aim.
Granted, none of us know for certain whether he’s a hack or a genius, but the most obvious answer is the former. It’s possible that he had all these deep rationales for his choices, but you’re stretching to make that point.
Jim Doom Reply:
March 13th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Again, I disagree that it’s more “obvious” that he’s a hack, nor do I agree with the artificially imposed options of hack or genius. If it’s more obvious he’s a hack, then we have to presume that what he did well was all accidental. And to rest on the conclusion that a buffoon accidentally did a lot of things really well seems like the illogical stretch to me. On the other hand, if what he did well was deliberate, it seems far more reasonable that some just disagree with choices he made.
March 12th, 2009 | #
I still think that the fact that Dr. Manhattan was an American scientist, and American weapon, and an American “gone-crazy” would cause the rest of the world to place blame squarely on America, even though America still suffered the explosion of one of her cities. Perhaps not immediately, but eventually, I’m sure that would take place.
That brings up the point of another big problem with changing the threat at the ending from an extra terrestrial to Dr. Manhattan: Nobody knows if Dr. Manhattan’s still alive after the explosions. Nobody hears from him. He leaves the planet to go create life elsewhere, and that’s it. The general public might eventually start to think he’s dead or never coming back, at which point the violence could resume. In the book, with the threat being alien in nature, the squid comes across as being sent to earth prematurely, that there’s still some lingering threat out there that is planning on one-day finishing the job.
Changing the threat to Dr. Manhattan doesn’t have that open-endedness of eventual confrontation that the alien threat contained, so there’s not as much need for some form of worldwide coming together.
I’m not saying that changing the threat to Dr. Manhattan was an all-around terrible idea, nor am I saying that it wouldn’t actually work; I’m just saying that it doesn’t seem as strong, and it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny as well, either. It inevitably leaves me with a lot of questions that the movie doesn’t take the time to answer. With the book, we didn’t really need the answers because everything just kind of fell into place from a logical standpoint without leaving any loose ends. Yes, I’m aware that I just said that a giant squid monster from space was a logical ending to something. But I mean, it was, kind of.
March 12th, 2009 | #
In no way is the ending to the book or the movie dependent upon the threat being an infinite one, and in fact, I’d say it’s the opposite. The whole idea behind Rorschach leaving his journal and the journalists finding it is to point out how flawed it is for anyone — the Americans, the Russians or Ozymandias — to think they can come up with a plan to control everyone. Finding flaws with their plan doesn’t undo the point of the book — it supports it. Neither version of the story suggests “And now, we will forever have peace.” It’s the exact opposite.
Besides, if you think people would gradually reduce their fear of Dr. Manhattan due to a lack of repeat performances, surely the same would apply to the giant squid alien. If anything, Dr. Manhattan has a better chance of showing up again than the squid does.
Doom DeLuise Reply:
March 12th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
I think the threat of the squid is that he’s just the first wave in what will eventually be a full-fledged alien invasion. Never did I suggest that threat would be infinite, but it would suggest that Earth would be more likely to come together to provide a united front against the potential next attack. If another squid didn’t show within fifty years, would there still be peace on Earth? Probably not. Just like with the threat being Dr. Manhattan, that “united front” on Earth would eventually erode; I just think that the threat from Dr. Manhattan would erode more quickly. Why? Because he never states his purpose for blowing up all those cities, and he never tells anybody that he’s planning on attacking again. At least the squid sent telepathic messages to the world broadcasting further death and destruction. Manhattan just left. Five years from now, his “acts” will have meant nothing. Obviously, Rorschach’s journal shows the flaws in both plans, but I think that the plan in the comic seems to be more thought-through on Adrian’s part than in the movie. At the very least, I wasn’t finding side effects of his plan in the book that could potentially lead to its unraveling (other than the journal, obviously, which leads to the point you made about man’s hubris to think he can control everything).
As for your second paragraph, did I already respond to that? I think I did. Dr. Manhattan never comes across as potentially striking again in the movie. In the book, I got the sense that the squid was the first of worse things to come (that is, unless we all united and prepared for it).
I’m not trying to say that either version is suggesting there will be everlasting peace after the story is over, but I am trying to get at Adrian’s thought process and how it differs between the two versions. In the book, I think he fully expected there to be neverending peace, and I think his plan fit that expectation. In the movie, I think that there are a few too many things complicating the plan for him to logically hope for peace without end. Being the smartest man alive, he had to have known his plan was tenuous at best.
Jim Doom Reply:
March 13th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Is it not reasonable that if Ozymandias set up a first round of fake Dr. Manhattan attacks, he could do it again in 50 years if he thought it wasn’t working as well?
March 12th, 2009 | #