I actually prefer the movie's version because it cemented that Nite Owl really did care about Rorschach...

I actually prefer the movie's version because it cemented that Nite Owl really did care about Rorschach. The very first person who agreed to keeping Veidt's secret was so upset by Rorschach's death that he runs back to Adrian and tells him off. I actually thought it was the sweetest moment in the story. But in the comic, Dan doesn't even find out Rorschach died.

Zack Snyder actually brought something to the table here that Moore didn't. I'm wondering if there's any particular reason Moore didn't want us to see Nite Owl react to Rorschach's death.

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Why the fuck couldn't this nearly omnipotent god just trap Rorschach in a cell in Antarctica? Killing him is a dick move.

It makes no difference to him either way, and Rorschach was telling him to kill him.

Because Rorschach's death doesn't matter. He's one of thousands.

What stupid preson needed to be told that Nite Owl cared about Rorschach? The entire comic book was about their relationship, you don't need a cheap summary of it at the very end. That scene was patronizing and excessively unnecessary.

It's like that scene in Peter Jackson's The Two Towers (which on the whole was a good adaption, don't get me wrong) when Sam says to Frodo "I know it's hard but we gotta go on so good can triumph over evil because sometimes things are bigger than just you and me." Tolkien never would have insulted his readers by taking a second to stop and tell them what the story they just read was about.

It's just so very Hollywood. Can't risk not bludgeoning the point of the movie or else out popcorn-chugging audience might leave asking questions.

Every death matters. Adrian killed millions because he thought it would be the minimal number of deaths possible. It doesn't mean he gets to go out and kill a handful of unrelated people.

It was also bullshit that he killed his henchmen.

Agreed.

I just wish they had made the part where Nite Owl cried silent. The nooooooo was too off-putting, and it would be more moving if his breakdown was muted and done in slow-mo

Because the only human emotion he still felt was mercy. Given any sort of choice between death and failing to uphold his fucked up sense of ethics, it'd be far more humane to kill Rorschach. Hell, Manhattan could have just ignored him entirely. No one would have believed him anyway. The mercy was more in letting him go down before he has to face that he's the sad pathetic warped little man his mother always said he was. If Manhattan had done anything else it would have crushed him.

>The entire comic book was about their relationship
Exactly, so why wouldn't we see how Dan reacts to Rorschach's death? We don't see him mention it, it makes it seem like Ror was irrelevant to Dan.
Although, I guess you could get the idea reading the book that Dan was very important to Rorschach but not vice versa.

youtube.com/watch?v=k6C8SX0mWP0
I loved that part though. Maybe it was better unstated in the books, but it was a powerful moment in the movie. And Frodo had to hear it.

I don't think you understand. Adrian sees the prevention of a nuclear holocaust as him saving everybody, so any deaths along the way are comparatively insignificant. Roschach isn't any more important than the Comedian, or the assailant he hired to make himself look like a target, or Moloch, or the millions of people who died in New York.

Because you already know about those two characters. The scene isn't about Dan. What he thinks doesn't matter.

Rorschach meant more than all those others.
Remember that he was the psycho who thought in absolutist good/evil comicbook terms, he was representative of the comicbook superhero morality from the start. There wasn't any other characters that embraced that faulty view of morality like he did.
So there was a need for him to die in order to reconcile whether or not this was moral in the sense of comicbook morality as opposed to the most moral action that can be taken in a more realistic world about to kill itself with nukes.

Nite Owl knew Rorschach personally.

>What stupid preson needed to be told that Nite Owl cared about Rorschach? The entire comic book was about their relationship, you don't need a cheap summary of it at the very end.
Their behavior seemed more like business associates who used each other to get the job done, y'know? Plus, Rorschach was a creepy guy and Nite Owl was relatively normal.

The "nooooo" felt natural, though, like a sudden, pained cry. What you're describing would've been really cheesy.

But his death still doesn't matter. The point of the scene is not that Rorschach's death is a tragedy and they wished it could be another way. It's that Rorschach is a loose end that needs to be cut off.

>Their behavior seemed more like business associates who used each other to get the job done, y'know?
What? I agree that Nite Owl had the whole 'normal/sane guy' thing going, but their relationship was clearly 'that weirdo I was friends with from middle school through highschool showed up and wants to crash on my couch while annoying my girlfriend and constantly spouting randian pseudo-philosophy that would get him kicked out of my first year philosophy class in college, except unlike me he never went to college.' Like, Dan is annoyed, and embarrassed, and a bit angry (at Rorschach) that he (Dan) feels that way, but this was a good friend of his once.

i agree.

>Zack Snyder actually brought something to the table here that Moore didn't.
To be fair, anyone can do that.

Moore doesn't really bring anything to the table

the reasoning for what i would consider to be genocide, was bullshit, it was the actions of ego maniac, who wanted to raise himself to godhood and save humanity.

the cold war was coming to an end, and so long as Manhattan was on the american side, their would have been peace.

to get two polar opposite political worlds to come together because of an alien attack in new york is bullshit,

it would have just given the soviets more resolve to keep their crumbling system alive.

moore really didn't understand the geo-political aspect of the cold war at all.

You really got me going with those hot opinions, user

>Tolkien never would have insulted his readers by taking a second to stop and tell them what the story they just read was about.
No instead he insults them by adding a character who does fuck all to the story, derails it and then people cry when he isn't in the movie

to be fair of course we can say that in hindsight but you have to remember watchmen was during the cold war both in story and out. Moore didn't know it'd just amount to nothing and the commies would collapse

Manhattan literally tells Adrian nothing lasts forever

Adrian's whole fucking character is that he FAILS to be a god. Moore understood the Cold War fine, it's you who doesn't understand the book

Wasn't the cold war actually coming to a head around the time the comic takes place? Of course in hindsight we can say that we would've moved past, but in an alternate universe where a being as powerful as Dr. Manhattan exists and works for the U.S. Military, who knows what could've happened differently

The actual cry is more cheesy. Its literally bad iveracting.

Cliched as the alternative us, ots cinematic. It works for a movie

It trades Dan caring about Laurie for Dan caring about Rorschach though.

Basically that last scene there where Laurie doesn't want to feel alone is the deepest her character gets. We need that to set up the epilogue, otherwise it comes ourt of nowhere.
Hack Snydo will show a ten minute extended awkward sex scene set to Leonard Cohen but he won't even hint at the more important one later on. Literally why.

Plus the way he set it up there meant we never got the "Nothing ever ends, Adrian," which is arguably the most important line in the book. That's un-fucking-forgiveable.

Rorschach wanted to die and had for a long time according to Moore. Manhattan probably realized this. It was suicide by cop (er, god).

He also added Faramir, who was a literal Gary Stu in the books and was vastly improved in the movies.

The comic was about other things at that point, as others have said.

I think that Rorschach was important to Dan, but that their relationship was also very complicated and conflicted at that point.

Beyond the fact that it's unnecessary and melodramatic it's also exactly the sort of dumb cliché scene that Watchmen otherwise strives to avoid and it happens right at the climax of the film which makes it impossible to ignore.

It perfect encapsulates everything that's wrong with Synder as a storyteller in one awful moment.

I'm pretty sure the point of Faramir was "look, not ALL Men that aren't Dunedain are total fuckups. I know between Boromir and Denethor and such it can get hard to remember, guys, but there are totally noble Men. See, I'll put one in right now".

I have to go to work and so I don't have time to write up a long, rambling post about how much I hate this change so I'll try and make it quick.

There are a lot of problems with this scene but the biggest one is that it undercuts the disconnect the characters have from Ozymandius's plan with what we as the audience see. All throughout the story (and yes it is heavily reduced already in the film) we get to know a number of regular people going through their lives in New York specifically so that we can see them all get nuked in the penultimate chapter. None of the main cast know any of them and none of them care about their deaths in any way beyond an abstract "this is a catastrophe" way. But we the audience have been following these characters throughout the story so the event is meant to hit us much more directly. These are real people Ozy has murdered, we know their names, we know their stories, they aren't just faceless extras to be roasted as a plot twist. Rorschach death is meant to echo this (just another body on the pile) and not letting Dan see him be killed is an intentional move on Moores part to keep him disconnected from the terrorist attack on an emotional level. More importantly however Rorschach is introduced to us as one of the regular citizen characters. He's the homeless doomsayer guy marching up and down the street. Due to his role in the story however he couldn't be present in New York at the time when the attack happens, he had to be part of the team assaulting Ozymandius's arctic base. Having Manhattan wipe him out afterwards, alone, without anyone knowing that it's happened is a way of posthumously adding him to that event.

To have Dan see him die is to betray the whole point of his death scene. The moment is as much about his nameless death as it is about his inflexability or how when faced with such a crisis personally he betrays opinions he expressed earlier in the story (atomic bombing of japan was justified).

>didn't watch the ultimate cut

I don't think Snyder is a bad storyteller so much as he seems obsessed with cliché. He isn't really telling stories in that sense, but regurgitating what he knows, To tell a story one has to introduce something unique. Snyder seems to flee from uniqueness like a vampire before garlic and a cross.