Holy crap, it's Rorshach!

[Relaxing Dragon]

I think it was sort of odd Bubastis was there at all. She just sort of appeared out of the blue. People who read the book will say "Oh hey, there she is. Wondered when she'd show up" and people who haven't will say "What the hell is that big cat thing?".

But yeah, it was still cool

[stansimpson]

I think it was sort of odd Bubastis was there at all. She just sort of appeared out of the blue. People who read the book will say "Oh hey, there she is. Wondered when she'd show up" and people who haven't will say "What the hell is that big cat thing?".

But yeah, it was still cool

Or like how my friend (who hadn't read the book) put it, "It was like having David Hasselhoff dancing in the background and nobody ever said anything."  That's prob my quote of the week... maybe even the month.  Haha.

[Edward J Grug III]

I expect that Bubastis will be better established in the extended edition.

[gbeenie]

I'm betting the extended version has Hollis Mason's murder.

[Edward J Grug III]

It does! That they have confirmed.

[gbeenie]

Makes sense. Its absence seemed pretty conspicuous.

[LucasM]

One of the guys I saw it with reacted very badly to the change in the ending.  My response to his complaint was this:
Seriously, how do you think an average audience with little to no familiarity with the book would react to the sudden appearance of a giant, pink, vaginal, octopus at the climax of the film?

And off to spoiler land we go...
I agree that the creature in the book - though it worked in the book - may not have translated well to the screen.  [Hell, Dave Gibbons was on set, have him whip up something that'd look OK on film.]  And, back in my extensive dissection of the ending, I said that if they substituted something else (even an amoeboid creature that exploded on arrival) it would still have worked for me.  But Dr. Manhattan simply would not have been seen as 'independent' of the U.S., particularly since places other than the U.S. were damaged in the film.

As Edward J Grug III put it (very well), "the original ending is much BIGGER. It's also much more out of left field. It's a huge climax. The movie's ending works, but still seems a lot smaller".  For that world to pull together, the attack had to be huge.  And only something from 'elsewhere' could have accomplished that.  As I'd said before in my longer post, they did introduce the idea of alternate dimensions in the dialogue between Laurie and someone (she was describing what Manhattan sees/where his attention is).  All that would be needed (to replace the psychic research and the rest of it in the GN) would be a line like, "he's tried to describe some of the forms of life he's seen elsewhere, and it's bizarre."  One line.  And anything they put up there as alternate-dimension-creature would've 'worked'.

And an important issue was that it be only the U.S. (NYC): the 'attacker' couldn't pick and choose its devastation sites.  Not 'key cities around the globe'.  It had to be seen as random so that every country would feel equally threatened... every person would feel equally threatened... so they'd pull together.  Manhattan didn't do that, because Washington D.C. still stood, and the U.S. 'owned' him.  The 'arrival' site for the alternate-dimension creature was NYC because that's where the psychic research site was... possibly a line about that needed to be covered in a conversation as well, Laurie to Dan after the above comment on weird other life, "based on what he's seen, they've even set up a research site studying things like psychic phenomena here in NYC.".

So: two lines of dialogue, a slight(?) change in the design of the alternate-dimension creature, and you have a solution that would've worked.

[Edward J Grug III]

I can certainly see where you're coming from. I will say this, my comment was purely in terms of it as a movie, not as a story.

In some ways I think this works BETTER as a story.

For one thing, the comic book's ending leads to the world uniting in aggression. Albeit directed outwardly, but still, it's all about the Earth coming together to build better weapons and defences against the alien/other dimensional creature, right? And how long do we wait before it's back to business as usual?

In the movie version the world is basically subject to the wrath of God. You are being very bad, I will spank you. And the threat of Dr Manhattan watching if you step out of line is likely to be a much more lasting threat. And they create peace, not aggression.

I'm not sure I agree about the world seeing Dr Manhattan as being owned by the US, either. The world would decide that the US sacrificed New York rather than just have Manhattan blow up Russia instead?

[LucasM]

Y'know... before I posted anything in this thread I had an idea of starting a separate thread that had "MAJOR SPOILERS: Watchmen" in the title.  At this point I realize it actually would've been easier than all of us spoilering whole posts.     [Oh, well, too late now.]

The only change that really bothered me is a rather minor one:
When Rorshach is recounting his investigation of the missing girl in the GN he handcuffs the guy and then sets the building on fire.  He gives the killer the chance to escape by cutting himself free.  In the movie they just have him hack the guy up with a meat cleaver.  Since this is a crucial moment for the character I thought it was out of place.  Before that incident he only beat up criminals.

I think the reason they did that was because there was no other place in the movie's plot to to paint the picture of just how fucked in the head Rorschach truly is. It wasn't my favorite thing, but I understand it.

Agreed: 'not favorite thing, but I understand it'...  hurmm...  They had to have some intense visual onscreen to go with the monologue showing how Kovacs 'died' and Rorschach took over.  It had to be 'shorthand' to cover the depth of a full issue of his chapter of the GN, including the text sections from his psych file.  Doing to the child-killer what the child-killer did to the girl was 'shorthand' (very short-hand  ).


And on bigger plot issues...

For one thing, the comic book's ending leads to the world uniting in aggression. Albeit directed outwardly, but still, it's all about the Earth coming together to build better weapons and defences against the alien/other dimensional creature, right? And how long do we wait before it's back to business as usual?

In the movie version the world is basically subject to the wrath of God. You are being very bad, I will spank you. And the threat of Dr Manhattan watching if you step out of line is likely to be a much more lasting threat. And they create peace, not aggression.

I'm not sure I agree about the world seeing Dr Manhattan as being owned by the US, either. The world would decide that the US sacrificed New York rather than just have Manhattan blow up Russia instead?

To answer the last thing you wrote first.  There are people here in the real U.S. that believe(d) that W. Bush and Cheney collaborated (by ignoring intelligence) in order to bring down the towers so that they could grab more power.  That's in the real world.  So, yes, in this story, I think that it would be likely that people would think that the choice of NYC and LA - instead of Washington DC - would have been seen as 'acceptable losses' in a whole-world campaign strategy so the U.S. could take over.  That, because the capital cities - the seats of government - of other countries were chosen as targets.  Our government was still intact, while countries throughout the rest of the world were 'headless'.  In that level of paranoia, that would be the focal point of the world's thinking.

Fear, is fear.  Whether Dr. Manhattan or an other-worldly creature, the world would have tried to figure out how to 'destroy' him.

But also, 'old habits die hard'.  Once the world was used to working together, being able to advance without the strain of inter-governmental tension, the chance of returning to hostilities would be greatly reduced.  Yes, that's a Utopian view...  that was Veidt's view.  [And if he had to 'nudge' it back in line in the future by having another creature appear, after the first one, it could appear in a sparsely populated area and have the same effect.]

[Edward J Grug III]

Some people believe that the number 23 has a mystical significance, that doesn't mean it works in a movie.

I agree with you that some people believe in conspiracy nonsense, but that doesn't make the ending of the movie any less believable, because you are assuming that the majority would believe in it.

I would also argue that the idea of the movie is that Manhattan was essentially a God and unstopable. That is the premise and internal logic of the movie. One must assume that if the world did try to unite against Dr Manhattan, he would know they were before they did and stop them, right?

[Darth Geek]

  Why would the world be so willing to believe that Dr. Manhattan would do this? The population at large has no clue about his "disassociation with humanity", that was just the people close to him. And aside from his exploits in Vietnam and as a crimefighter, he hasn't killed anyone or even threatened anyone. To suddenly go from a 'God who does interview on TV when he's not working on science experiments' to 'mass murderer' seems quite a bit of a leap for the general populace to accept, even those in other countries who didn't necessarily like him or the US.

It seems to me that a better plan for Veidt to have done was to get Dr. Manhattan to eliminate the entire world's stockpile of nuclear weapons and use that as a threat to the world's leaders. manhattan could also have given the "psychic warning" to the world's people about his threat to kill them all if they stepped out of line. I know this doesn't need the elaborate plot to kill the masked heroes, but it would have been a better use of Veidt's affiliation with Dr. Manhattan and still necessitated his leaving the planet. Something that he probably wouldn't have minded anyway.

[mrbasehart]

Looks like it's opened well:

From the imdb:

Comic book movie adaptation Watchmen has scored the biggest opening of 2009 after taking in an estimated $55.7 million (£39.8 million) at the U.S. box office over the weekend.

[Doctor Who?]

Great I will be doing my bit to help it out.

If i like what I see today I plan to go back and see it again next week.

[Edward J Grug III]

  Why would the world be so willing to believe that Dr. Manhattan would do this? The population at large has no clue about his "disassociation with humanity", that was just the people close to him. And aside from his exploits in Vietnam and as a crimefighter, he hasn't killed anyone or even threatened anyone. To suddenly go from a 'God who does interview on TV when he's not working on science experiments' to 'mass murderer' seems quite a bit of a leap for the general populace to accept, even those in other countries who didn't necessarily like him or the US.
  It seems to me that a better plan for Veidt to have done was to get Dr. Manhattan to eliminate the entire world's stockpile of nuclear weapons and use that as a threat to the world's leaders. manhattan could also have given the "psychic warning" to the world's people about his threat to kill them all if they stepped out of line. I know this doesn't need the elaborate plot to kill the masked heroes, but it would have been a better use of Veidt's affiliation with Dr. Manhattan and still necessitated his leaving the planet. Something that he probably wouldn't have minded anyway.

I put the second bit behind a spoiler tag too. I assume you meant to?

Anyway:

Why would they believe it? Because it *was* him. Oh sure, it wasn't, you and I know that, but it was his powers and the world is told it was him, so why would anyone think otherwise?

He's the only character in the whole world with superpowers.

He was also demonised on television earlier, and it is shown that he doesn't regard life as important or meaningful.

[stansimpson]

  Why would the world be so willing to believe that Dr. Manhattan would do this? The population at large has no clue about his "disassociation with humanity", that was just the people close to him. And aside from his exploits in Vietnam and as a crimefighter, he hasn't killed anyone or even threatened anyone. To suddenly go from a 'God who does interview on TV when he's not working on science experiments' to 'mass murderer' seems quite a bit of a leap for the general populace to accept, even those in other countries who didn't necessarily like him or the US.
  It seems to me that a better plan for Veidt to have done was to get Dr. Manhattan to eliminate the entire world's stockpile of nuclear weapons and use that as a threat to the world's leaders. manhattan could also have given the "psychic warning" to the world's people about his threat to kill them all if they stepped out of line. I know this doesn't need the elaborate plot to kill the masked heroes, but it would have been a better use of Veidt's affiliation with Dr. Manhattan and still necessitated his leaving the planet. Something that he probably wouldn't have minded anyway.

I put the second bit behind a spoiler tag too. I assume you meant to?

Anyway:

Why would they believe it? Because it *was* him. Oh sure, it wasn't, you and I know that, but it was his powers and the world is told it was him, so why would anyone think otherwise?

He's the only character in the whole world with superpowers.

He was also demonised on television earlier, and it is shown that he doesn't regard life as important or meaningful.

And let's not underestimate the power of the scapegoat.  The bigger the crime, the higher demand for a scapegoat.  Get the president on tv with a person to blame, and the public will soak it up.

Looks like it's opened well:

From the imdb:

Comic book movie adaptation Watchmen has scored the biggest opening of 2009 after taking in an estimated $55.7 million (£39.8 million) at the U.S. box office over the weekend.

"Biggest opening of 2009"?  Really?  Because the competition against "Madea Goes To Jail" and "Pink Panther 2" were strong contenders.     That assessment is as respectable as those critics who call any movie released in January the best movie of the year so far.  Still waiting on that following weekend drop-off.  That'll be a huuuge indicator (as well as a huge percentage).  At this point, I think 70% drop-off point is very reasonable. 

I mean, even as much as I enjoyed the movie, I've had to tell certain people not to go see it cuz I know they'd hate it.  Considering how much went into marketing this sucker, it'll be amazing if it makes its money back.  Now let all of us fans be sure to spend that extra dough on repeat viewings as a sign of good faith to the execs who stepped out of the way for this not be a 2hr movie with big movie star names and family-friendly rewrites.