Not to mention that Hollis Mason’s death, and Dan’s reaction to it, are now deleted scenes – though they wouldn’t have carried nearly as much weight, given that the movie necessarily removed the bulk of Mason’s backstory. (I mean, without the autobiography, we’re at the point where truncated flashbacks mean various of Mason’s costumed contemporaries no longer even get lines in the film.)
I forget: did Mason unmasking and retiring at the banquet in his honor – and the unsettling conversation he had there with Doc – make it into the movie?
I think you misread my post. I understand that Ozymandias isn’t an unambiguous villain. If anyone, that part is taken by Nixon, and his unseen soviet counterpart, and that’s what I was driving at. Moore has stated Watchmen was supposed to be anti-Reaganism, that’s the backdrop to the story. We are supposed to be appalled that the world has reached the point where Ozymandias’ plan is the alternative to armageddon.
Whether Ozymandias’ plan was the only course of action is, of course, debateable. He is blessed with intelligence, wealth and influence, but chooses to manipulate and sacrifice thousands instead of trying to work with them. And at the end of the story, it’s implied that his plan may not ultimately work anyway.
Late to the thread, but IMO you can’t see the film and get any real idea of what the book is about. The movie is an utter travesty from a hack director, but even the best director in the world couldn’t do it justice. It was meant to be a superhero comic and it only works in that medium. In other words you can get a good sense of what Iron Man is about by watching the movie, even if you’ve never read a single comic, but not so with Watchmen. As others have said, in some sense it’s a meta-comic, critiquing superhero comics up to that time (1986). However, for me, Moore’s real accomplishment is creating an entire richly detailed superhero universe in twelve single issues.
Also it probably had more impact in 86 than today.
But I understand that. Life is damn complicated, and in the movies sometimes you just wanna see the good guys beat up on the bad guys, and don’t necessarily want to see the motives behind them, or the complications that led them to this point.
If you do, then you need to take your time and establish characters. I think Watchmen would have done better if they had dropped a lot of the super duper slow motion shots, the lingering scenes, as beautiful as they were, and spent time on each character. Individually, not in choppy little scenes.
I never saw the English movie version but there is a Hindi move called Salaam-e-Ishq which follows four love stories and does it very well. It’s a three hour movie, which Watchmen almost was, but it does justice to each of the stories by taking time with them. I think Watchmen should have done the same - picked the Comedian, Nite Owl, the girl whose name I keep forgetting, Rorschach, and Dr. Manhattan and Ozzy and shown each one of their stories, individually instead of lumping them all together in an amalgam of flashbacks.
I admit i am not really fond of flashbacks to start with. But if you can build deep, interesting characters, you’re halfway there. But as has been said, the characters were fairly 2-D.
There are lots of movies that offer exactly that. (I thought Thor was fun, for example.) Watchmen just isn’t one of those movies, and if you adapt Watchmen in such a way that that’s all it is, it loses the things that make it interesting and great and it really ceases to be Watchmen. So if you’re not in the mood for something more complicated, it’s kind of a given that you’re not going to enjoy it.
Do you have some indication that Moore would have any problem just with someone taking his characters and doing other things with them?
That’s not his issue. His issue is his own name being associated with the derived works when he had no creative input.
(And repeatedly being fucked over by the comics companies, but that’s a different issue)
Yes. A thousand times yes. That reaction defines Dan. How Rorschach of all people becomes a restraining influence shows how much they need one another.
Do you mean the conversation where he says he’s going to he a mechanic, and Manhattan tells him the new electric models will be simpler? I don’t remember that in the movie, but the last time I watched it was with a girl in a Silk Specter (old) outfit, and man was I distracted…
Aren’t we? The comic leaves open the possibility that he wins in the end.
No, I get what you’re saying - “hero” is the wrong word here - POV-character is closer. But the point is that Moore doesn’t just make a lesson that ends justify the means like was claimed. Like you said, he leaves it unanswered. But for me, the amount of focus on the civilian characters definitely points to one message - in a way, Ozy is as inhuman as Manhattan, to be willing to sacrifice real people the way he does.
Yes, there are an awful lot of “Lassie saves the day” stories out there. Which doesn’t stop them from being fun sometimes, but I’d glad there are some more ambitious storytellers out there as well.
That was me, looks like KneadToKnow mangled the quote tag somehow.
Again - Nothing ends. Nothing ever ends. There’s a reason those were Dr. Manhattan’s last words. Ozy thought he saved the world, and he did - temporarily. But it won’t last forever. Maybe Rorschach’s diary will come to light, and be believed. Maybe there’s some other flaw in Ozy’s security. Maybe another country, whose leadership doesn’t believe in the telepathic squid alien will come to power. But mankind will be facing disaster again, no matter what Ozy did.
Watchmen might be better as a TV show, one that was only scheduled to run for maybe 2-4 seasons, like Babylon 5, with a beginning, middle, and end. We could take our time then with the characters and their motivations.
I had always hoped it would be an HBO miniseries, across 12 eps like the comic book, and directed by Pixar/Brad Bird (Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille) in some sort of stylized CG animation.
