You must be watching different movies & TV shows than I have been, because I rarely see it done well, and making someone around 40 look like a teenager sounds incredibly implausible in most cases. So is Watchmen back on? Legal squabble over?
I just finished reading it for the first time ever, and I noticed that as he was shouting "Do it!" to Jon, his voice bubble was normal, not all crackly. I found that quite interesting myself; was Kovacs returning for those last few moments?
^Could be...after all, why remove the mask at all, when he considered it to be his true face? Could be that Rorschach was already dead, and only Kovacs was left.
It wasn't bad, but I found it a bit overrated. It probably would have helped if I hadn't spoiled myself on the ending before I decided that I actually was interested enough to read it, though.
Example #250925802395820359825092852095820980 why spoilers make quality work look worse than it actually is. IMO, of course.
I knew the ending and I still love the thing to death. It's rare that I can read a book several times and not feel bored, and pick up new things upon each reading. With 90% of the books that I own, once is more than enough. If I'm still reading a book (from the beginning) when I walk to the Checkout Desk, that's a sign that it's worth purchasing. I'm happy to include Watchmen in that category, along with Christopher's Deus Ex Machina and Orion's Hounds.
Definitely. That said, I really liked Dan and Rorschach, and just seeing what Rorschach did next was more than enough to keep me turning the pages. I also felt sorry for Jon at the same time as being infuriated at him; for example, his reason for not saving JFK was because he didn't save JFK, if you look at it from a certain angle. It was 'destined to be', but it was only destined because he knew it was destined... I felt that Veidt should have been built up more in the comic though, to really sell his betrayal. I didn't feel that he played a large enough role in the comic until the very end, and by then, it was just too late.
It's difficult for me to be objective about the book because it was so eye opening. I first read it years ago. At that time, I wasn't aware that there were comic stories like that out there; thoughtful, political, literary, multilayered, epic in scale, and full of less than heroic figures as the heroes. It diverged so far from the monthly diet of superhero punches the bad guy titles I was reading at the time that it left an indelible impression.
Adrian's build-up is more or less "shown" in the artwork itself, especially the in the backgrounds of the city and various settings and rooms near it. Look closely and you'll find that his "influence" spans the pharmaceutical, apparel, cosmetics, broadcasting, toy and self-help industries... ...not counting the "secret" corporations he's manipulated also. With all that taken into account: it's far more apparent why Adrian's involvement in the hoax would send the public into an even deeper mania. Imagine: You've just learned that one of America's most successful and respected entrepreneurs orchestrated and initiated a series of events that would send the world to the brink of Nuclear Holocaust, and then murder half of New York, in order to convince both the US and USSR to cease hostiles so that they can protect the world from a hoax.
^Veidt's vast influence is evident throughout the artwork. However, I agree that, as a character, he doesn't get nearly enough development. For that matter, I wish the story had more of the Comedian in it. He was one of my favorites. A few (unrelated to each other) points about this: 1.) I was thinking about the moral differences between what Truman did & what Veidt did. Veidt saved the world with a lie. Truman ended the war with a simple, grim truth-- the U.S. now had weapons capable of annihilating every last city in Japan, one by one, if they didn't surrender. Then the conspiracy theorist in me started to think... what if that was a lie too? What if the existence of atomic weapons is all just a great hoax designed to deter further escalation of conventional warfare? (The more I think about it, the less plausible it seems. I just think the possibility is intriguing.) 2.) Are we sure Rorschach is dead? Dr. Manhattan's last line to Veidt about him struck me as somewhat ambiguous. (Something like, "It will take him a long time to get back from where I sent him.") I was pretty young when the Cold War ended. I don't remember any of it. (My first memory of world events is a kids news article about the Baltic states regaining their independence. I think maybe my mother took a certain care to not mention the Cold War to me while I was young because she remembers being absolutely terrorized in her childhood by her Catholic school teachers and all of their Red Menace rhetoric.) However, I am a student of the period. I can recognize right away that Watchmen is very of its period (and I hope to god that the movie doesn't even think of changing that). Although, it also seems to me that Veidt's plan would only be a temporary stop-gap measure. It does nothing to address the deeper ideological differences that created the Cold War in the first place. All it does is divert & delay it, much in the same way that World War II did.
Actually, it's exactly like... And if you still wonder if he's dead or not, just look at the rather large bloody smear left in the snow next to where his hat fell. Trust me, he's mulch.
And I hope that nobody missed the symbolic significance of Walter/Rorschach ending up as a dark blot on a white surface....
Hence the beauty of Doc Manhattan's last line and knowing smile...and the last panel that leaves dangling the possibility that Veidt's house of cards might be due for a stiff breeze.
I always found it weird as to why he had to kill him just like that. Couldn't he have restructured Roshark's brain cells so he would lose any memory of the incident or something like that. I mean it is Doctor Manhattan we're talking about. The from what I understood pretty gruesome killing seemed unnecessary. And even if Dr Manhattan couldn't do that, just who would believe Roshark?
Well, Manhattan, for all his power, was still a human inside... human frailties and foibles and so forth (as clearly illustrated by his relationship with Laurie and with Janie before her, among other things). If anyone ever did a sequel to Watchment (which I'm OPPOSED to, mind you, unless it's Moore doing it and he's got a story he really thinks needs telling!), the only way I can imagine it happening would be for Manhattan to be the "villain." Problem is... I can't imagine any way that the "good guys" could win. So it's best that he do as he says, at the end, and goes out to explore the universe, leaving Earth alone. But given that... why kill Rorschach? Well, for one thing, it was pretty clear that Rorschach was, quite literally, ASKING for it. And it's also quite clear that Jon Osterman ("Manhattan") had stopped thinking of morality the way we do... remember, "a dead body and a live one have the same number of particles." For him, it wasn't much different than smacking a mosquito on your arm. Yes, you could "save" it but if it's an annoyance, why bother? Rorschach was threatening to cause trouble. Jon wanted to be able to abandon his self-chosen responsibility to "keep the peace" and recognized that Adrian Veidt's plan would let him do so without any evident moral consequences. So, Rorschach was the only one who really stood in the way of what was left of Osterman's conscience allowing him to bail, wasn't he? And Rorschach gave Jon exactly the "moral opportunity" he wanted... he ASKED FOR IT! The really scary stuff in the book, to me, was never Adrian Veidt. It was always Osterman. Basically, Osterman was Gary Mitchell but he stayed "human" for a little longer before deciding that he ought to be God. ("Roshark," by the way? Isn't that one of Aquaman's villains? )