i haven't seen it yet, but i intend to at some point... thanks for the heads up on the duration.  i'll have to have a babysitter, and i would never guess to let her know i'd be gone for about 4 hours!!!

revjohn,

I enjoyed that review of yours :3 I've been worried that the original material, which I find to be quite deep and fractal in nature (what with the non-linear storytelling), would be turned into "people in underwear beating each other up."

The original comic was created during a time when comics, in general, were in a massive rut. Alan Moore ended up creating something that, unintentionally, helped usher in the 'angsty superhero' comic book genre (most of which I find to be, again, imitative rather than creative).

I like how each character has a different world view toward the Ineffable Great Nasrudin's Donkey that is existence. How they act, how they don't act, how they feel aboot acting and so forth. I found it all very existential and human...

The focal point for me (and one of my favourite moments) is on Mars with Dr Manhattan and Laurie. That must be SPECTACULAR on the screen :3

It is too bad that Alan Moore didn't retain the Watchmen IP.

In worship of the imagination,

Inannawhimsey

Hi Inanna Whimsey,

They actually handle the flashbacks amazingly well.  While there are quite a few fight scenes they do not appear to drive the plot, they just happen.

Dr. Manhatten doesn't wear a lot of underwear.  CGI genitalia probably needs its own award category at next years Oscars.

They are, for the most part, exceedingly human and fairly cognizant about what is going on.

Mars was handled fairly well.  Visually it is stunning. 

Rorschack's scenes in the prison, particularly when he is shown the inkblots and he responds with what he sees and his bad day were quite powerful and tragic.  I think that was probably where he won a great deal of sympathy from the audience.  I think most were shocked by the Antarctica finale.

My son still feels ripped off.

Grace and peace to you.

John

I had planned to go on Friday night  but my friend went online and found out what it was about and did not go.     I had them convinced to skip the prayer meeting at Church to go to a movie but it all fell apart when they looked up what the movie was about.  So they went to prayer and I went bowling.     Watchmen is evil being a comic book character you know and having evil powers from Satan or something. 

I was able to watch the making making of Watchmen on the Sci Fi channel this weekend and even that was interesting...  It gave me a lot of background information on the comic so I guess I will "understand" the movie better when I get to watch it.

I will see my non fundy friends tomorrow and if they are going I will go otherwise I have have to wait for it to come out on DVD.    (like all the good movies which are evil.......

My friend went and saw it, and had little to say but "there was this guy's penis hangin out the WHOLE time. I had trouble taking it seriously."

What's up with that? I dunno.

I got a chance to see it last night, and I'm still not sure I know what I think about it.  You're right - it was no Dark Knight. 

Now, I haven't read the original comics so I can't see the story as anything more than a film.  I loooved the way the director filmed the photograph-like tableaus at the beginning, and I loved how 'whacked' Rorschak was.  But you're right - they never get close to defining what exactly is 'evil' about any of them.  It made sense to me what Ozzie was doing half of the time, and the other half felt like cold, corporate crap.  I enjoyed Rorschak's character even as I abhorred it.  I guess the person I felt the most intuned with was Night Owl.  Of all of them, he seemed the most grounded and human of them - and yet he was continuously painted as pathetic and soft.

I think it would also help if I understood more of the 1980s history - cold war, etc.  I don't know a lot about that era of American/World History, and they are constantly referring to it.  I felt lost with a lot of the references, but I stayed focused on the story of the movie.  Visually, it was very well done.  Story-wise?  Maybe if I knew what was coming, I would feel less like it meandered along on a vague plotline.

Unlike Dark Knight, I didn't come out of it with any personal revelations or opinions.  I had wanted the Joker to be killed; I think the fact that Batman didn't kill him to be that hook, that unique draw that keeps us trying to figure him out.  I didn't feel nearly as hooked into any of the characters of the Watchmen.

I've been worried about this one.  The comic is so incredible, and there is so much material, I have been worried it would be one of those things where perhaps a couple movies would actually be required, but where financial considerations smooshed it into one. 

You said the three hours flies, but does the movie feel rushed?  There's an awful lot to take in in just three hours if it's that close to the comic. 

Hi Freundly-Giant,

Well, it isn't hanging out the whole time.  When he is doing formal events he is wearing a suit.  When he is doing the hero bit he has gitch on but when he is hanging around Mars or home tinkering around he is not constrained by clothing.

Bear in mind it is CGI and it is a powerful shade of light blue.

Oh, and he can produce multiple copies of himself so sometimes you get multiple shots of full-frontal blue CGI nudity. 

Dr. Manhattan is increasingly losing touch with humanity.  I suppose the nakedness factor probably comes from the fact that he feels very little shame about anything.  Which turns out not to be such a good thing for one or two vietcong and one of the Watchmen themselves.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Hi Faernach,

I thought that was a wonderful bit of cinematography.

His challenge to the inmates in the prison after the cafeteria line scene could have come across like a Schwarzenegger one liner.  Light comedic groaner.  Yet, it didn't.  I guess it is because Rorschack is so eloquent and can carry on a conversation it carried quite a punch.  

I don't think I rank as evil on Rorschack's scale but I still wouldn't want to be locked into anything with him.

I think Ozzie personifies the idea that the ends justify the means.  Certainly he is able to convince Dr. Manhattan that it does.  The carnage and suffering Ozzie dishes out appears to be acceptable in light of what he was trying to accomplish.  

Up until he reaches that goal he is atypical as far as the rest of the Watchmen understand him.  Nite Owl thinks of him as a pacifist and is not prepared to deal with Ozzie in cold-blooded murder mode.  Bizarrely The Comedian is the first to uncover Ozzie's plot and he apparently is the one most upset about it--which seems odd from what we know of the Comedian.

Were you sympathetic towards him in any way?  I found myself really pulling for him and even though I knew how things ended for him I didn't want it to work out that way.  Although, he gets the last laugh because his journal gets to the papers.

True.  He could kick ass with the rest of them and while doing so he liked the thrill of it all.  He, of all the Watchmen, is probably the embodiment of compassion, hope and trust.  At the same time he is the one who seems to understand fear to the point of feeling it.

He is a brilliant inventor but once superheroes are outlawed he slips into mediocrity.

I mean, he apologizes to Rorschack for calling him mentally instable.  Sincerely apologizes.  Not out of somekind of "Oh Crap now the psychopath is going to tear me apart!" but out of genuine remorse.

And, it has probably the biggest impact of anything said to Rorschack by anyone.  It prompts Rorschack to apologize to him and call him a good friend.  How could anyone be Rorschack's friend?  You'd have to be a saint of incredible magnitude.

Rorschack's interogation of Moloch was also another real bizarre moment for a superhero themed movie.  It seemed like Moloch was also able to touch something human in Rorschack when he revealed he was dying of cancer.  Rorschack's response about his story being so lame it was probably true was one of those moments when the audience started a huge laugh and then realized, "Hey, that wasn't supposed to be funny."

Well, they do reinvent the 1980's quite drastically.  The Comedian assassinates Woodward and Bernstein (it is also strongly suggested that he is the gunman on the grassy knoll who killed Kennedy on Nixon's says so) so Watergate was never uncovered and Nixon goes on to a fourth term in the Oval Office.  Everything gets slightly screwy after that with Dr. Manhattan leading the Americans to a victory in Vietnam.

I think that is because few of these heroes embody "super".  Dr. Manhattan with his amazing power is losing touch with humanity and is easily fooled by Ozymandius.  Ozzie, normally a pacifist, decides ruthlessness is the logical solution to a large problem and co-opts Dr. Manhattan into providing the rest of what he needs so that he can frame him and turn the world against him.

The Comedian is repugnant and seriously challenged in the ethics department.

Rorschack is a sociopath.

The Silk Spectre is really just trying to please her mom.

The Nite Owl.  Well he is Nite Owl because his life is boring without it.  It is kicks for him.  I think he is a bit like Peter Pan.  The boy who never grew up.  Save for the fact that he also seems to realize that there are very real consequences to their actions and people do get hurt.  Of course, he is quite able to seriously lay a beating on a person.

I agree with you.  He seems the most grounded.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Hi Frommian,

That's the funny thing.  Apart from the fight scenes which are frenetically paced with bits of slo-motion stuffed in to give your mind a chance to keep up with all the action the movie was a very leisurely stroll.  Stopping to admire the view of some very twisted nooks and crannies in The Comedian's life.

Grace and peace to you.

John

That's a very perceptive observation.  I think Ozzie likes the Pharaohs and Alexander because history blows them up into larger-than-life creatures... on TOP of their own propaganda at the time.  He sees himself as above everyone else - not necessarily in a 'better' way, but as a more detached and unbiased way.  Perhaps that is why he is most attached to Dr. Manhattan (and gains his trust so readily), because he seems to understand that detachment from humanity.  I was a little disappointed, though.  Seriously, what was Ozzie's long-term plan?  Banning together towards a common enemy is really only a short-term goal; what did he plan for the future?

That's a good point too - what on earth does the Comedian believe in??  Perhaps he is simply a man of strong emotions, and he rejects any idea that throws them away completely.

I'm not sure... I know that I liked him, but that might have been my fascination with dark creatures.  My boyfriend adores his character, but that's just his style.  Maybe some of my own interest in Rorschak is for this reason.  But sympathise with him?  I don't think so.  When he died at the end, I was not sad; I thought it ended just as it should.  It had a kind of symmetry, if that's not too corny to say.  He is the type of character whose voice speaks of moderation more than his actions, and so history will probably soften a reader to him in the way an observer couldn't fathom.

It's a beautiful moment that you have made me consider more deeply... thank you.  It's true - if any of the Watchmen are what we consider 'true' superheroes, I would say he's the closest to what we're used to.  And so seeing all the others in comparison to him is strange and wonderful.  He perhaps loses some of his mediocrity and dullness simply from being the odd man out.

That certainly sums it up, yes.  And yet, he's the one I think I would have liked to try to understand more of.

It's a shame there isn't much more to her than that.  I was surprised to find how conservative she seemed... especially with that whole latex thing going on.  I wonder if her mom dressed her up in it, like some moms enter their kids in pageants.

Cheers for the insight, RevJohn!

For those of you who are having 'troubles' with the movie:

o if it is anything like the graphic novel, it took me a month to read. Part of understanding came from the times when I wasn't reading. It probably will take you multiple viewings of the movie to grok more of it. For me, this is what seperates entertainment from Literature.

o the graphic novel was written at a time when the whole Superhero genre was stagnant; no one had really written anything in the mainstream that had gone beyond teenage power fantasies.

o each of the characters is a lens through which the story is viewed. Each character experiences and sees things differently.

Pedantic point: Dan Dreiberg is Nite Owl II; the 1st Nite Owl is Hollis. Laurie is Silk Spectre II; the 1st Silk Spectre is her mother.

Watching,

Inannawhimsey

revjohn:

I really liked your comparison between Rorschach and the Joker. It really never occurred to me how similar they are. They both seem to have the same opinion about the world (that humanity is pretty much just sewage that doesn't realize that it's sewage), but they act on that opinion in completely opposite ways. The Joker figures it means that he should do whatever he wants all the time, while Rorschach decides it means that he should work to fix things since he sees the truth. Huh. I've gotta think about this for a while...

Also, was anyone else freaked out by Nixon's nose? It didn't look like that!! Kissenger was adorable, though. There's just something about those two that makes them fun to watch.

 This may make me unpopular, but I didn't like the movie.  And to explain why involves some spoilers, so if you haven't seen the movie, you'd best skip over my post.

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I was fully expecting to like it because it's been constantly hyped as a dark movie.  I LOVE dark sci-fi -- TV shows like Charlie Jade, Delta State, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine; movies like Children of Men and Serenity; books like Warchild, Burndive, Cagebird, and Stealing Light -- so I figured I'd like Watchmen.  But I walked away feeling really put off by the whole thing, and it took me a long time to figure it out.

At first I suspected that the violence turned me off.  But, no, while the violence was certainly excessive and I looked away from the screen for a bit, some of those shows, movies, and books mentioned above have very violent scenes.  (The bathroom fight scene in Charlie Jade is incredibly brutal because it's two guys with fists and a bunch of porcelain and pipes -- it's less graphic than something in Watchmen, but in my opinion it is far more brutal -- yet the violence in these other things never bothered me.)

After a while, I figured it out.  Watchmen has a very negative view of humanity.  All the other dark stuff I like, no matter how dark and twisted it is, they all have a positive view of humanity.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the negative sides of humanity should not be shown or that the good guys should always win -- all the dark sci-fi I mentioned above has questionable heroes, many are in dystopian universes, the good guys all kill other good guys out of necessity, and lots more.  But, in the end, they always have a positive view of humanity -- even if that is only represented by a few characters.

I mean... humanity can only achieve world peace by terrorizing several major cities and giving them a common enemy to loathe (Dr. Manhattan)?  I don't like what that says about us.

That really cheesed me off.

Then as I further digested the movie, there were several other things that really bothered me (and feel free to pick apart my problems and tell me I'm wrong -- I am hard of hearing and miss some movie dialogue, so maybe it makes more sense to you than it did to me)...

These superheroes are not "true" superheroes in the sense that they have superpowers.  They are humans who have donned masks and vowed to take justice into their own hands (Dr. Manhattan being the exception).  So....  Why do so many of them display physical abilities.  I can buy the fight scenes by guessing they've spent years training and fighting and are all experts at mixed martial arts.  I still have some disbelief, but I'm willing to ignore it.  But Rorscarch (sp?) balancing his body on a tiny railing or something as he enters the Comedian's apartment?  The jumps he makes from the staircase to the emergency ladders several times?  Ozmandias (sp?) makes huge jumps in the final Antarctica scene -- including jumping onto Nite Owl's gun, thereby destroying it?  In the opening sequence, the Comedian is slammed against his kitchen countertop so forcefully that it breaks in the shape of his upper torso, yet it has little effect on him?  (Never mind the fact that such a thin-framed man could wield such force against such a heavier-set man.)

Rorscach's mask bothered me.  Sure it's a cool effect, but if we're assuming he's a normal human being and there's no special paranormal activity or super-advanced technology, then why does the pattern on his mask continually shift?

The whole Alexander the Great fixation and Egyptology fixation of Ozmandias.  He says something like he truly admires Alexander the Great and strives to be like him.  As well, his costume has Roman influences with that band of metal that wraps around the back of his head.  If he's that into Alexander and the Roman empire, then why is there Egyptian paraphenalia in his office?  Why is the password for the computer Rameses II?  Why is the base in Antarctica an Egyptian building?  If he loves Egyptology that much, why doesn't he admire a pharoah and have an Egyptian styled costume?  I really felt the Egyptology stuff came out of nowhere.

As Nite Owl and Silk Spectre are flying to the Antarctica Base, Nite Owl says something about how the heat generated by the base is off the charts.  If the heat generated is truly so great, why does the ice around the base not melt?  If the heat is shielded, wouldn't it also be shielded from the heat sensors on Nite Owl's ship?

Dr. Manhattan has unbelievably incredible powers, yet when he is confronted with his former girlfriend and she claims to have cancer, he can't "see" her cells and know she doesn't have cancer?

The turning point for Dr. Manhattan was to realise that the a child forming from a sperm and egg is a miracle on par with "turning air into gold"?  I thought that was ridiculous.  If that is such a miracle, he would have realised it much earlier.  Even if I could buy that he didn't realise it till then, to equate it with alchemy?  That strikes me as absurd.  During that whole sequence I was waiting for "the big reveal", some big secret to reveal itself that would change Dr. Manhattan.  But for that big secret to be that a sperm and egg make a baby?  I felt truly ripped off.

But still, the thing that really turned me off was the whole negative view of humanity.

Perhaps someone can explain the watch significance to me?  Watches, clocks, time, and timepieces constantly appear.  Is there some significance?  I don't see how it generates some sort of theme.  But the watch appearances I saw...

- Of course, they are called Watchmen

- Someone's father was a watchmaker

- That someone flashes back to the memory of him as a child, reassembling a watch

- Dr. Manhattan's "thing" on Mars looked an awful lot like it was made of watch gears

- Before becoming Dr. Manhattan, the guy got trapped in that radioactive chamber because he had left his watch there

- The doomsday clock

- And I think there were a few others that I can't remember at the moment.  But I remember walking out of the movie and thinking, "There were a lot of watches in there."

So... in summary... sorry to be the buzz-kill, but I didn't like the movie for a lot of reasons...

John - I haven't seen the film but was a fan of the comics. It is interesting that you refer to Calvinism in your post while I thought that the comic's gnostic themes were so prevalent and accessible. I'm waiting until I can get an evening off so I can compare the two.

YouthWorker, let's see if I can help out. Maybe I'll make someone mad too. We'll see...

Rorschach's mask is pressure and heat sensitive viscous fluid trapped between two layers of latex. The world of the Watchmen has a lot of cultural and technological differences from ours thanks to the contributions of Dr. Manhatten. I don't think this was portrayed very clearly in the movie, and there were a lot of things that only made sense if you had read the comic. It made the whole thing seem like an elaborate scam to grab money from the fans of the comic. I'm glad I'm not the only one who was bugged by this, even if for a slightly different reason.

Ozymandias is actually another name for Ramses II. Make sense now? Heh. The only reason I know that is that it was explained more clearly in the book. Starting to curse Zack Snyder a little...

As for the violence, I totally agree that it was over the top. I went in excited to see realistic fights, so when they started jumping around just outside the realm of believability, I was more confused than anything. The way they portrayed the gore just seemed kind of Hollywood. Like it was there for the shock value rather than to contribute to the story.

Now, the Doctor. I've been thinking for a long time about the problem of Dr. Manhatten. Why wouldn't he have thought of something so simple sooner? And even if he had, why would something so simple change his mind at all? I mean, isn't it just as unlikely for Mars to have the exact composition of minerals that it does? Or for a certain speck of dust to be floating by at this exact moment?

But what I realised is that, for all his physical and mental differences, Dr. Manhatten still thinks and behaves like a human. He was a human who had his perception of the world radically altered. Anyone in that situation is going to question the meaning of it all. There's a reason we made up the word 'nihilism'. I find it very humbling to think that a man given seemingly ultimate power will still fall and rise because of his humanity.

Last, I don't think that Watchmen is meant to portray a negative view of humanity. I think it's an invitation to see the shades of grey in real life. I mean, in most stories the good guys and bad guys are easily identifiable. We find ourselves relating to the good guys and the bad guys are placed on a lower level of humanity. But in Watchmen the main characters seem to be varying proportions of  hero and villain, so it's left entirely to the audience to decide who's right and wrong, and to what degree.

I think Watchmen tries to get us to view humanity through more honest eyes by asking extremely uncomfortable questions.

So I ask you, did Watchmen make you mad because you don't think humans are really like that, or because you're afraid they can be?

PS: The Delta State rules!!

JelliedFire -- Thanks for explaining those things, it really makes it so much more understandable.  And I guess it makes sense that some things were dropped... one of the guys I went with said it was something like a 12 issue mini-series, so that's a lot to cram into a movie.

(And I can't believe I stumbled across another Delta State fan!!!!)

While I totally see the point of trying to show the audiences shades of grey, I still found it too negative.  The best example I can give is the show Charlie Jade -- and I fully expect to find I'm the only one here who's seen it.  They show tons of shades of grey but still end with a positive view of humanity.  I won't go through explaining all the characters and the plot -- but basically you don't know who's good and who's bad (and often these people will flip-flop to suit their current objectives) and motivations are always unclear.  For example, the "villain" of the show is shown as pure bad in the first few episodes, and then all of a sudden we are shown a completely different side of him and immediately understand that while he is "bad", he is doing what he's doing to protect a world.  We quickly come to cheer for him.  Then throughout the remainder of the series, he continues to do questionable things that make us wonder if it was wrong to cheer for him at all.  It truly was amazing.

(Unfortunately, I always hold Charlie Jade up as the perfect example of dark sci-fi.  Nothing I ever read or watch will compare.  So it does leave me a little jaded to other dark sci-fi things.)

Youthworker,

*chuckle* It is completely alright that you don't like it a'tall. There is so much out there to enjoy.

Remember, it is a peice of fiction, which means that you are a participant in the co-creation of the experience. It was also written as a stand-alone -- a 12 issue series that would end. No sequels, no 'shared world for others to write in'. But a stand-alone concept.

It was written in a time when mainstream superhero comics were stagnating. it was written in a time when Reagan and Thatcher were around, the people who thought of 'trickle-down economics' and concentration camps for AIDS sufferers (thank goodness that last one didn't come aboot). There were world-wide peace marches. There was intense anxiety over nuclear war. The smiley face in the USA meant 'happy'. The smiley face in the UK meant 'wanker'.

If you are feeling uncomfortable remember to ask yourself why? What part of you is reacting? See how deep you can go.

It was also written as a deconstruction of the superhero genre. When an art form is stagnating, it is important to try to give life to it and to try to show why it is stagnating.

Ask yourself a series of questions, imagining you live in a world where superheroes exist: what do heroes/superheros do? What actions do they cause? Do we need them? What can we do without them? Is the violence they inflict worth it?

Take a look at each of the main characters. What is their world view? How do they act? What are the results of their actions/inactions? Is it worth it?

Aboot the watches: have you ever heard of the Doomsday Clock and what it signifies?

Nite Owl II Flame On,

Inannawhimsey

 Hi,

Yeah, I've heard about the Doomsday clock and what it's all about.  I was wondering if the significance of watches and clocks runs deeper than that, though.  I viewed the presence of the doomsday clock to be another recurring watch symbol -- not what the other watch symbols were referring to.  Although... come to think of it... whenever we glimpsed a (working) watch... didn't it stop at 12:00 or at least when the second hand reached 12?  (Then that would all make sense -- doomsday is upon us.)

Anyway, I've been discussing this movie with one of the guys I went with.  He had not read the comics either, but he's been discussing it with some coworkers of his who did -- so I'm getting some of the back story that was cut from the movie.  (And multiple times I've said, "Ah, that makes sense now!")

So with all this new understanding, the movie is slowly growing on me, but I don't think I'll ever completely grow to like it.

Perhaps one of my biggest stumbling blocks is that I am a totally optimistic person and the negative view of humanity that I keep talking about really turns me off for that reason.  (After all, when I am talking about social justice, I always talk about how easy it is for even just one person to make a lasting difference, and how we are progressing in a positive direction.  So perhaps this movie goes counter to what I believe about humanity?)

Food for thought, I guess.

I saw the movie with my son, and I really liked it. My son thought it was too dark, and of course he didn't understand any of the historical references, though we have had a lot of conversations since, which was a great side effect of the movie.

There of course were parts that were ignorable, but the kicker (for me) was the look into the physke of the 'heroes'. They are as dark as the people they fight, but they turn their darkness against other darks as opposed to preying on 'the good' people.They are channelling their violence and agression into a way to 'do good'.

To me, the movie was about how people come to terms with themselves - accept who they are, and make the best of it. Something Nightowl can't do, which results in his impotence.

I thought the blue guy would come back and save the world.  I was dissapointed that one of the good guys engineered armegeddon as a ploy and used the blue guy's power to frame him.  I was totally dissapointed in the ending.  Even with the warning it was not what I expected. 

Rorshack and the Comedian had to die to usher in the century of peace based on a lie.  The Comedian wanted to sleep with his daughter.  I am not sure that he knew she was his daughter, tried to rape his ex-wife/girlfriend...did beat her up, and shot another pregnant girlfriend.   To me this is bizarre.  I mean these are the "good guys".    That is what makes it bizarre.  The batman guy sleeps with the blue guy's girlfriend the day after they break up.  Hey that is what friends are for.  My friends said the movie had too much sex and blood.

Yeah....there was no real good guys.  In fact I am seriously wondering if I would rather be on the bad guys' side.

I don't.  I think they are just like the bad guys.  I did understand Roshack's first killing but not the comedian shooting his pregnant girlfriend and the blue guy standing and watching.

 I did not get it all either.

Well nobody was laughing in the theatre tonight.  The people in my row were all cringing.  We usually don't watch such violent movies.  

The fight scenes were good.   The "heroes" fought well.  I would be afraid to cross them.  The movie kinds of leaves me with a hopeless feeling.   But maybe that is the reality.  The good guys really are not good anymore.   They are "protecting" us from the bad guys but we may actually be in more danger from the good guys.

I understood Roshack the most.  I liked how they told us of his history of abuse.  It explained how he became that way.  I was saddened to see the cops take him in.  I was understanding the blue guy until he replayed his history in his mind and realized that he cheated on and dumped his first girlfriend because she aged and he did not.

Hi Serena,

Well, from a certain perspective that is what Dr. Manhattan does.  Although it is not heroically "super" and more behind his back than of his own volition.  He appreciates the logic and since the logic plays into his own agenda he is cool with it.

No nuclear war because everyone is now teaming up against a threat that is no longer there but could pop up at any moment.

Well, not actually.  They chose to die.  The alternative was to participate with the agenda against Dr. Manhattan.  The Comedian was too mercenary to not reveal what he learned through his covert operations to Nixon who paid him.  Rorshack's sense of rightness wouldn't allow him to participate in genocide and frame Dr. Manhattan for it.  Ironically, it is Dr. Manhattan himself who kills Rorshack simply because Rorshack will not keep quite.

He didn't know she was his daughter.

Not exactly.  Silk Spectre 1 was neither his girlfriend nor wife.  Just a team-mate.  They did have a fling later.

Girlfriend is overstating the nature of that relationship by quite a bit.  There was no affection present it was, from the Comedian's perspective just an itch to scratch.

These "good" guys are as "human" as the rest.

It was fairly graphic though not it a gratuitous way.

The bad guys are never developed.  Moloch is the only one that has any character revealed.  He is a tired old man with cancer who leaves flowers at the grave of his arch nemesis because that is the closest thing to a friend he ever had.  He doesn't seem evil, he seems pathetic.

No.  They are like what you would expect bad guys to be like.  The story doesn't dwell on the bad guys.  It deals with humans and what they perceive as evil and the lengths they will go to to stop it.  It very much suggests that there are lines between right and wrong and that those who claim to serve the right often cross the line between the two themselves.

Again, not his girlfriend and she did just cut his face open with a broken beer bottle.  Not right and certainly not in the heat of passion.  His response to Dr. Manhattan explains what Manhattan's problem is.  He is too busy looking at the small picture that he fails to see the bigger picture.  Humanity is not that much interest to him anymore.

Dull crowd.

Well, Ozymandias is certainly the biggest threat since the ends justify any means in his book.  So long as you don't get involved in something bigger than yourself you'd be safe from Ozymandias.  The rest are looking for criminal activity and so long as you surrender peacefully they likely wouldn't pound on you.

Well, that is a part of it.  He never really fell out of love with her.  He just couldn't comprehend what he was feeling on a human level when he spent so much time focussing on things smaller than human.  His younger-girlfriend wasn't doing much for him either except provide an emotional anchor and he was was quickly slipping away even with that.

Even though he had all that raw power he was still the same man at heart and that man was in over his head emotionally.  So it is probably a good thing that he is also fairly calm by nature.  If Rorshack had the ability of Dr. Manhattan everyone would tremble in fear.

Grace and peace to you.

John

It just seems so wrong.   I think I would have lied and said I would have kept the secret and then exposed them.  But then the world would be at war again so I don't know. 

Hi Serena,

Rorshack isn't big on lying.

Nope.  One night stand.  Which explains the flash back with the fight between her parents.

In some ways they are although we don't get to see one of their super villains in action so we have no real comparison.  The whole point is to explore what makes the good guys the good guys. 

Sure they do.  The Silk Spectre 2 and the Nite Owl 2 save those people in the burning building.  They also take down that crowd of would be muggers in the alley-way and then they help get Rorshack out of prison during a riot.

Lucky for the other criminals they did get Rorshack out.  He didn't appear to be in much of a rush to leave.

You did catch that the Comedian was over in Vietnam fighting communism didn't you?  True she wasn't much of a threat she did carve his face up though.  What did you think he would do . . . laugh it off?  Not a chance.  She was expendable and meant nothing to him whatsoever.

That is about right.  He will save the world but he is not a decent person.

So?  Don't live in a big city.  It isn't like he is going to be blowing up any more now that he has achieved his goal.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Just to clarify something... Silk Spectre2  and Rorschak are half-brother and half-sister??

RevJohn

This film is a masterpiece! I took my 14 year old kid and her friends because they needed an adult to get into the 18A movie (yes their parents approved).  I hadn't read any reviews, I just showed up, and wow was I glad.

The soundtrack was excellent, still humming the Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen tunes. The cinematography was stunning and seemed authentic to the 1980's.  This is of course was a big appeal for me, the late 70's and the 80's were the time of my childhood and youth, I remember the pop culture references and I felt a connection to this dystopia. I remember the doomsday clock and I remember the worry of Nuclear War during the cold war, we talked about at school all the time.

I can't explain the movie adquately and will do it no justice in trying. You need to see the film and you don't have to be familiar with the source material, I wasn't.

As for the parental advisory, yep, lots of brutal violence, a bit of nudity and some sex thrown in.

I've finally seen the movie. W O W. It was worth the wait. And bless my wife for also enjoying it (without having read it before). More on this later.

For now, on to replying to more of your juicy words.

Youthworker,

you don't have to like the world of the Watchmen.  I see your reaction as kind of one of the whole 'points' of the Watchmen. Like the Bible, just because they are being written aboot, doesn't mean that the world and it's characters are meant to be automatically liked or admired. That is one of the things that I think 'one off' works do better than serialized works -- they are self-contained and can look at things that serialized works can't.

Remember how Ozzy handled that bit in the movie? He gave her the cancer in such a way that it would appear to have been caused by Dr Manhattan.

For me, this is the central theme of the movie.

Dr. Manhattan was in a conflict between his human self and his superhuman self. His human self saw things on a human scale. His superhuman self saw things on a much bigger scale.

His humanity grew less and less as he grew more and more distant...until the last thing tying him to Earth disappeared. All that was left was randomness and chaos. No automatic universal intent.

But then, what Dr. Manhattan found was that...even if everything is randomness, no ultimate intent...the fact that someone like Laurie could be born (all these cause and effect chains, of parent meeting parent, of universe having to be created in the right way to support life, in the dinosaurs having had to have been wiped out so that mammals could evolve, electrons having just the right charge etc etc etc) is something truly amazing and worthy of awe. In this moment, while still remaining superhuman, he regained some of his humanity. And I think it speaks to my culture as well, that even if everything is randomness, etc etc...there is meaning and purpose and things to be in awe and wonderment over. It takes a little thinking to cause Nihilism to falter and die...revealing the very strong structure beneath...

On to your noticing of the Watch motif:

there are some more that I noticed as well:

o the Watch was the name of medieval Police;

o to Watch is to be vigilant and an act of seeing;

o Who Watches the Watchmen is the notion that, for any set of protectors (Police, whichever) who watches them? Who makes sure that they are doing their job correctly?

o the notion of G_d as Watchmaker;

o the fable of a man walking through the desert and then coming upon a working watch, then coming to the conclusion that G_d must, indeed, exist;

o Dr. Manhattan's father encourages him to be a watchmaker, just like him, but then tosses it all away when he learns of Einstein's theories (that states that there are no absolute standards of Time and Space);

o the Mars thingy is all gears, timekeeping;

o Watches implies time, Ozzie's Egyptians tried to fight time/death;

o watches are understandable mechanisms, they operate by understandable laws.

Ooo, JUICY! Can you elucidate further?

Ok, on to my impressions.

This is the first movie I have ever seen that was sooooo close to the original. The scene in the IF chamber, where Dr. Manhattan 'dies' is just like in the comic book.

Even the fight scenes are in the order they appear in the comic book. Though they are MUCH more graphic (and revjohn gives a good explanation why). During the fight scene with the Comedian at the beginning, I was simultaneously laughing (because it was so absurd) and cringing.

This movie was obviously made by someone who loves the comic.

I whooped when I first saw Bubastis!

The movie is very, very rich. There were things I'm sure I didn't see, that were going on in the background.

They changed some things. Like blaming the deaths on Dr. Manhattan. It meant that the movie could be much shorter, less things to explain (in the comic book, Ozzie ended up creating a Mock Alien and then teleported it into Times Square and that ended up killing everyone).

I <3 Rosarch's voice. Try listening to it then watch The Dark Knight. Ain't that Batman? :3

I'm definitely going to be seeing it again and getting it on DVD. Especially because that has the "story-within-a-story" <i>Tales of the Black Freighter</i> on it :3
 

Just a thermodynamic miracle,
Inannawhimsey

I just remember seeing Rorschak watching his 'mother' (which I think was SilkSpectre?) entertain clients... it's been long enough now that I'm not sure.

Rorschach's mother is not Silk Spectre, though they look marginally alike in the film.

Aaahhhh... my bad.  I must confess I was a bit confused by that...

i missed Watchmen and am waiting for it to come out on DVD. i was reading the graphic novel while it was in the movies and didn't have time to see it when i was done reading (i like to read the books before i see the movies, they are usually better than the movies ^_^). i loved watchmen sooooo much tho and can't w8 for it >.<

The ending is better in the graphic novel.