Jab’s Builds! (Miss Piggy! The Swedish Chef! Sweetums! Gonzo!)

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Ares
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Eris! Hooded Justice! Capt. Metropolis! Sally Jupiter!)

Post by Ares »

Dan was, naturally, my favorite character of the Watchmen series, and one thing I liked about the movie is that it downplayed how 'soft' he was. He was still unsatisfied and less secure as Dan, but he showed more strength of character and conviction, was more willing to stand up for himself and you could see his old heroism was just below the surface. And once it came back, it was back with a passion. He was more able to fight Adrian as well, even if he still was ultimately outmatched.

The tragedy of Dan is that he would have fit right in at Marvel or DC. He would have been a proper superhero in a universe that allowed for proper superheroes, IE, a non-Moore Deconstruction universe.
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Rorschach

Post by Jabroniville »

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"Somebody knew Roy Chess. Somebody hired him. Don't worry... won't insult legendary underworld solidarity by suggesting you surrender name without torture."
*Everyone in the bar immediately turns toward the guilty party*


RORSCHACH (Walter Kovacs)
Created By:
Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
First Appearance: Watchmen #1 (Sept. 1986)
Role: Murderous Vigilante
Group Affiliations: None (partnership with Nite Owl)
PL 7 (99)
STRENGTH
2 STAMINA 4 AGILITY 4
FIGHTING 10 DEXTERITY 2
INTELLIGENCE 1 AWARENESS 3 PRESENCE -2

Skills:
Athletics 6 (+8)
Deception 6 (+4)
Expertise (Streetwise) 7 (+8)
Insight 3 (+6)
Intimidation 10 (+8, +10 Creepy Mask)
Investigation 7 (+10)
Perception 6 (+9)
Sleight of Hand 3 (+5)
Stealth 4 (+8)
Vehicles 2 (+4)

Advantages:
Chokehold, Daze (Intimidation), Equipment 1 (Grappling Gun, Creepy Mask), Fascination (Intimidation), Fast Grab, Improved Critical (Unarmed), Improved Hold, Improved Initiative, Improvised Weapon, Ranged Attack 2, Startle, Takedown

Offense:
Unarmed +10 (+2 Damage, DC 17)
Initiative +8

Defenses:
Dodge +10 (DC 20), Parry +10 (DC 20), Toughness +4, Fortitude +5, Will +7

Complications:
Motivation (Justice)- Rorschach was driven to become a vigilante following the death of Kitty Genovese (raped and murdered in front of dozens of witnesses, who did nothing).
Hatred (Sex)- Rorschach thinks negatively of nearly all sexuality- perhaps drawn from a childhood of having a prostitute for a mother. He calls liberated, sexual women "whores" and thinks it a salient point to investigate Ozymandias as "possibly homosexual".
Responsibility (Whoreson)- Rorschach found his mother's job humiliating and lashed out when insulted and bullied for it. He later identifies strongly with a young boy being brought up in a similar way.
Reputation (Psycho)- Rorschach is a known murderer and vigilante. Even his fellow superheroes are extremely disturbed by him, with only Dan Dreiberg putting up with him.
Responsibility (Temper)- Rorschach is an extremely violent person, thinking only in terms of aggression at times. He growls incoherently when challenged and lashes out often. When told he can't be a vigilante anymore, his first action is to murder a rapist and leave a taunting letter for the police and government. A known perv who liked to be beaten up was thrown down an elevator shaft for trying it on him.
Responsibility (Dislikes Others)- Rorschach thinks negatively of nearly everyone. He calls Ozymandias a "prostitute" to his face for cashing in on his repuation to make action figures of himself ("He is pampered and decadent, betraying even his own shallow, liberal affectations"), calls Dan "a flabby failure who sits whimpering in his basement", and more.

Total: Abilities: 48 / Skills: 54--27 / Advantages: 13 / Powers: 0 / Defenses: 11 (99)

Rorschach- The Unhinged Vigilante:
-RORSCHACH. It seems like every discussion of Watchmen begins and ends with Rorschach. It's fitting, given that the story begins with his insane diary writing narrating nearly the entire tale and ends with his death. A psychotic lunatic who turns off even those closest to him, he was perhaps the biggest takedown Moore did on what a real-life vigilante would be like- someone intensely driven to justice but himself permanently marked by the evils he'd seen. What we were left with was a murderous, psychopathic killer, refusing to see any compromise or anything but good or evil ("Even in the face of armageddon, I will not compromise on this". He longs for when the "whores and politicians" beg him to save us ("And I'll look down and whisper, No.").

-Rorschach was based off of Steve Ditko's The Question, but also later vigilantes like Mr. A, who Moore thought of as a lunatic, torturing criminals. Ditko had a more vicious, black & white sense of justice as the '60s wore on, and this dark nature was exaggerated by Moore until THIS guy manifested- Rorschach wore a trenchcoat like many of Ditko's heroes, and also hid his face (behind a Rorschach inkblot, thematically appropriate because the black and the white NEVER mixed). We learn pretty quickly how strange he is, as he talks about a dog being run over by a car in gruesome terms, discovers that the murdered Edward Blake was the Comedian, and begins openly torturing criminals in seedy bars for information ("I've just broken this gentleman's little finger. Who murdered Edward Blake?")- and it's quite clear he's done this many times before. He's paranoid and would speak in a stilted, ultra-shortened manner, using as few words as possible.

-His diary narration of the entire Watchmen story involves him using strange comparisons like New York "Beneath me, this awful city, it screams like an abattoir of retarded children", calling women he didn't approve of "whores", suggesting that Ozymandias was gay ("possibly homosexual? Must remember to investigate further"), and other paranoid rants "Landlady complaining about smell. She has five children by five different fathers. I am sure she cheats on welfare"). He makes random assertions to people lacking the quality of "Men like my father and President Truman"- he's met neither man, but assumes his father to be a great hero and worships Truman for the atomic bombing of Japan because it saved lives in the long run. He's described as smelling TERRIBLE, and takes advantage of Dan Dreiberg's hospitality, breaking down his locks and helping himself to canned beans ("You want me to heat that up, or...?" "No need- fine like this."), yet is succinct to the point of disrespect when Dan wonders what happened to better times ("You quit"). Hilariously, he sees no problem in HIMSELF- he opines in his infamous narration "Why are so few of us left active, healthy, and without personality disorders?".

Rorschach's History:
-Rorschach started out as merely odd and driven- he was the son of an abusive prostitute, raised by the state after he'd assaulted a boy after being called a "whoreson" (when he later heard of his mother's death, he merely replied "good"). He made a living in a textile factory ("unpleasant. Had to handle women's clothing"), and made a mask out of fancy material Ozymandias had developed, driven by the real life rape & murder of Kitty Genovese. Disgusted by the lack of witnesses helping the poor girl, Rorschach became a vigilante and soon partnered up with Nite Owl II. Some flashbacks indicate he used to talk pretty normally ("Obviously, I agree, but..."), but he went off the deep end, and Moore would tell us why.

-So on a mission to find a kidnapped girl held for ransom (a case of mistaken identity; her family was actually poor), he discovered that the kidnapper had murdered the poor child and fed her to his dogs in order to cover his tracks. Shocked beyond belief, Rorschach slaughtered the dogs and handcuffed the man to a stove while he burned his home down. And forever after, he was an unhinged lunatic, badly damaged by what he'd seen. His dialogue style changes and he becomes murderous when dealing with criminals- when the Keene Act is signed, declaring vigilantism is illegal, the various superheroes all quit and retire... except Rorschach, who leaves the murdered body of a rapist at a police precinct with the note "NEVER!" written on his corpse. Naturally, he's a wanted felon, but keeps escaping. But his theory of a "Cape Killer" leaves him to the reformed criminal Moloch (an old enemy of the Minutemen), whose murder he's blamed for- he is trapped in Moloch's home and ultimately beaten and arrested by the police after a hell of a fight ("MY FACE!" he cries as his mask is torn off "GIVE ME BACK MY FACE!").

Rorschach Imprisoned:
-Rorschach in prison is ANOTHER great bit of business. He stares blankly at the prison psychiatrist looking after him, and is blunt when asked what's wrong. "I don't like you" "Because you're fat" and "you don't want to help me- you just want to find out what makes me sick". He ONLY calls himself Rorschach and hates the name Walter, and considers his mask his face. And he gives his entire biography to the man, who is horrified himself at the story of the little girl's murder (he's so stunned he stops having sex with his wife, who nearly leaves him after he ruins a dinner party by telling the story to a leering guest who wants all the seedy details of the case).

-And then of course there's the great bit where the giant dude hangs out behind him in the prison cafeteria line, threatening to kill him in the future, at which point Rorschach grabs a full batch of hot cooking grease and throws it in the man's face- then, in the most-quoted line in the series, he's dragged away while the prisoners freak out at him, screaming "None of you understand! I'm not locked up in here with you- you're locked up in here with ME!". A few days later, the man succumbs to his wounds and the prison riots. In the lawless mess, an old enemy, the dwarfish criminal Big Figure arrives with some goons in two, telling Rorschach they're going to kill him. Walter, blank-faced as always, simply replies "Tall order" (clearly offending and angering Big Figure), then tricks a big galoot into lunging for him, tying his hands together. Big Figure has the man's throat cut so they can quickly burn through the bars, but then Nite Owl & Silk Spectre arrive, springing Rorschach. Who calmly walks into the washroom where Big Figure's hiding and murders him, no one else the wiser (Nite Owl seems to think he had to piss).

-The proper investigation into the "Cape Killer", complete with trademark threats (which leads to the line I actually think is FAR funnier and more bad-ass than his prison one- written above), actually reveals the truth- that OZYMANDIAS is the killer of Edward Blake! "Veidt. Cannot imagine a more dangerous opponent". Rorschach attacks, but is delivered a humiliating beating, being a great fighter against normal folks but no match for this "perfect man". The heroes are badly beaten (even Laurie's GUN doesn't work!) and Veidt reveals his full story to the horrified heroes- that half of New York was murdered to create an "extraterrestrial threat" that would unite humanity. Most of them are in disbelief, but Rorschach knows better ("Listen to sound of voice. Telling the truth. Murdered Blake. Murdered half of New York"). And when the heroes realize they can't bungle this chance for world peace, promising to keep Veidt's actions quiet, Rorschach replies "Joking, of course". As always, "Not even in the face of Armageddon- never compromise". Seeing things in only black & white, he demands Adrian face justice, but knows he's doomed- a reluctant Dr. Manhattan is forced to kill him, Rorschach finally showing more emotion other than rage or displeasure ("DO IT!" he cries, clearly weeping at the circumstances). And so the story ends... but then we realize that Rorschach's left his journal, detailing many of Veidt's crimes, at a conservative newspaper he adored, and the hapless assistant there is about to print it for lack of anything else to do...

Watchmen's Signature Icon:
-So Watchmen kind of lives or dies off of this character, and he's one of the most fascinating character studies of the piece. He's a complete lunatic, but one we're given a lot of understanding on. A childhood that made him viciously angry and uncomfortable with sex (he can't even handle WOMEN'S CLOTHING), a strong sense of justice, and an uncompromising look at a world that is complex- he refuses to see the complexity, thinking in terms of black & white so strongly that his own friggin' costume reflects that. This has left him such a mess that he's an ugly, stinky hobo even outside of his costume (the police who arrest him note his horrible body odor), and only his old partner puts up with him- Rorschach doesn't even realize what a burden he is. And of course his lack of ability to compromise results in his death- he can't handle a world in which evil isn't punished, even if said evil saves the rest of humanity.

-Yet there's SOME depth there- when Dan lights into him over how shitty a friend he's been, and how he's never been remotely grateful for Dan's help, Rorschach is actually taken aback and apologizes. When he finds out his ex-landlady (herself a fat prostitute, reflecting Walter's own mother) lied to the press about him when his identity was discovered, he says "Did they pay you to lie about me, whore?" to get some insults in, but is stopped in his tracks when she begs him not to say that in front of her kids, who've run into the room with tears in their eyes ("Please- not in front of my children. They don't KNOW..."), and Walter blatantly sees himself in the crying eyes of the little boy beside her, and leaves without another word.

-Rorschach had... an extreme effect on the comic book industry. Heroes had always been pretty brutish with thugs (Daredevil & Batman would often clear out bars to get information, or threaten people with violence), but Rorschach actually snapping people's fingers one by one was a step beyond, and it led pretty directly to the more murderous vigilantes that soon became popular. Interestingly, the Question, who inspired Rorschach, had already by this point become kind of a "zen" guy and wouldn't follow that path (even though it likely would've made him a MUCH bigger star in comics) as Denny O'Neil had his own thing in mind, and Question later got beaten up attempting the finger-breaking trick.

Rorschach's Stats:
-Rorschach's stats are a bit tricky to figure out, as he's equal parts unpersonable wreck and a vicious, terrifying killer (poor Moloch gets the worst of it, finding a note in his fridge saying "Behind you" and turning back to see that Rorschach has snuck up on him). He's a good fighter, particularly with grappling & strangulation, and can easily use makeshift weaponry (using a grappling gun Nite Owl gave him to fire a hook point blank into a cop's chest, and using cloth to tie up a much larger Mook). Yet he's very human- a SWAT team capturing him takes some losses but definitely overwhelms him, and he's dealt an easy beating by Ozymandias, who's way too much for him. He's a PL 6 grappler with PL 7 defenses- not bad, especially for this world. He lacks interpersonal skills but is quite scary and can hide in plain sight (his secret identity is a wandering hobo with a "The End is Nigh" sign, and people think he's just some random kook).
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Sally Jupiter! Nite Owl! Rorschach!)

Post by M4C8 »

I never read the books and barely had any knowledge of the story before watching the movie. I liked the movie but I'm sure I read that it was generally disliked by the fans of the book. Reading these bios it seems the movie was quite faithful to the source material so what was it about the movie that the fans didn't like?
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Sally Jupiter! Nite Owl! Rorschach!)

Post by Davies »

The Question #17 wrote:Butch: Any last words?

Vic: Yeah. Rorschach sucks.
The line everyone quotes about him, of course, is "all the whores and politicians will look up and shout 'SAVE US!'...and I'll look down and whisper 'No.'" And in the end, he is deprived even of that opportunity, for the disaster happened while he was on the way to a meaningless confrontation.

The thing that strikes me about Rorschach is how fundamentally naïve he is. This comes out most where he's unwittingly chattering to Moloch's corpse about all the criminal masterminds whom he imagines as being responsible, and when Dan finds the records suggesting Veidt's guilt, he's genuinely shocked despite his blatant dislike of the man. He never even considered the possibility that Veidt might be behind it until then.

This also comes up in his uncritical acceptance of the moral panic surrounding the Kitty Genovese case, which was (as later investigations showed) pretty much a lie -- several of the witnesses did call the police. (Most importantly, the offender was quickly caught and was in jail by the time the stories about this episode were written.) I used to be bothered by this, until I came to understand that it makes sense for Kovacs to be convinced of this narrative -- it portrays the world in the negative light that he imagines, rather than the mixture of dark and light that it actually is.

What I absolutely hate about his story is the way that we're supposed to accept that his account is so compelling, so harrowing that it breaks Dr. Long. Come on, seriously? Yeah, it's horrific, but the man is a trained psychiatrist who works in the prison system. He's heard worse things, surely.

His death ... more than anything else, it bewilders me that Manhattan lies about it. One possibility that I hadn't considered when I wrote an alternate ending for that was that when he says that it's unlikely that Rorschach will reach civilization, he's telling the truth at that moment, and that his decision to kill him, later in his personal perspective, is actually meant to spare him from death by exposure. That's probably nonsense though.
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Sally Jupiter! Nite Owl! Rorschach!)

Post by Shock »

It's funny how Rorschach idolizes Truman for dropping the bomb "because it saved lives in the long run" but refuses to compromise for Ozymandias who had the same goal.
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Sally Jupiter! Nite Owl! Rorschach!)

Post by Davies »

M4C8 wrote: Mon Aug 22, 2022 8:18 pm I never read the books and barely had any knowledge of the story before watching the movie. I liked the movie but I'm sure I read that it was generally disliked by the fans of the book. Reading these bios it seems the movie was quite faithful to the source material so what was it about the movie that the fans didn't like?
It's faithful to a point, then utterly adulterous. (The singular "alien" arrival in the comic becomes dozens of strikes all over the world.) It also turns up the action a bit much for my liking.
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Sally Jupiter! Nite Owl! Rorschach!)

Post by Davies »

Shock wrote: Mon Aug 22, 2022 8:21 pm It's funny how Rorschach idolizes Truman for dropping the bomb "because it saved lives in the long run" but refuses to compromise for Ozymandias who had the same goal.
There's a bit in Good Omens where a modern day witch hunter is shown what a witch execution looked like, and, despite being basically a psychopath, finds it horrifying. I think this is much the same situation.
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Sally Jupiter! Nite Owl! Rorschach!)

Post by Jabroniville »

M4C8 wrote: Mon Aug 22, 2022 8:18 pm I never read the books and barely had any knowledge of the story before watching the movie. I liked the movie but I'm sure I read that it was generally disliked by the fans of the book. Reading these bios it seems the movie was quite faithful to the source material so what was it about the movie that the fans didn't like?
I recall most of the fans seemed to adore it, because it kept so close to the narrative. Even keeping the same dialogue and some scenes in there entirety. A lot of was lost, but fans even seemed to "get" the redirect of the finale, at first. Because it required less exposition and "wait, you did WHAT?"- like the movie couldn't be three hours long, so you didn't want to have to explain why Ozymandias had also invented teleportation and cloning, ya know?

In retrospect it bungles the narrative a bit to not have all humanity aligned against an "outsider" who seemed to mean doom for them all. This time it was literally the American guy who did it.
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Sally Jupiter! Nite Owl! Rorschach!)

Post by Jabroniville »

Shock wrote: Mon Aug 22, 2022 8:21 pm It's funny how Rorschach idolizes Truman for dropping the bomb "because it saved lives in the long run" but refuses to compromise for Ozymandias who had the same goal.
Rorschach's adoration of Truman seems to be part of his childish idealization of his own father, whom he's never met either. The supplementary materials even showcase him writing stuff about Truman when he was a young boy- that a grown man refers to "Great men like my father and President Truman" implies a great immaturity.
Davies wrote: Mon Aug 22, 2022 8:20 pmThe thing that strikes me about Rorschach is how fundamentally naïve he is. This comes out most where he's unwittingly chattering to Moloch's corpse about all the criminal masterminds whom he imagines as being responsible, and when Dan finds the records suggesting Veidt's guilt, he's genuinely shocked despite his blatant dislike of the man. He never even considered the possibility that Veidt might be behind it until then.
It also kind of reads with him taking more interest in Veidt possibly being homosexual, as if THAT'S the important thing. With Moloch his big thing is finding out that his cancer treatment drugs aren't approved. He's just... laser-focused and his chief investigative trait is to go to bars and break people's fingers. His best detective thing was finding Edward Blake's hidden locker (something the actual police missed).
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Sally Jupiter! Nite Owl! Rorschach!)

Post by bsdigitalq »

M4C8 wrote: Mon Aug 22, 2022 8:18 pm I never read the books and barely had any knowledge of the story before watching the movie. I liked the movie but I'm sure I read that it was generally disliked by the fans of the book. Reading these bios it seems the movie was quite faithful to the source material so what was it about the movie that the fans didn't like?
I'll note that the core issues with the film as an adaptation was that it was adapting a much strongly "comic book" story to a moving medium, and that it was slickly filmed like a music video, which resulted in the visual execution and choreography of various scenes running counter to the story and narrative despite the otherwise literal translation of so many elements. It turns out, there's a great deal more subtlety and skill required in adaptation than direct translation, especially for a work like Watchmen that was so carefully made with the comic medium in mind.
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Re: Nite Owl (Dan)

Post by Jack of Spades »

An observation I had while playing Dan in some of those DC Heroes modules long ago is that the material of his cape and cowl seem to be heavier than your typical superhero costume. My head-canon is that they're actually a reasonable thickness of kevlar, with strike plates in the cowl to make it a helmet; it'd protect him from surprise attacks without getting in the way so much when he's brawling with someone. Seemed appropriate for a gadget based guy like Dan.

And it has to be said: Batman or Captain America would have been no more willing to let Ozzy get away with it than Rorschach was. But then I've long maintained that the difference between Batman and a psycho is that Batman is never wrong about who's actually guilty. The real difference, I think, is that the DCU or Marvel Universe would support the heroes in much the same way Earth-3 supports its villains.
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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Sally Jupiter! Nite Owl! Rorschach!)

Post by greycrusader »

There are a few difficulties when trying to judge how effective the Watchmen characters are in terms of game stats; first, they are rarely seen in any sort of physical action against anyone above the ranks of thugs (Dan and Laurie against the Topknot gang, Rorschach roughing up low-level crooks and prison inmates), or at most, well-trained/equipped "normals" (Rorschach battling the SWAT team); and second, as Ares has pointed out, there isn't a easy way to scale them up against superheroes in comics settings-how powerful is Dr. Manhattan, say, compared to Hal Jordan, or Ozymandias to Captain America? Now, I'm talking about the series proper, and (I suppose) the prequels DC put out, not the mess that Doomsday Clock made of things. I mean, Dr. Manhattan is incredibly impressive-pretty much immortal, can teleport great distances, create duplicates, and manipulate matter, but his most impressive feat is forcing the Viet Cong to surrender, which frankly someone like the Flash could pretty easily accomplish in the DC universe. Adrian easily handles Rorschach and Dan, but honestly? The former had been next to homeless for years, subsisting on canned goods and cheap fast food, and was still recovering from a police beat-down, while the latter was out of condition and years out of practice. And yeah, he took care of the Comedian-but again, he defeated a semi-drunk, depressed man who was nearly twenty years his senior.

Those last few examples bring up another issue-readers really don't get to see much of these characters in their primes, except for those prequels, which are of varying quality and questionable canonicity (no, NOT just because Moore says so; there's material that just doesn't correspond to what was presented originally, both in characterization and background). I suppose most of the main characters might be leveled up a PL while they were active crimefighters, though not much more than that, because super-villains were vanishingly rare, so the only real threats heroes faced were superior numbers, sneak attacks (the Liquidator murdered Silhouette while she was sleeping), or bad luck (poor Dollar Bill). I suppose this was all part of Moore's deconstruction of the genre, because he wasn't telling any sort of conventional superhero tale. And for the most part, it was a VERY well done story, even a classic, but we never quite got to see just why any of these characters except Jon and Adrian had any real impact on the world.

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Re: Jab’s Builds! (Sally Jupiter! Nite Owl! Rorschach!)

Post by Ares »

M4C8 wrote: Mon Aug 22, 2022 8:18 pm I never read the books and barely had any knowledge of the story before watching the movie. I liked the movie but I'm sure I read that it was generally disliked by the fans of the book. Reading these bios it seems the movie was quite faithful to the source material so what was it about the movie that the fans didn't like?
Jabroniville wrote: Mon Aug 22, 2022 10:07 pm I recall most of the fans seemed to adore it, because it kept so close to the narrative. Even keeping the same dialogue and some scenes in there entirety. A lot of was lost, but fans even seemed to "get" the redirect of the finale, at first. Because it required less exposition and "wait, you did WHAT?"- like the movie couldn't be three hours long, so you didn't want to have to explain why Ozymandias had also invented teleportation and cloning, ya know?

In retrospect it bungles the narrative a bit to not have all humanity aligned against an "outsider" who seemed to mean doom for them all. This time it was literally the American guy who did it.
I felt that, as far as adaptations of a 12 issue series done in less than 4 hours, it was a pretty solid adaptation. The performances were all generally good, it streamlined things a bit, it had a solid visual style, and I actually prefer some of the changes, such as Dan having more of a spine, Dan actually throwing Adian's crap back in his face at the end, some action to liven things up a bit, etc. I can even understand the switching out of Dr. Manhattan as he threat, given he was a known quantity, and it's another reason for Jon to stay away from Earth. The attacks on multiple locations also makes it more of a world-wide issue and forcing everyone to come together. So in some ways, I kind of prefer the movie to the comic, or at the very least, it's the more casual way I prefer to enjoy the story.

It definitely isn't perfect, and Snyder can't help but turn even Dan and Laurie into brutal, bone breaking, neck snapping fighters. It definitely isn't the quiet character study that the book is, and ironically it goes against what Moore was trying to do by making it feel more like an actual superhero movie. I can't necessarily fault it for that, as a real faithful adaptation of Watchmen would have to be done as a high budget Netflix or Disney+ series.

Like I said, it isn't perfect, it's definitely more faithful in some things it adapts over others, but overall? I enjoy it. And in that merged setting I mentioned in that Captain Metropolis post, I use the Watchmen movie as the basis over the comic for the most part.
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The Psychic Vagina Plant Monster

Post by Ken »

As much as it makes me ill to defend Zack Snyder, there's one very simple fact: the Psychic Vagina Plant Monster doesn't work.

Veidt's plan is that humanity will stop trying to destroy itself and unite in the face of an otherworldly plant thing teleporting into New York City, being killed by the shock to its system, and in its death throes psychically kill several million nearby people.

#1) Veidt and the missing scientists invented teleporting and psychic plants.

#2) We're supposed to believe that the Veidt's scientists are so good that the other 99.9% of the scientific minds on the planet won't be able to figure out that the "alien" was bred from a rhododendron.

#3) That America's enemies wouldn't just go "well, at least it wasn't us".

At the end of the day, the film was aimed at a much broader audience than even the trade paperback collection. I don't care how many bookstores, public libraries, and school libraries carry the trade paperback, its still only going to be read by a small percentage of the populace. Compared to a movie with world wide release...

Plus in the film Veidt's plan is to make people believe a super-hero had a psychotic break. It's a lot easier to accept, especially since it's the truth. It's just most people don't know that the super-hero is Veidt, not Osterman.
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Ken
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Jabroniville wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 6:00 pm Watchmen's Origins & After-Effects:
-Watchmen has its origins in Alan Moore's concepts for when DC bought the rights to the Charlton Comics characters- Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, Nightshade, Peacemaker and more. However, his ideas submitted to DC were as character-breaking as they were incredible. Nowadays he'd just be allowed to do it and permanently-alter many of those characters forever, but back in the '80s someone was like "Hey, what about the future?" and wisely asked Moore to just create his OWN version of these characters for his 12-part mega-series, so DC could use the regular Charlton guys later. It says something that even ridiculous-looking doofuses like Peacemaker and forgotten worthless ones like Nightshade and Peter Cannon were afforded such respect.
If one digs into it, there are rumours first envisioned this story not with the Charlton Heroes, but with the Archie/MLJ/Red Circle heroes. He adapted his pitch to use the Charlton Heroes when Dick Giordano was looking for ideas for the Charlton heroes after DC acquired his babies.

But.... have you ever concerned if Moore had pitched his idea to a smaller, different American comic book line...

Jackie Jokers is dead.

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My Amazing Woman: a super-hero romantic comedy podcast.

When the most powerful super hero on Earth marries an ordinary man, hilarity ensues.
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