I caught this on late night cable a couple of days ago. It wasn’t bad, but I thought the violence was ridiculously over the top. Did we really need to see a guy get his arms sawed off with a power tool? Or another guy get killed with a meat cleaver?
On the plus side, the sex scene, while gratuitous, was still…nice. Loved her facial expressions.
I went in to the story completely cold–never read the comics, all I knew was that it involved a group of superheroes. It’s a neat little alternative universe. That said, why was there no punishment for Veidt? Dr. Manhattan splattered Rorschach’s atoms across the snow for failure to agree to keep silent about the real cause of the destruction Veidt caused. Seems like Justice would demand at least comparable punishment for the villain.
Likewise, Silk Spectre II and Night Owl II staged a jail break. Spectre, at least, has no secret identity, so why isn’t there a warrant for her arrest?
Also, if I understand the ending correctly, the truth is going to come out anyway, because the New Frontiersman has Rorschach’s diary, which contains all the details of Veidt’s conspiracy except for the final battle.
Finally, Dr. Manhattan mentioned in passing that he might choose to create life elsewhere in the universe. What kind of life would he create?
A large chunk of NY was destroyed. Maybe the information about her was destroyed and there’s just not enough evidence to prosecute. The comic has a different explanation for why she’s still free.
It’s the diary of a crazy person. Who knows what’s going to happen when it’s published?
Who would enact the justice? Dr M. has seems to have pretty much evolved beyond any concern for individual justice, and the other heroes would be outmatched by Veidt.
In the comic, Dan and Sally (Nite Owl II and Silk Spectre II) changed their identities to Sam and Sandra Hollis (they also changed their looks, bleaching their hair blond). The movie ran long enough without trying to establish that.
It’s already been established that Manhattan wasn’t really interested in justice, but I think it bears pointing out that the original Watchmen comic wasn’t a straightforward superhero tale. Alan Moore, the comic’s writer, was deconstructing superhero cliches and tropes by placing superpowers and vigilantes in “the real world” and attempting to extrapolate the effects from that point. One of the conclusions he reached was that someone who had power on the level of a Dr. Manhattan would begin separating himself from humanity and come to regard us at a distance.
I hesitate to say this as I know someone will probably come along to contradict me, but I think by that point Manhattan had come to regard morality and ethics as a solely human concern. He came to regard Veidt’s transgressions as a logical extension of human nature and was simply trying to fix a problem he saw, regardless of what caused it.
It can be somewhat difficult to pick up in the movie given how the fight scenes and whatnot were filmed, but Manhattan is supposed to be the only being in the Watchmen universe with superpowers. That’s an important plot point.
Yeah, I did a bit of googling after watching the movie to fil in some of the gaps. Kinda wish there would be a sequel, but I think it would be hard to do given the ending…
To expand on this - there are multiple things working against the diary ruining the plan:
It’s the diary of Rorschach, who’s known as a nutter.
It’ll be printed in the New Frontiersman, which isn’t exactly presented as a respectable newspaper - it’s clearly an openly extreme right-wing rag, and beloved of nutters like Rorschach.
The conspiracy itself is pretty ridiculous.
Even for the fringe who would take both Rorschach and the Frontiersman as valid sources, there’d be at least some who’d notice the diary is somewhat…unsourced.
Movie only - even if the Frontiersman staff decide to look into things, there are exactly 3 people who are alive who can confirm the more outrageous claims. Dan, Laurie, and Adrian. And Dan and Laurie agree that since the damage had already been done, the best thing to do is to give Adrian’s plan the best chance of actually working. To which point, they don’t actually need to deny Rorschach’s claims - admit everything including the stuff after Rorschach sent his journal - that they, and John, all agreed to the above point. Simply ignore the part that John had decided to explore the universe and completely ignore Earth. The plan in the movie depends on people fearing John’s retribution. That the initial energy burst wasn’t his doing doesn’t take away that fear, when, after all was said and done he agreed.
I don’t know about contradict, but maybe rephrase. To quote Manhattan:
“Logically, I’m afraid he’s right. Exposing this plot, we destroy any chance of peace, dooming Earth to worse destruction. On Mars, you demonstrated life’s value. If we would preserve life here, we must remain silent.”
On my read of it, he (a) had come to agree that life has value in general and (b) is genuinely concerned with preserving life on Earth in particular – which is why he obliterates Rorschach after explicitly granting that Veidt is right.
There was a line missing from the movie that I thought should have been there. Veidt says something like “I did the right thing, didn’t I? I saved the world forever.” Manhattan then says “Nothing is forever, Adrian,” as he leaves the planet. I think Laurie quoted him later in the movie instead.
Well, yeah, but after Manhattan had already made up his mind and gotten into his ready-to-fire pose and said “You know I can’t let you do that” – which prompted Rorschach to say “Huhhh. Of course.”
I actually agree with this. I think Manhattan had come to regard life as having value on an intrinsic level. But I don’t think he made the, (somewhat intuitive and illogical), jump to valuing the ‘quality’ of life on an abstract level. For example, if you take John/Manhattan at the end of the story and transplant him to the beginning of WW2 I think he might have made the decision that leaving the Nazi’s in control of Germany at the outset of the war in exchange for avoiding the deaths of millions would be an acceptable exchange, despite the fact that the war discredited fascism on a wide scale and arguably led to a better 20th century.
Frankly, I think Oakminster is correct in the broader sense about the truth about Veidt’s machinations coming to light eventually, completely removed even from the contents of Rorschach’s journal. He made assumptions about what people would believe and do based on what he himself knew. Dr. Manhattan believed himself above humanity on a grand scale and that informed his decisions, not realizing that that his human biases were still intruding on his thoughts. Manhattan was not so completely removed from humanity on a basic level as he wanted to think. He was not a truly a godlike being, he was a human modified by a scientific accident, which is an all too common occurrence in superhero comics. I’m not sure that Moore wasn’t commenting on the arrogance of basic assumptions.
This is completely wild ass speculation after the fact however, and I realize that FTR. It’s based on my own interpretations and I could be completely off base.
Also, on a personal note, looking back on my previous post I wish I hadn’t included the note about ‘contradictions’, as it sounds arrogant and like I’m attempting to avoid debate which isn’t the case at all. That was a mistake on my part.
Yes. The violence is a significant part of the superhero deconstruction. I see it as a purposeful backlash against the decades of nearly-bloodless superhero comics going all the way back to the Comics Code. Because, if the heroes are so powerful and the villains are so ruthless and evil, how can the result not be compound fractures, murder, and horrifying splatter? In the movie, I thought this was best illustrated when Dr. Manhattan explodes a mobster in a restaurant and his viscera drips from the ceiling. The people who cheered missed the point; the people who wanted to look away got a little glimpse of the nightmare of super-heroics.
I’m not sure I follow you, here. After all, right after Doc’s aforementioned quote about “Logically, I’m afraid he’s right” we get Laurie – Laurie! – agreeing in the next panel that “Jesus, he was right. All we did was fail to stop him saving Earth.” And then we get Dan agreeing in the next panel: “Okay, count me in.”
Factor in Eddie Blake choosing not to blow the whistle on the plan, and – well, look, Laurie and Adrian and Dan and Eddie and Jon are all very different people, and yet they all seem to reach the same conclusion on this one. (Heck, even Rorschach doesn’t actually dispute Veidt’s factual claims; he only ever disagrees about the morality of thusly killing millions to save billions.)
Forgot to include in the OP, I really liked the use of All Along the Watchtower as they fly in towards the base for the finale. Seemed to fit the mood.
You could be completely right Waldo and I understand where your coming from on this, but two thoughts occur to me off the top of my head…
Number one is thematic… Moore’s deconstruction of the superhero genre includes questioning the motivations and decision making capabilities of people who dress up in bright spandex to fight crime… These people are extraordinary but they’re still human. Is it not possible that all of them came to the wrong conclusion at the same time, given the same circumstances? That covering up Veidt’s actions was a bad idea because they were looking at the immediate consequences and not long term consequences? One of the unfortunate cliches that developed over time about superheros is that they place themselves above humanity because they’re always right. Why are they always right? Because traditionally they’re stories written for children as simple morality plays. Moore, and many of his contemporaries, were attempting to move past this by introducing moral ambiguity into the tales. Dan, Laurie, John, Walter and all the rest were capable of making bad decisions and experiencing the consequences of same. (This is, of course, not to say that this ambiguity hadn’t existed previously but it was still a relatively rare thing in early and mid 80’s comic books.) If Rorschach were truly interested in getting “the truth” out he would have placated Manhattan outside of Ozymandias’s base and lived to tell his tale another day. He didn’t because he was so obsessively dedicated to his ideals, (as so many ‘dedicated’ heroes are) that he became fatally shortsighted.
The second thing that springs to mind is purely practical. If someone that you know is capable of erasing your entire existence with a thought has put his foot down about something, (even to the extent of killing a team mate), would you disagree with him? I wouldn’t.
<— wow, it’s blue!
