The Watchman

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anybody see this movie yet? catch any symbolism?

you gotta know Alan Moore's up to something with this story lol

Preston wrote:anybody see this movie yet? catch any symbolism?

you gotta know Alan Moore's up to something with this story lol

I saw it. I'm a long time Moore reader, since about the age of eight with Axel Pressbutton.
I watched the film twice (geek fanboy that I am) and the film has levels of brilliance, bringing the comic fully to life at times, but on the whole the substnace of the story and any relevant motifs or occult symbology are drowned out by Zach Snyder's high action comic book pornography style. He tried to make a cinematic facsimile of the graphic novel just as he did with Frank Miller's 300. Didn't quite work. The material is too complex.

It is relentlessly violent. To the extreme.

The main theme of course is the false flag attack on New York to usher in an age of global peace.

Better to read the graphic novel to get the full hit of what Moore intended.

Here's some interesting symbolism from the graphic novel:

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Dr. Manhattan Vitruvian Man style.

I agree with you Winston. The graphic novel was much better. One should read that before seeing the movie...if see it at all. I'm a fan of Moore as well and had read the Watchmen years ago. But despite the movie not being as good as the graphic novel, I was still a happy geek to see it on screen lol.

***spoilers****

One thing that they changed was the staged alien invasion at the end. I was looking forward to see how they'd bring that about on screen. But they apparently ditched the idea. I couldn't been because it was too corny and too violent. The alien looked kinda silly and there were piles of dead bodies, stacked upon each other in huge mounds due to the alien invasion. The whole Dr. Manhattan bomb was more clever and less over the top. But what Moore touched upon in his book may represent (or have represented) the NWO's plan and purpose for the alien agenda. Not so much that aliens are real, but that they'd use it as an way to bring the world together. Like what was said in President Reagan's speech at the United Nations.

Winston_Smith wrote:Here's some interesting symbolism from the graphic novel:

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Dr. Manhattan Vitruvian Man style.

indeed!

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The false flag event in the movie was sickening. Not only that, but the good guy (godlike blue mr manhattan with the Hyrdogen atom/3rd eye on his forehead) agrees to take the blame for the event. Horschak our hero is then destroyed by Mr Manhattan for refusing to play ball.

The movie made me sick, the ends justifies the means garbage.

Many people who you could classify as "asleep" didn't get the ending.
I "got it" and strongly disagree. Mr Manhattan can go dematerialize himself.

splinters wrote:The movie made me sick, the ends justifies the means garbage.

Many people who you could classify as "asleep" didn't get the ending.
I "got it" and strongly disagree. Mr Manhattan can go dematerialize himself.

The point is that Snyder made Alan Moore's intensely complex and subtle post-modern deconstruction of the super-hero archetype, complete with heretofore unheard of character depth and moral ambiguity in the "hero," into overtly violent comic book pornography.
There is a big reason why Moore insisted that his name was not associated with the film in any way. And why he refused any profits from the film His fellow co-creator Dave Gibbons thought it was just dandy to be a Hollywood whore and try help legitimise the project by linking with it from an early stage.

Alan Moore is strange egg indeed, but the whole point of his original graphic novel was to show no matter how much the ends seem to justify the means, "nothing ever ends."
The ending was left as a deliberate tantalizing of the reader (far more effective than the film's finale) where it looked as if Rorschach's sacrifice was not in vain.

The film, in total, was a botched job. If it's intent was true predictive programming I think they would have not altered Moore's version so radically which was influenced by Ronald Reagan's famous proclamation about that only an external, alien event could truly unite the world. It was conditioning for the public in a sense towards the desensitization to extremely high levels of violence and comic book magical realism "potentiality thinking." And more male full frontal nudity which seems to be more and more in demand, though I'm sure the females weren't complaining.

Moore's purpose, in his original comic, was to show how misguided and fallacious it is to attempt to "save" humanity from itself by playing the biggest joke of all time on the human race to trick it into "world peace."

Snyder largely fucked up the whole job, and only superficially brought the thing to life on screen.

To conclude I don't think the film's intent was predictive programming but yet an other example of mind bombing the intended demographic with extreme violence, sex, breaking the taboo on male full front nudity, and psychically affront the audience.

What Moore did with Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen (the graphic novel) and with his other work Swamp Thing was very similar

You have 2 superheroes with god-like powers, who have the ability to save humanity from pending doom...but given all their power, they decided not to act in an overtly deliberate way to save humanity...instead, they'll let masses of humans die. (Manhattan wasn't being toyed with by Viedt in the graphic novel as much)

I think what Moore is getting across, is another one of the blame the masses for the follies type angle. With Swamp Thing, the masses where too stupid...the choices they made were too short sighted...the culture of instant gratification got them into their environmental problems, so why bother saving the lot? They need to learn their lesson...even if it means most of humanity dies in the process. It's pretty messed up lol