Untoward_Parable, how about you lay off the insults? As you’re new, I’m not sure you read the registration agreement. You’ll find it in the About This Message Board forum. Insults are not allowed outside the BBQPit. State and defend your opinion, but keep the snippy comments to yourself.
Everyone else, let’s go back to discussing the movie.
I agree.
Yes, that’s a major failing of the film. Other flaws are much more forgivable, as it’s impossible to cram the same level of detail into 2 3/4 hours.
Nice catch.
I’d forgotten that. It also helps explain why he didn’t simply liquidate Dan and Laurie at the end. I may have to give the comic another go sometime. I’ve tended to enjoy the discussions of it more than I did actually reading it in the first place, but I did rush through it a bit.
What’s the Hallelujah scene? Snyder put the song on the Comedian-rapes-Silk Spectre I scene?
Again, havent seen the movie. Really liked your post.
Cause I’m as surprised by the overly negative comments on Ozymandias in this thread as I am by those on the Comedian (the Comedian doesnt have morals?? Really?).
I can only imagine this comes from the movie. Because one of the high points of the book was how a character that’s consistently portrayed as a (boring) bleeding heart Bruce Wayne suddenly gets revealed as one of the most interesting characters in the story. Moore couldnt care less about endorsing one character in the book and making him HIS voice (as Alessan seems to want to) but Veidt basically does what any Super should do but has neither the guts nor the ability to: he decides to take over. And anonymously so.
He really unties the Gordian Knot. Something none of the other heroes could ever bring themselves to.
You’re kidding?
Thanks, and that’s all I was saying - that’s what I came away with. 
No, he put it in the Dan-finally-gets-it-up-and-bangs-Laurie-in-the-flying-owl scene.
Strikes me more as WMG than Fridge Logic, unless there was something in there to indicate it: the Comedian talks about how he need never have looked out of that window during the flight back to the States; Ozzy says he regrets the Comedian’s accidental involvement; nobody – not even Rorschach! – suggests otherwise when confronting Ozzy after realizing he killed the Comedian the same way he killed his servants and the rest; it’s consistent with the comic in the same way that it’s consistent to believe Ozzy could breathe underwater and talk to fish.
Nah, you’re wandering off from movie/book analysis to fanwank here. Ozy isnt that arrogant, it’s mostly that people that feel uncomfortable about his “Smartest man in the world” are the ones that describe him to us for a long part of the story. When we get to the point where Ozy tells his story, you realize he is less arrogant than he is ambitious.
Doesnt make any sense whatsoever that he could have planned that the Comedian would have spotted his secret island back on a mission, and that he would investigate it. In fact Veidt only learns of this because he was taping Moloch’s house, as part of his plan to get rid of Manhattan.
That Ozy wants to get rid of Manhattan, now, that’s clear. Ozy represents the Man Vs God conflict. That’s why he’s so fucking interesting. (besides Ozymandias respects the Comedian. He probably despises a lot of the aspects of the man, but respects his insights. Hell, it’s the Comedian’s speech that tears the veil for Veidt).
*BTW, where is it said exactly that the Comedian beat Veidt (I guess it must have been in the written bio parts)
I’m being flip, but I’m serious. In the movie, Veidt seems a bit chilly and self-important when he’s talking down to reporters or CEOs, but he comes across as genuine and relaxed and even sentimental when he’s talking with Dan – if you ignore the German accent he’s suddenly using. (It probably doesn’t help that the actor is a Brit oscillating between American and German accents: by definition, he’s almost can’t not sound a bit strained and artificial.)
There’s a part in one of the written segments at the end of the comics where Veidt says that the Comedian attacked him, then claimed he “mistakenly” assumed Ozy was a villain. IIRC, it didn’t state who won that fight.
I concur though - there’s little/no evidence that Ozy planned to murder the Comedian. It was an awfully convoluted plan if he did. Especially since he then had to fake the own assassination attempt on himself to throw off Rorschach. Heck, the Comedian lived close enough to ground zero that he would have been taken out by the telepathic alien anyway.
I dont get it. Veidt is supposed to be German in the movie? Because of his name? Cuz in the book, I had always assumed that he was American (especially since there are NO foreign supers in Watchmen, they’re all US.).
The actor has stated that he gave Veidt a German accent he only uses when among friends, figuring the guy would use an all-American accent in public. (It’s spelled out in the comic that Veidt’s parents arrived in the US the year he was born, but no further detail is supplied other than, y’know, their names; Goode extrapolated.)
Extrapolating when you dont manage to already cover all the material is pretty stupid. Especially when it goes against the flow of the original story.
And giving a German accent to a future traitor and portrayed megalomaniac sounds incredibly dumb. One other reason to skip that movie for me (the Matrix/300 Ninjutsu moves in the prison riot being enough reason for that)
A claim that can be pretty much made of any writer of the last 50+ years. Everyone takes inspiration from what came before.
In your case though, you’re specifically saying that he has no ideas at all that count as original. That seems a very dubious claim.
I mean, I’ll give you some slack here, and say that the a comic series well accepted to be amongst the best ever written* was actually derivative of a superman comic in the 60’s…that you can’t give a number or link to. But then I’m going to have to point out DR & Quinch, Ballad of Halo Jones, V for Vendetta…get the idea?
It’s the sex scene, which I actually thought was a highlight of the movie. Not only was it sexy, it was freaking hilarious, which I think was 100 percent appropriate for the situation. I was amused and turned on, all at once. Definitely better than the comic book version of this event.
I don’t think he’s kidding. I agree with him. Everything was wrong about the movie’s portrayal of Ozymandias, and the accent is one of the glaring problems. Even worse is the fact that the actor who portrayed him looked like he was about 15 years old. Whoever said that it should have been George Clooney was right on the money.
For some reason, I’m thinking that Adrian Veidt was originally from the Netherlands.
I must also call “baloney” on the idea that Veidt planned Blake’s murder early on. It’s not quite as overreaching a fanwank as saying Manhattan teleported Rorscach (as opposed to exploding him), but it’s pretty close.
Anyway, the biggest problem I had with the sex scene is that it just went on and on. The comic shows the foreplay on one page, then cuts to the post-coital (rather like a James Bond movie) with no loss of drama or significance. I’m quite certain the five or six minutes the movie spent on humpy details could have put to better use elsewhere.
IIRC it is at least implied that the Comedian won. In the short term.
Killing the Comedian as a personal vendetta would have been out of character for Veidt, who above all was a rational man.
He sums up The Comedian’s style as something like “Skillful feint, devastating uppercut, and little else,” and I think his exact words were “He won. In the short term.” Personally I can’t help detecting a significant amount of bitterness in Ozy’s voice there even though he purports to be above such things. He’s not a man who takes defeat well, particularly since he despised everything about The Comedian. He also strongly implies that The Comedian knew Ozy wasn’t really a villain and fought him just because he wanted a fight. I don’t think Ozy intentionally let The Comedian see what he was doing. It didn’t advance his plot in any way and increased the risk he would be exposed, even if that risk was marginal. I do think he took enormous pleasure in getting revenge on The Comedian by overwhelming him physically (while sustaining few or no injuries) and then killing him, and in knowing that The Comedian understood as well as Ozy himself that Ozy had beaten him completely.
While Adrian Veidt’s characterization was very, very weak, I’d have to say that I absolutely loved Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the Comedian and Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach. They really brought their characters to life right off the page. It was really a career performance for Haley (yeah, okay, I haven’t seen all his movies, but I did see Breaking Away!). I feel bad for him that the rest of the movie didn’t live up to what he did there.
The rest of the performances were mediocre or worse. Malin Ackerman was pretty awful.
Billy Crudup had a very difficult job to do and thus I don’t hold it against him too much that his performance was so flat as Doctor Manhattan. I don’t know what went wrong with the special effects, but that whole thing just didn’t even feel like it was in the same reality. Maybe it might have worked better if they hadn’t made him blue – yeah, I know, it is a huge departure, but I’m trying to figure out how his presence could have been made a little more verisimilitudinous.
Carla Gugino and Matt Frewer were also very well cast.
FWIW, I don’t think you’re off base at all. I think a major point of the graphic novel is that superheros and super-villains are just social constructions in a chaotic and morally ambiguous world. I’ve always seen Dr. Manhattan as symbolic of how irrevocably the nuclear option changed history. The part of the story where he sees all moments in time, simultaneously, where he has his accident and the magnitude of his new existence causes him to lose all sense of perspective. The accident didn’t just change him… it changed the world irrevocably.
I just can’t for the life of me figure out how anyone could do justice to the graphic novel in film format. How do you portray something as subtle and complex as Watchmen in a fast-paced, plot-driven medium?
And now I am really tempted to give this book another read-through.
I think the most dated thing about the comic book is the art. The style is very traditional 1970s straight up-and-down comic book art. Yeah, there’s a lot of playing around with the framing, but the actual drawing style itself is very staid.