The ending of Watchmen (spoilers)

[muldoonthief]

@Just_Asking_Questions

Unless I’m remembering wrong (my book is at home - unless you’re talking about the movie?), Night Owl shot him, and the only thing that saved Veidt was that he caught the bullet. A fine trick, and one that can probably only be used once.

I’d have emptied the gun into him.

Laurie shot him, not Nite Owl.

http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/4/41224/3029247-ozymandias+1.jpg

ETA: Can’t find a picture of the Rorschach/Nite Owl/Ozy fight (from the comic), but IIRC, Ozy pinned Rorschach’s arm to a table with a fork, then when Nite Owl pulled out the laser, Ozy deflected the beam with a soup tureen lid, then used it as a frisbee to break Nite Owl’s nose. All while calmly explaining his plan.

[Just_Asking_Questions]

@muldoonthief

Laurie shot him, not Nite Owl.

Ah. IDRC.

Still, shoot him again! Smug murdering bastard.

[John_Bredin]

@muldoonthief

ETA: Can’t find a picture of the Rorschach/Nite Owl/Ozy fight (from the comic), but IIRC, Ozy pinned Rorschach’s arm to a table with a fork, then when Nite Owl pulled out the laser, Ozy deflected the beam with a soup tureen lid, then used it as a frisbee to break Nite Owl’s nose. All while calmly explaining his plan.

About halfway down this page.

[leahcim]

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

IIRC, all that’s mentioned is that whatever happened to Jon was certainly unplanned and just as certainly unrepeatable, with no mention of failed attempts.

I recall the failed attempts as being implied, but not outright stated. I took it as implied that Jon’s previous training by his father in the assembly of timepieces (making him a “watch man”) was critical to his ability to reassemble himself after the experiment.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@leahcim

I recall the failed attempts as being implied, but not outright stated.

Well, I’m not much at proving a negative – but if you can point to something other than the “certainly unplanned” sentence I’d mentioned, I’ll of course concede.

Can you?

[Just_Asking_Questions]

@leahcim

I recall the failed attempts as being implied, but not outright stated. I took it as implied that Jon’s previous training by his father in the assembly of timepieces (making him a “watch man”) was critical to his ability to reassemble himself after the experiment.

I know it isn’t critical to the book, but if further “experiments” were done, what happened to the others? Are they still alive, somewhere out there? (whatever “alive” means when you are what Jon was before he reassembled himself.) Maybe having one’s intrinsic fields removed causes The Next Step™ of human evolution. Turn us into Organians, as it were. Jon is actually the failure - so unimaginative, so tied to his earthly one-dimensional viewpoint that he thought coming back was the thing to do, rather than moving on and never looking back.

Maybe that’s why the other experiments “failed” - they didn’t. All the test subjects are alive and happy in a higher plane. They just didn’t want to come back.

“I can’t go back,” said Towser.
“Nor I,” said Fowler.
“They would turn me back into a dog,” said Towser.
“And me,” said Fowler, “back into a man.”
Clifford Simak - Desertion

[Lemur866]

Of course Moore doesn’t insist that Ozymandias’s plan will work out for the best. It might work, it might fail. Either way Ozy killed a million people. The success or failure of his plan won’t change that. Even if it works, would it be the only option to prevent war? And even if it prevents war today, tomorrow comes and then new things happen. Nothing ever ends. I mean, unless there’s a nuclear war and humanity goes extinct. It ends then, I guess.

[FlyingRat]

@Just_Asking_Questions

I know it isn’t critical to the book, but if further “experiments” were done, what happened to the others? Are they still alive, somewhere out there? (whatever “alive” means when you are what Jon was before he reassembled himself.) Maybe having one’s intrinsic fields removed causes The Next Step™ of human evolution. Turn us into Organians, as it were. Jon is actually the failure - so unimaginative, so tied to his earthly one-dimensional viewpoint that he thought coming back was the thing to do, rather than moving on and never looking back.

Maybe that’s why the other experiments “failed” - they didn’t. All the test subjects are alive and happy in a higher plane. They just didn’t want to come back.

“I can’t go back,” said Towser.
“Nor I,” said Fowler.
“They would turn me back into a dog,” said Towser.
“And me,” said Fowler, “back into a man.”
Clifford Simak - Desertion

Considering that Bubastis (Adrian’s mutant lynx) got disassembled at the end, it’s fun to think that she either a) is playing cat-and-mouse with planets somewhere, or b) is going to come back and be the most capricious superbeing ever.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@Just_Asking_Questions

I know it isn’t critical to the book, but if further “experiments” were done, what happened to the others? Are they still alive, somewhere out there? (whatever “alive” means when you are what Jon was before he reassembled himself.) Maybe having one’s intrinsic fields removed causes The Next Step™ of human evolution. Turn us into Organians, as it were. Jon is actually the failure - so unimaginative, so tied to his earthly one-dimensional viewpoint that he thought coming back was the thing to do, rather than moving on and never looking back.

Maybe that’s why the other experiments “failed” - they didn’t. All the test subjects are alive and happy in a higher plane. They just didn’t want to come back.

Heh. For the opposite of that, I recall seeing unsupported-but-yeah-it-could-be speculation that – well, look, from the late '50s to the early '80s, does Doc ever strike you as someone who wants people following in his footsteps? I gotta say ‘no’. And, given that Doc got vast powers after it took him a good long while to first pull himself together – well, maybe he’d dissipatie away any attempts to duplicate that accident. Would he? Could he? Well, it sure as hell wouldn’t surprise me.

Now, that’s assuming there were other attempts, and assuming he’d react that way. But if so, then if he leaves the solar system at the end…

[Elendil_s_Heir]

Check out the excellent 2012 Before Watchmen comic about Dr. Manhattan, written by J. Michael Straczynski and drawn by Adam Hughes. Lots of interesting stuff on Jon’s background, and free will, destiny, causality and even Schrodinger’s cat.

@Gyrate

Certainly Veidt had plans to manipulate public opinion; note for example the change in advertised perfume brands from the dark, backwards-looking “Nostalgia” to the forward-looking, positive “Millennium”. Control the messages, change the zeitgeist, exert enough influence to get a more progressive administration in place (led by Robert Redford?), and you’re already well on your way to averting the longer-term disaster.

The fly in this particular ointment (apart from Rorschach’s diary) is flagged by Dr M just before leaving: nothing ever ends, and there is no once-and-for-all solution to the problems of mankind. Veidt has averted today’s holocaust and will avert tomorrow’s. But next year’s, or next century’s? Maybe, maybe not…

Exactly. He’s pulled humanity back from the brink of imminent nuclear destruction and bought time, maybe years, to do even more to make WWIII unthinkable. I wouldn’t put it past him (even if The New Frontiersman publishes what purports to be Rorschach’s journal).