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They should spend another million dollars to make that sequence just because. It wouldn't be in the movie or anything but it would be fun to gawk at. ....I'm serious.

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"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." I agree with the second part.

"There's a cello in your house now."

Maybe in 20 years Snyder will pull a Lucas and remaster Watchmen with the squid ending. Eh? God I hope not.

Have Lauries realization be like the comic, and include her throwing the drink in the Comedians face.

Yeah, and we have have Rorschach to show that. We had the Comedian to show that. And, in a different way, Dr. Manhattan.

Rorschach, who lost his mind facing the badness of humanity manifested in the brutal slaughter of a little girl, decides that lethal force is an appropriate way to punish the criminals and to prevent recidivisms.

The Comedian, who early in his life realized that the world is a stinking bog full of perverted lunatics, just tried to flow with the shit and get some laughs out of it.

Dr. Manhattan, who couldn't care less about a bunch of dead mobsters or a hundred dead vietcong, does what he's told: 'fighting crime'. The morality of his activities escapes him.



But Dan and Laurie? Of course, what they do is violent. They beat up thugs, that’s what they’re trained for. But do they kill them? And if they do (in self-defence), don’t they care about what they’ve done? Dan is pretty much as peaceful as a thug slogging vigilante can be. It takes the brutal murder of his mentor and friend to almost drive him over the edge. And Laurie ‘shoots’ Adrian after learning he is responsible for mass-murdering half of New York (or multiple cities).

I really think having Laurie casually killing this thug is not the right way to approach the whole ‘vigilantism is violence is problematic’ complex. We have more than enough better examples for that.

This is one of the things that still bother me about the movie. Nevertheless, I really like it by now! It just could have been even better.

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The world is a mess and I just need to rule it.

I think Adrian needed more development, but then I thought that in the book as well. It's not supposed to be obvious he's the "villain", but it kind of is because compared to the others he's more like an outsider. You remain distant from him because there's really not enough of him explored in a personal fashion...for you to really care or to understand. At least that's how it is for me.

I don't believe this has been mentioned but, here's my thoughts:

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Lose several cringe inducing scenes--I don't feel like putting in the work to name them all, but the "captain's of industry scene" and Adrian's laughable speech to them was one of the worst. "Yeah, and why free energy?? Free's liak socializum--and we can't be havin' no socializum". Yeah Socialism is super awesome and a totally sucessful way to run a country.

are you fucking kidding me? Fossil Fuel and Nuclear Power a drug???

Where was all of this shit in the comic? Oh yeah, it wasn't because 'energy independance' wasn't an issue--Manhattan had changed the world with his presence.

Why did we need to have that as a plot point other than to do some backdoor anchoring to current times and problems--which we are trying to escape from.....by going to the movies......dumbasses.

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Can't Argue With A Confident Man.

Response to above ^

The whole alternative energy sub-plot does a lot of things for the movie. However lets start with why they probably decided to put it in the film in the first place. What Veidt says about the cold war, and how it's cause by a fear of not having enough is quite accurate. In retrospect it makes a lot of sense, and the fact that Veidt states in 1985 lets the audience know he is intelligent and the fact that he cares about the world. Sure Manhattan can synthesize the resources, and just have another self just do that all day, but it's a waste of his resources and time, and I don't he would want to do that, especially for a species he doesn't really care much about. It makes sense that he would collaborate with Veidt, since the man has enough money to fund a project that would give humans that power.

When we are first introduced Veidt, it makes Veidt seem less of a sell-out, if the money he accumulated is going to the research arm of the Veidt industries, to help humanity no less. But more importantly it is an introduction to the S.Q.U.I.D subplot. While I do have issues with splitting Veidt's character chapter in two parts, and putting one part in the middle of the movie, since it basically gives another hint that he's the guy pulling the strings, the writers I guess thought that since he is almost assassinated in this scene, it would cast away all doubt from the audience, There are advantages though. First of all it gives the audience more screen time with Veidt before his reveal, and while he does appear as a megalomaniac, the captains of industry are portrayed far worse, and also show more of the cold war struggle in the story. Plus the fact that Veidt looks at his watch after the meeting and right before his assassination was awesome and subtle, since that really isn't something you could put in GN, at least not the way it was done in the movie.

Though at the end of the day, the problems facing the world in 1985, should reflect our current problems, if the movie didn't remind you of today's problems then it wouldn't have been a true Watchmen adaption. After all Watchmen isn't exactly escapist fiction. The fact that you even "attempted" to escape the problems of the day by seeing Watchmen wasn't the brightest thing you could have done, and that's trying to be nice about it. Perhaps in the future you should see more optimistic movies, after all not all art is angsty anyway. Even a Michael bay movie would have sufficed in "escaping the troubles of the day" depending on whether or not you mind the inherent retardedness of that stuff.

I'd also like to add that the scene worked to ease the expository load in Chapters XI and XII. If that all had been cut outright, we'd have lost a great deal of Veidt's backstory and his motivations and if it stayed at the end of the movie, it would have killed the pacing. Snyder and co. had to get all of that out of the way at an earlier point in the story and I think they did a serviceable job.

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This is truly a madhouse. And I'm the lunatic running it. I've spent three years wondering if I should be proud or ashamed.

Yeah I agree there was no point at all to the gore in Dan and Laurie's fight scene: The book is largely about the different motivations that have bought each of the characters into becoming masked 'heroes'. Rorchach shows the psychopathic side with more than enough vigour, while Dan's motivations were always romantic, dealing out justice by way of fisticuffs in the footsteps of his predecessor. If they had kept that part purer it would have equally addressed the kind of romantic heroism which people are also used to seeing in movies, a contrast to the grittier violence in the film. That scene was all about nostalgia and Dan and Laurie sharing a romantic moment, which is harder to notice if there's gore everywhere.

I seem to recall they also didn't feature them 'post coitally' lighting up afterwards and I'm not sure how clear the humour of the situation was to non-readers. I'm not sure if they just didn't quite get, they didn't want to depict smoking on screen or they didn't have time to introduce the while concept of the futuristic pipes.

It's Hollywood's crusade against smoking. In the past they have gotten in quite a lot of trouble portraying lead characters as smokers.

Could you be more of an uppity douche? I don't think you have the volume quite loud enough on your 'uppity douche-o-meter'.

Intellectual stimulation and escapism/fantasy are NOT mutally exclusive. People who make modern day movies seem to think this is the case--it is not. Watchmen to me was not intellecually stimulating or entertaining--it was a pale shadow of it's source. It failed on both fronts because it was a frankenstein of Alan Moore's writing and studio compromise. I would say it was visually striking, but as a movie--it just didn't work. (THIS IS ONLY MY OPINION)

Though I will say that it is the best interpretation of Moore's work as far as films go, even though 'V for Vendetta' set the bar "SUPER" high.

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Can't Argue With A Confident Man.

Sorry about that, in all honesty I don't what happened there, I guess I was just in a bad mood. I apologize for being a utter douche bag about all of that. I can see where you're coming from, the first time I saw it, I didn't like it too much. I pretty much went into the movie nitpicking everything I didn't like. But after repeated viewings of the director's cut, I actually like it. The movie gets better the more you watch it.

There are a lot of cool easter eggs and you can tell it was a labor of love. It's a movie I respect since it's basically a big-budget art house film. It was a movie meant to divide people. Even though it only got like a 58% on RT if you limit it only to top critics, Roger Ebert gave it 4/4, which is a good sign, since he is one of the few critics I check to see their input on movies. It's amazing that any major studio would produce a film so Anti-American;the fact that a film got made, and that it didn't pussy out, and that it remained faithful to Alan Moore's themes (in my opinion) is pretty much an equivalent to a thermodynamic miracle (okay maybe I wouldn't go that far, but the odds were extremely stacked against this movie.).

EDIT: I don't think I ever said that Intelligent movies can't be escapist, it's just that I think it wasn't Alan Moore's intent to make it escapist. I'm particularly reminded of one page; which I think was part of the supplemental material after chapter five, that had panel of a pirate talking about how horrible the world of the black freighter comic series was, and asking us if our world was any better.

Put David Hayter into the movie during the Vietnam flashback. Come on! Hes the voice of Solid Snake XP Ooh! Rorschach/Solid Snake crossover! Battle of the gravely voices!

Chuck Norris

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"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." I agree with the second part.

"There's a cello in your house now."

When Laurie puts the Owl goggles on, it reads Laurie Juspezcyk. Unless you read the book, you'd have NO CLUE that Laurie's real last name was Juspezcyk since it was never mentioned in the film. She's only called Laurie Jupiter.

I think more back story with Long would have been better. In the book it's clear he has genuine interest in wanting to study Rorschach but in the film, all he says is, "I can't help him." Yes, a friggin' prison psychiatrist can't help out someone he's trained years to deal with. That's believable.

Also, more back story on Rorschach's childhood and beginnings, as well as the mask origins, would have been great to see. Plus, burning Grice to death instead of cleaving him would have left more of an impact (which is saying something considering the cleaver was pretty damn impacting as well).

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One superhero blows up New York, another one kills women and children, and the last one just flashes everybody.
SUPERHEROES ARE ASSHOLES! ~ Chester A. Bum

I always thought Long's comment was weird but it doesn't really bother me much.

....

Seriously though that's just bad policy saying out loud that you can't help your patients.

"Sorry Sir but you are too screwed up."

And more of his backstory would have been great but that damn time is always screwing things up. I'm completely fine with the cleaver though. I like the scene in the book as much if not more but it makes more sense that he would flat out attack him in a fit of rage rather than set him on fire.

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"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." I agree with the second part.

"There's a cello in your house now."

I think using Dr. Long the way he is used in the book would have taken too long. In the DC, the Dr. Long sequence (including Rorschach's flashbacks) is about nine minutes. I think for Dr. Long's background/narration/etc. to be effective, the sequence would have to be double that. No point in doing it unless you're gonna spend a good amount of time on it. If you don't, it's just random. Thrown in there.

Very sad but true. The idea itself is not inherently uncineamtic. In fact, conceptually, I can see it being very interesting. But it would just taken too long. It wouldn't make sense to spend that percentage of the movie on Rorschach's backstory, and spend so much less on the other characters' backstories.

Doc's origin is about 10 minutes, and the Blake flashbacks are about 12 minutes. Rorschach's should be about the same. That was a big improvement in the DC. I think they about doubled the amount of dialogue between Kovacs and Long. The added time firmly establishes that this is Rorschach's section of the film.



Yeah, I agree. When the book was published, Rorschach burning the guy's house down was a pretty shocking thing for a superhero to do. Today, it wouldn't be that shocking. The meat cleaver was a great idea.

I do wish so many audience members hadn't been happy when Rorschach killed the murderer. When I read that scene in the book, I really felt like Rorschach had officially crossed the line. That was when Rorschach changed from "cool" to "psychopath."

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"Computer unnecessary."

Well, it wasn't for lack of trying on Snyder's part. The movie made no attempt to sugar-coat who Grice was or what he did, but his appeals to be arrested and put through due process really pull at the conscience. Moreover, a clear effort was made to show that Rorschach was committing a bloody, gruesome act of murder against a defenseless man.

It is indeed the moment when Rorschach became a true sociopath and it's clearly treated as such by Snyder and JEH. If the mouthbreathers don't understand that, that's their problem.

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This is truly a madhouse. And I'm the lunatic running it. I've spent three years wondering if I should be proud or ashamed.

^ hence why they're mouthbreathers.

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