Zach Snyder's Changing the Ending of "Watchmen"

[Hicks]

The movie's substitute for the squid is quite good, from what I've read.

If that's accurate, it's much better than the end of the comic. The squid has always been dumb.

Yeah, good thing Zack Snyder is teaching that hack Alan Moore a few things about how to do a real Watchmen story.

Look, I'm all for praising Alan Moore, and I would have preferred the squid stay, but it bugs me when talented people are treated as infallable beings.

Just because Alan Moore wrote something doesn't make it automatically the best thing to possibly be written in that instance.

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it' a dumbass plan. just like blowing up .07% of the world's population by nuking New York was a dumbass plan.

It's a brilliant plan. The best way to unite people is to give them a common foe that exposes the similarities between the previously opposing groups in the face of a mutual threat which is more foreign than either of them are to one another.

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That's the biggest problem about having waited so long to make this movie. So many other shows and comics have taken the premise and made it their own. Watchmen is going to come across as a rehash, not an original story.

That would be unfortunate, but let them. I just hope it's a good movie.

 

[Hicks]

delete please thanks

 

[Kryton]

I can't even think of what to say about this, other than why?

Paramount threatened to sue because of similarities to Nero's giant octopus spaceship.

 

[CaptMurdock]

What was wrong with the ending, CaptMurdock?

Though I wasn't all that impressed with the squid myself. It didn't really represent an intelligent adversary.

It just seemed like a huge left turn off the brink of believability. It took me so completely out of the story that I had hung on with baited breath for the first ten issues. It's like discovering Spider-Man is actually Steve Urkel in disguise.

 

[InklingStar]

If this is true, it doesn't make much sense:

Spoiler

The events of the comic are triggered when the Comedian discovers Ozymandias' island, where the artists and writers are making a "movie" that will fuel the psychological effects of the squid's arrival. Once the Comedian learns of this, then Ozymandias has to kill him, and that's how it all starts. Without the squid, then there is no island. Without the island, what does the Comedian find that causes him to be killed?

It seems strange that Snyder would go through so much trouble to stay as close as possible to the source material, only to change something so major at the climax.

 

[Teelie]

I finally read The Watchman a few weeks ago and the ending worked though it was still a let down and a seemingly cheap way to end the story. The "villian" essentially wins and the heroes just go "oh well" and move on with their lives. There's no real resolution to what happens to Ozy or the other heroes which I guess means we're supposed to interpet the ending for ourselves as what ultimately happens to them. Does the scheme become unravelled or does the world go on ignorantly assuming what they saw is real?

It is deeper than that (the villian wins, the heroes fail to stop him and go on with their lives) but I doubt the audience is going to look much past it and see the way it forced unification of the world without some kind of more definite conclusion.

Also, I lived through the 80's and I don't remember the paranoia and fear being that high at the time. I remember stories of how the world was that way in the 50's and 60's especially but not the 80's (where it was really Japan that was the bogeyman nefariously taking over). I'm sure it was amped up for the comic book but it felt ridiculously comical reading it now about how people then were so afraid of WWIII.

Alan Moore has some rights in his grievances with Hollywood but that hardly excuses the jackass way he acts IMO. The guy is just as wrong as the studios when it comes to how his work is interpeted. He gets so arrogant and self-righteous, even for it being his work. The man just grates on me the wrong way.

 

[ITL]

Also, I lived through the 80's and I don't remember the paranoia and fear being that high at the time. I remember stories of how the world was that way in the 50's and 60's especially but not the 80's (where it was really Japan that was the bogeyman nefariously taking over). I'm sure it was amped up for the comic book but it felt ridiculously comical reading it now about how people then were so afraid of WWIII.

Ah, but the real world of the 80's didn't have Dr. Manhatten, did it? In Watchmen, he is a catalyst for the elevated international tension that's going on. America had it's very own superman - and they used him as a weapon.

 

[Teelie]

True but there weren't/aren't real superheroes either and it was more a realistic take on what if super heroes existed (up to the point of Dr. Manhatten at any rate). I would have thought someone/thing like Dr. Manhatten would be even more of a determent from war as opposed to the escalated fear he caused.

Though I can see how it could be reversed and cause the Russians to fear annhilation, that should be cancelled by M.A.D. Using Dr. Manhatten would be the same as using a nuclear bomb, only this bomb was human and can think. There would be no survivor in using Dr. Manhatten as a weapon any more than if the U.S. or Russia had actually launched weapons at the other.

 

[Venardhi]

That's the biggest problem about having waited so long to make this movie. So many other shows and comics have taken the premise and made it their own. Watchmen is going to come across as a rehash, not an original story.

The premise of a benevolent plot to unite the earth through attacking it is pretty old. Moore didn't come up with it, he just did it better than most.

 

[Teelie]

Which you can debate too. The plot to save the world through evil means came up shy for me. It left too many unanswered questions about the future of this world beyond those few uneasy months of people wondering where the attack will come from. Within a year or few years at most, people will forget the alien threat and go back to hating each other.

 

[LutherSloan]

The ending in my view was more ambiguous than 'evil over good'. I felt that Moore was trying to move comics away from the black and white, good vs. evil storytelling that generally made up comics until then. He made 'heroes' who had flaws and issues of their own, making them at least seem more human and vulnerable. Even the 'villain' has good intentions in this case. His goal was to end the Cold War by creating another 'threat' that would allow both sides to find common ground. Unfortunately this meant sacrificing some people's lives for the greater good. It's tougher to say that this is purely evil. Some would consider this beyond normal morality, because it is not so cut and dry.

I would prefer if they stuck to the original ending, but the change doesn't seem all that awful.

 

[Teelie]

While it is all more ambiguous and murky than a clear-cut good vs evil story, it still boils down to an evil plot that had good intentions behind it. As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and that was one well paved road of good intentions.

 

[The Old Mixer]

If this is true, it doesn't make much sense:

Spoiler

The events of the comic are triggered when the Comedian discovers Ozymandias' island, where the artists and writers are making a "movie" that will fuel the psychological effects of the squid's arrival. Once the Comedian learns of this, then Ozymandias has to kill him, and that's how it all starts. Without the squid, then there is no island. Without the island, what does the Comedian find that causes him to be killed?

Spoiler: Answer to above spoiler

They could be working on something else on the island or elsewhere...for example, satellites to fire the death rays.

Also, I lived through the 80's and I don't remember the paranoia and fear being that high at the time. I remember stories of how the world was that way in the 50's and 60's especially but not the 80's (where it was really Japan that was the bogeyman nefariously taking over). I'm sure it was amped up for the comic book but it felt ridiculously comical reading it now about how people then were so afraid of WWIII.

There was definitely tension and fatalism in the air in those late Cold War days. Look at some of our entertainment...The Day After, Red Dawn, Amerika....We were eventually going to be annihilated, taken over, or subverted, or so we thought at the time. And tensions were higher in the Watchmen's world due to turns in their history caused by the existence of Dr. Manhattan....

I would have thought someone/thing like Dr. Manhatten would be even more of a determent from war as opposed to the escalated fear he caused.

Having him made the U.S. overconfident...they thought that they were invincible (though Dr. Glass argued that they still weren't), so they lorded it over the Soviets in a way that didn't happen in the real world. This causes tensions to boil under the lid until it all spews forth with Dr. Manhattan's departure from Earth. What causes the superpowers of that world to come to the brink of nuclear annihilation? The Soviets invade Afghanistan...in 1985. It happened in 1979 in our world, and didn't have anything like that effect (though I believe that it did contribute to the increase of tensions that ended the detente era of the '70s).

 

[stj]

The Soviet entry into Afghanistan was prompted by US intervention into Afghanistan. Zbigniew Brzezinski has boasted about his success in luring the Soviets into a trap.

I agree that doing away with the fake alien plot raises real questions about exactly what the Comedian found out. Also, Dr. Manhattan voluntarily taking the fall? Awfully proactive for a character who's supposed to be detaching from humanity.

 

[The Old Mixer]

^I don't think the plan would rely on his cooperation...it looks like he's going to be manipulated into leaving Earth, the same as in the book. Only later will his cooperation become an issue...again like the book.

 

[Messianni]

I agree that doing away with the fake alien plot raises real questions about exactly what the Comedian found out. Also, Dr. Manhattan voluntarily taking the fall? Awfully proactive for a character who's supposed to be detaching from humanity.

Not really, it's really just another symptom of his apathy. It matters not to him if he is to be the one to take the fall. It is really a win-win situation: humanity unites and it gives him a reason to cut off his last ties with them.