*** Official WATCHMEN Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[rich_d]

 

[TonyD]

wasn the Dr Manhattan ending a day the earth stood still thing.
Manhattan did this to prove a point(stop with the bombs) and
wouldnt think twice about coming back and doing it again?

Also the movie ending isn't that much different then the book.
Except manhattan gets blamed.

in the movie Veidt had been, for years trying to duplcate Manhattan's powers.
Same as in the book, just a different power.
in the book it was teleportation power, in the movie it was
destruction power.

So viedt used Dr's power of exploding stuff in stead of a teleporting power.


As for Dr. M seeing the crying, it was a near future. M couldn't see far enough to see what
Viedt was going to do.

do we have to use spoilers in a discussion topic?

 

[Phil Florian]

The bigger point is that WE the audience know that it won't last. Veidt was wrong in both the comic and the movie. I don't think Moore in the original nor Snyder in the movie were saying that Veidt was right and finally brought permanent, generations-long peace to the world. He averted a world-ending nuclear war, to be sure, but it was fairly clear that at some point the house of cards would come tumbling down. Thus the ending point at the New Frontiersman in both the movie and comic.

I think the new ending works fine because we can actually see beyond it a bit because we have had 20 more years on this planet to know how people respond after huge, city wrecking crises. I think the point was made fine in both the book and the movie version of it does fine by it.

 

[JonZ]

Nevermind, comment above explains it.

 

[Malcolm R]

No. Once the film is released, everyone should realize the discussion will involve spoilers. Those who haven't seen the film and don't want to be spoiled should stay out of the thread.

 

[Edwin-S]

There have been 297 ratings of the movie by average viewers on a non-movie buff site that I look in on once in a while. The average rating for the film, from reporting viewers, was 1 star out of four. The film failed to connect, at least among that group. I would consider the people who have reported to be typical of the average mainstream filmgoer, considering the type of site it is.

I think this film could end up being severely front-loaded. I think a good chunk of the mainstream audience probably think they are going to see a more typical superhero movie and are disappointed to find that that is not the case.

 

[Ray H]

Saw this earlier today. Thought it was pretty decent but didn't love it. I wrote out a decent sized rant, but I think I'll watch the movie again in the next week or two before getting too huffy and puffy about it. Hell, much of my feelings about the movie are already tempered knowing there are two director's cuts coming out down the line.

Either way, it is something of an achievement that Snyder and co. brought Watchmen to the screen in a pretty decent and not too compromised manner.

My main issues right now are with the characters. Despite all the flashbacks and issues that are presented, the movie just feels disengaged from the characters. As a result, we never get inside their heads. We're just watching them. We don't feel what they're feeling or understand what they're thinking.

The movie also has story issues. Mainly, the main plot drops out of the movie after the first act, only to reappear later. On top of that, the whole nuclear war thing - the very idea that the world's on the brink of ending - isn't played up well at all. Sure, we get some Dr. Strangelove type scenes, but why don't we see these same fears in the characters?

As for Snyder's stamp on the movie - the speed ramping, the music choices, etc. I could go without them. The music choices are odd not because they're bad songs or because they have nothing to do with the subtext of the movie/comic. They're wrong because tonally, they don't fit what's happening in the scene. I felt "Unforgettable" worked quite nicely in the opening fight scene, and "The Times They Are a Changin'" worked for the credits as well. But after that, things go crazy. I know the comic quotes "All Along the Watchtower", but why the hell is the Hendrix version scoring the scene where the Nite Owl and Rorschach are travelling to the Ozy's? Tonally, it has nothing to do with the moment.

Anyway, I love comic - every bit of it. But the movie isn't the comic.

 

[Derek Miner]

Not sure if I'm covering ground you've read elsewhere (I'll check it out if you provide a link), but I think a threat from Dr. Manhattan fits under the "alien and unknowable" and "psychic trauma" well enough because people had been led to believe that Manhattan was asuperman and an ally. Not only do people now have to face that someone they trust has turned against them, but also that this being has powers beyond what humans can predict and defend against.

When I went back to review exactly what had happened in the original book, I was amazed at how smart this particular change was. It feels so part of the whole tapestry of a world let down by "heroes" and it also fits the majority of story points from the original book. Well, except I can see how having Bubastis in the film doesn't relate to any other element on screen.

 

[TravisR]

Most definitely. I loved it but the movie is going to plummet to the earth next weekend.

 

[TonyD]

has everything to do with the scene.
"Two riders were approaching, and the wind, began to howl."

Hendrix or Dylan, same song, personlly i like the hendrix version.

 

[Chuck Mayer]

Derek,
The point of the squid is that it was not human at all, and it actually had a powerful psychic brain. It physically caused psychic scarring based on it's dimensional "displacement"...the book specifies this. All pointing out that the world's smartest man understood how fickle human behavior actually is, and took steps beyond just a body count and video imagery to push humanity together. Manhattan had been a familiar face. He was a known quantity that acted irrationally. The supposed alien was just that..completely alien. That psychic damage was supposed to imprint humanity (through other psychic sensitives) to the horrors beyond.

So while it might fit that theme a little better, it makes the world's smartest man not nearly as smart as he was before. At least if you've read the book

The film moves fast enough to let such a plot inconsistency slide.

EDIT: And to respond to Brett's comment in his review thread...Carla has been that hot for a long time. She is hot in Spy Kids, she is hot in Sin City, she is hot in Entourage. She owes Snyder nothing

She's looked better than she does as Silk Spectre before.

 

[JonZ]

I thought the Dylan and Hendrix were appropriate and by far,those songs worked better than any other tunes chosen for the film.

 

[Chad R]

My problem with the ending isn't that they changed it, it's that they didn't change it enough. This film had the same strengths and weaknesses as the book, and the ending was its biggest weakness.

The problem with the ending is that we just no longer fear world annihilation like we did in the mid-eighties. The ending to the book just doesn't resonate like it once did (and I thought it was a pretty simplistic solution to a global problem back then). To compound the problem is that Veidt's solution of killing a few million to save a billion plays specifically into our fears today. We're not scared of a thousand nuclear bombs taking us all out, we're scared of one taking out one city. So it's much, much harder to buy into his plan. He's that much more of a monster than he previously was for doing exactly what we fear most.

And like someone else mentioned, the whole peace thing wouldn't stick, even with "psychic" disturbances caused by an outer space squid or Dr. Manhattan bombs. We wouldn't stop fighting each other just because a new threat looms on the horizon. You just have to look at political parties to see that a group of people with the same essential goals will have different ideas on how to reach those goals and fight about it - the Democrats post 2000 elections and Republicans now. Or heck, look at the middle east. Most of those groups have the same religion and the same goals, but are willing to kill each other to achieve those goals "their way." It's in our nature to disagree and fight, and no event will change a few thousand years of instinctual behavior. I think our disagreements are what makes us special and unique, and I'd have liked both the book and film to explore that idea rather than think it can "solve" it.

The book was great at dealing with Superheroes realistically, and the characters we fantastic. But the plot to the book was always kinda hokey, and that weakness bled over to the film.

 

[Phil Florian]

Chad, I totally agree. Moore has always been slagged at being good at coming up with a concept, characters and a plot but having little in the way of endings. I never liked the squid ending and the psychic mumbo jumbo. He may have SAID that this scarring was what was supposed to work but even Moore undercuts this point by noting that if the Rorschach diary gets published, all of the scarring in the world won't matter when they hear that it was all Veidt. Same with Dr. Manhattan.

Actually, the movie parallels traditional comic book storylines nicely, especially Superman ones. How many times has Lex Luthor (the smartest man in the world, ahem) tried to convince humanity that their "superman" is something alien and unknowable and has the power to wipe everyone out. I love it. The comic and the movie even pokes fun at Veidt's 'monologuing' that happens in every comic or Bond film.

I stand that the ending of the book and movie have the same message and that is no matter how hard you shock the world, it will revert to its old ways in time.

An interesting take on this point and maybe the counter to it is in the awesome "World War Z" which, I think, posits that all the world needs for global piece is a huge zombie epidemic. Seriously.

 

[Ray H]

Hendrix, Dylan, either way, it's a great song. Look, I know the song is used in the movie because Moore quoted that line at the end of the corresponding chapter. In the comic, you can read the line and it has resonance. But here, with the song played loudly over a dramatic scene, it's not very subtle. And as far as the images and tone that the song conjures, it's completely different from what we're watching. Ultimately, I felt the song distracted from what was happening onscreen. The trouble with using music in films is that songs often bring their own baggage. The Hendrix version of "All Along the Watchtower" is just used so often in other films, tv shows, and commercials and heard so often on the radio, etc. that I've already associated it with half a dozen different images - none of which gel with this scene in Watchmen.

 

[TonyD]

I haven't associated that song or typecast the song with anything
so that didn't hurt the scene for me,
besides not much about this movie was subtle.

 

[TheBat]

someone metioned about the characters being detached.. I felt that way about the characters in the book. they got that tone right from the comic book. I think they did that on purpose.. someone reading the complete comic book can hopfully respond to that.

Jacob

 

[todd s]

I went to see this with some friends. We all had not read the comic. We all felt that their were some great scenes and some scenes that just seemed to lag. We all liked Rorshach.

Just curious what was the ending like in the comic??

 

[Ray H]

Maybe we're thinking of thinking detached in different ways. The characters in the book are much more vividly realized. There are certain nuances to them on the comic book panel - either in their look or the things they say. All I know is I cared for nearly every character in the comic from our main characters to the people on the street. They felt like fully developed characters to me. As the movie presented them, I can't say I had much of a connection. Hopefully this is fixed in the longer cut.

Maybe I just came to expect too much. For the last two months, I've been watching Kieslowski films and "The Wire". Talk about strong character work.

 

[Ray H]

Not too different. Instead of framing Dr. Manhattan, Ozy gets a bunch of scientists to develop a giant psychic squid monster and teleport it to NYC so that he can fake an alien invasion. The world unites against a common enemy.