Why the Squid is a much better ending for Watchmen

Ok, I wanted to make this thread so people know it's not just a meme or pseudo-intellectual postulation and that the squid is, in fact, much better.
Before anything else, you should know about the Cold War, it's history, the social effects on the world and so on. Knowing the context of any movie/book/comic/game is extremely important to understand the motivations of all the characters and the author's as well. Do you have to know all these things to still enjoy something like Watchmen? No, absolutely not. Does it help to improve the experience? Yes, yes it does.

Let's get to the point, most of us reject the squid because how unlikely and unrealistic it is. Here's what you need to know about aliens and the public's perception towards them: the 1950's was the high of the ufo hysteria and the cold war sparked the interest in aliens. During that time, the notion that extraterrestrials existed and were in contact with earth was a given, not a far fetch theory held by some tinfoil heads. There were so many sightings, specially among military and nuclear testing, that it was the first time in history of mankind that governments created books of contingency protocols on how they and the military should act in case of contact. The Project Blue Book, for example, was created in 52. It details many hypothetical scenarios of friendly or hostile reveal of aliens and what to do. For the average civilian of the 1950's being in constant fear of invasion was normal, it was routine.
So would the governments of earth actually believe the staged alien attack? Yes, they would, unquestionably.
The Cold War was also the period where the most weird fucking shit happened, specially in soviet territory, mysteries that are still a puzzle to this day. Lots of /x/ fodder.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=M7T0oSWkmfs
imdb.com/title/tt0667826/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

Now for the next point let's talk about fail-ability and why the ending in the movie sucks balls. In the movie the major countries on Earth are simultaneously attacked by an energy blast that mimics the powers of Dr. Manhattans and so they all put their differences aside to form one Earth defense against him. This would never happen, Dr. Manhattan was a citizen of the US and was on government contract even before his rebirth. From his rebirth through his entire life he was under direct employment of the US government and military, even his name is clear on that. He fought alongside american military due to personal request of the american president, he lived in quarters provided by the government, everything he did revolved around what the US gov wanted him to do. The world knew he left Earth for Mars, but that doesn't mean they would buy it, when it could easily be predicted as a ploy. As soon as the fake attack was registered the entire Soviet union and it's allies would have retaliated to what on the surface is a clear attack by the USA, from the most powerful USA weapon who so far has been nothing but utterly loyal.

The movie ending was better because it was made by based kinographer Snyder

>b-b-but New York was also attacked and that's why they know it wasn't the US that order manhattan!
Doesn't fucking matter, even before they could be alerted that NY had also been attacked they would've launched all of his nukes because their assumption would be their are under direct attack and they are going to continue and hit them soon. Even Manhattan himself says that if one single nuke was fired the response would be so fast and there would be so many launching that even he wouldn't be able to stop them all.
But even IF they waited enough to get the intel that the US had also been attacked, why would they not retaliate anyway? These were mortal fucking enemies at the high of the largest tension there has ever been between two world powers. Millions of their people have been killed by what was essentially the United States's attack dog. Why would they have compassion to the people of NY? Why would they assume the vile capitalist pigs aren't capable of attacks on their own soil, when they know they had tested chemical weapons on their own troops in Vietnam?
It would not happen and it's stupid.
Now here comes the squid attack and how it covered all bases of possible failure. Not only would they all believe aliens did it, as already established, the explosion had also been complimented by a large psychic wave that hit millions of people that survived the blast. In this psychic wave there was several implanted memories designed by many of earth's top artists to perpetually give humans for several generations horrible nightmares about aliens, the attacks and the horrors of war, they would suffer greatly from these vision, even the people on the top of the hierarchy, guaranteeing that they never forget the threat looming over the planet. As for the Manhattan attack it would still be subject to the effects of time, making it less impactful as years passed.

I'm not gonna read that. But here's my take.
>Dr. Manhattan is the most powerful recourse on earth
Why would movie Adrian turn him into a scapegoat then? He's much more useful as an ally than an enemy. Making a fictional enemy is a much smarter play

Now, there are many other arguments about symbolism, what the squid means, what it evokes, it's appearance, vagina dentada concepts and all that shit, but I don't think that's even necessary to get to the conclusion that the alien is a better ending. The pragmatic effects that I have explained are more than enough.
So hopefully this puts the ignorant normies' to rest with their bullshit once they understand the context in which the story was written.

The conclusion: the ending used in the movie is retarded, logically flawed and it taints the entire work.

Yeah but Manhatten sperged out on tv once

No reason not to assumed it was staged.

Your already making a ridiculous amont of assumptions, why not one more?

he dealt with artist and psychologist to figure out what the most alien looking thing the majority of the population could imagine and something about fear too. that's why he went with the squid.

...

You can't really control a guy like Manhattan

There are plenty of points that don't rely on assumption.
If you don't think the fucking URSS wouldn't be skeptical of Manhattan's "mutiny" then you are in denial.

there's nothing clever about either the squid or the manhattan ending

it was literally a saturated trope ever since the 50s til the 80s (in which the book was released so it's hardly a post-trope reference)

I like the squid better just because it makes more sense to me

>ignorant normies
These are the only people who think the film’s ending is better. Anyone who remotely cares about symbolism or subtle detail in a story knows that the squid ending is better.

Of course it was better. The movie's end was half assed. Ozymandias's whole plan, like the Outer Limits episode, centered on how alien and sudden the attack was. It was supposed to be nothing the world had seen before and therefore would unite them together as one.

Snyder's ending was just as hollow, soulless, and poorly thought out as most of the rest of the film.

How did Ozzy get the squid in the first place in the comics, he genetically engineered it right?

>there's nothing clever about either the squid

Strongly disagree, bruv. The build up to the delivery was great and prolonged, the whole time you have no idea what's this thing about getting artists, writers and poets on a remote island. He had the best musicians and experts on sound engineer to think the most abominable sound it could make as it teleported and died. The best visuals that would create fear and rejection in the human mind. Mankind already evolved to be weary of aliens, in the earthly sense, anything outside our species and culture. That is the ultimate alien, it shares nothing with mankind or any other creature or earth, there is no human justifying to make the squid look righteous or good, even postmodernists scum we have today wouldn't do it.
It was perfect. The perfect enemy to unite an entire species.

the logic behind the multiple world Manhattan explosions was super flawed.

more so he also took a huge misstep in chasing Manhattan out of the u.s. before the explosion. since if his plan didn't go right, Manhattan might have a chance of saving the most american lives possible. but since he was off world even after the explosion if russia was upset about the attack and launched a single nuke it would hit and nothing could stop it.

his fear was if all war breaks loose and Manhattan misses a single nuke the damage would be catastrophic. so his correction to this is to take out every major city in the entire world causing a catastrophic end he was trying to prevent?

in the book he choose new york as a sacrifice of his own people, and because it would show there was no double crossing by the americans if it happened to say russia or china. the squid being a possible invasion preparing for world unity in building a global army for the impending space war. Manhattan in the book was driven mad and taken off world not to take the blame but to get out of the way since he might figure out it wasn't an alien or might stop the squid from transporting to new york. also so the world stop relying on manhattan and felt they had to fight for themselves.
in the movie it was to make him a patsy, he turned on them and ran away. i don't remember but also veidt in the books put himself in safety and called it exile, but in the movie it seemed like he was just at his cool base and would return like nothing ever happened, even further down the line profiting from the damage as Manhattan out of the picture he was now number 1 human once again (which is super lex luthor).

Yes. Bubastis was the set up for that.

>tripfags

I should've also added that Adrian had no way to know he could kill Manhattan. He tried but it proved to not work and he didn't seemed surprised by that, so he knew Manhattan would be alive AFTER his plan. So why would he assume Manhattan would understand and be totally ok about it? What if he wasn't and he proved that Ozymandias did it? He was the one guy that would be capable to do that.
So the smartest man on Earth sure made the ultimate greatest plan taking a shitload of chances and assumptions just hoping it would all work out and not kill the entire world.

>crocodile nipples

well the pleading manhattan to understand him and to say he was right, was part of the character being a scumbag. the whole story to me was leading up to he's not really the smartest man in the world he just thinks he is. it's like luthor. sure he thinks he's perfection personified and if he can't think it, it's impossible. yet they ignore any other valid person because it interferes with their ego. in lex's case he ignores all the other brains in the dcu, batman, terrific, ray palmer/atom, toyman/asian boy. superman constantly outsmarts him. how the fuck does regular brain superman despite his vast power still outsmart you and is not considered smarter than you? simply because people like doom, luthor, veidt, can't accept it and label themselves as smarter ignoring reality.

which i thought was the point, he truly thought he was so smart, but he was just a comic book villain.

Even he isn't THE smartest human on earth Veidt is a genius. He reproduced Manhattan's teleport ability, he generated tachions in the future to obscure Manhattan's time vision in the past. He engineered cancer on people near him to make him unstable. He engineered a new species of feline. All of this without mentioning the ending itself.
He was intelligent enough to not commit the stupidities present in the movie's ending plan.

i'm not saying he isn't smart (to be fair he also had the top everyone helping do research and development for him, so it's not all pure 100% him) what i'm saying is he thought he was incapable of a mistake. which he clearly made plenty of.

and if he's flawed then he wasn't capable of making such a huge decision for mankind. he took on that responsibility himself because of ego. not because it was right. and because of ego he didn't see the error of his ways and proceeded to kill countless innocents. more so than if maybe the war had never happened. war seemed inevitable, but it had not yet occurred.

...

the imagery of a giant dead squid monster surrounded by piles of bodies is much more effective and memorable than a big hole in the ground or whatever snyder did

Tripfag fuck yourself with a knife. TLDR.

Sup Forums already knows that. Only Sup Forums has delusional Snyder brainlets. Also the thread isn't mutually exclusive. If it was done on Sup Forums someone could say

Why did he make himself a new breed of tigerdog? Was there a point to that or did he just think it was fun? He didn't really ever try to do anything fun or socialize ever so making a tigerdog seems like a weird diversion in his 20 year plan

They made Watchmen without the slimy squid,
And he'll have you know that that's pretty low,
But not quite like the standards of a 90s kid

Both endings are retarded because humanity wouldn't live in harmony just like fucking that. The might pretend to be happy and work together but it would just end up in a cold war. Veidt's plan has a HUGE faith in humanity as awhole

Outside of story structure that it was the setup for him messing around with making bioengineered creatures I think the book says why, but I don't recall.
Probably because no one else has done it and he can.

This shit right here is accurate as fuck. Snyder very clearly did not understand the source material.

>tripfag

Opinion disregarded :^)

in the comics it was the first attempt to making genetically altered creatures that look like aliens. it was preparation into the squid monster. in the movie it was pointless because it didn't have anything to do with anything.

i guess if he made some sort of puppy that teleported like Manhattan causing tiny explosions that would have the same set up for the final end.

The most important flaw is that Snyder still firmly established that Doctor Manhattan was strongly associated with US foreign policy and seen as a direct arm of US Military might. It wouldn't matter if DM blew up American cities as well. This would be seen as no different than any other American super weapon fucking up and bombing the fuck out of USSR cities. In the end, the response would be to blame the US and respond to the assault.

It's also important to note that the USSR and the USA actually had (in the real fucking world) a treaty stipulating that in the event of an alien attack/invasion they would call off aggression and join forces.

Lold at tigerdog. In addition to what's been said, I think Bubastis was a marketing tool. There's also a lot of mythological stuff online about these cool cats being supposedly "psychic" or having "second sight" or whatever. I have no idea if that's relevant at all, but from my knowledge of Alan "Snake Worshipper" Moore I wouldn't be that surprised.

i misread that as kindergartner Snyder. I prefer my misreading

Well he DOES misinterpret the point of the alley fight with the Silk Spectre and Night Owl. Rather than SHOWING the difference between the balance, nonlethal force used by "sane" superheroes and the absolute violence employed by Rorschach, Snyder has SS and NO talk about how Rorschach is unbalanced for killing bad guys THEN immediately go out and fucking brutally kill some bad guys.

but the squid ending makes more sense, it drives the whole story to that final point.

it's obvious both are not actual real solutions. that's the whole point Adrian is completely wrong and did all that shit for nothing. he just bought more time in an incoming global war, by causing an atrocity. the world of watchmen never got to play out the cold war which irl didn't amount to shit. they didn't get to play it out because adrian veidt intervened. the super heroes designed to help us actually just go tin the way of people solving their own issues.

the whole comic is essentially an explanation to the truth of a great conspiracy. about how and why superheroes committed a 911 style attack.
this is decades before stuff like this happened which is why it's such a great fantasy story.

And then there's this abomination...
youtube.com/watch?v=M7T0oSWkmfs

right, but what i mean is the immediate logic of stopping the war was to prevent death. his response probably created just as much death allover the world (in the movie version) as Manhattan failing to stop one nuke but stopping the rest. he just evenly spread out the death. which is retarded.

in the comic the amount of lives lost was a lot, but he said it was calculated a lot less than if war happened. the movie (it was like 10x that) i'd say he ended up causing a ton more harm than a war. plus all the stuff you said.

Whatever it takes to show Malin Akerman naked like usual.

I think a lot of people also forget that the squid was engineered to be an incredibly potent psychic programed with incredibly fucked up shit designed to give the entire population vivid, horrific nightmares for months/years.

That kind of shit would likely alter the way all humans think about our petty differences, and the loss of human that resulted from the "invasion."

>squid ending
>not hollow, soulless and poorly thought out
hahahahahahah, Moore couldn't think of anything better so he ripped off Outer Limits just like how he ripped off Super Folk for "whatever happened to the man of tomorrow"

TBF Ozy's plan in the movie worked just as well as the squid did in the comic
>bbbbbbut it wouldnt work in real life
BWAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

The alien squid was teased since issue 2 or 3
The movie was bad regardless of the ending because they tried to stick really close to the book while using a completely different visual style which clashed with the story completely, and because most of the acting was fucking awful
Also comic style dialogue doesen't really work when you just recite it verbatum out loud

the entire story leads up to the squid, it's from page 1 a plot to cover up the squid. how is it poorly thought out if it's an integral part of the story? so much so that changing the ending caused the movie to not make sense and have about half of it cut out. entire side plots and characters rendered pointless and all the things that make it a mystery are pretty much gone.

... yeah, cause it's his fucking movie. He could do anything and have it turn out like exactly what he wanted. Literally anything.
Even ignoring that it wouldn't work it also lacks the lasting effect of an alien adversary and the psychic horrors that would plague mankind for decades.

its poorly thought out because Moore didn't have a proper ending so he just ripped off Outer Limits. Plus evidently real psychics actually exist. a real let down after a very well written series.
Howard Chaykin was right to say it sucked.

>Only Sup Forums has delusional Snyder brainlets.

>when an opinionated head-canon spewing cheeto-muncher from Sup Forums thinks he's going to shift an entire board's opinion based on his boring "analysis"

Go read some real literature for a change, brainlet.

>Dr. Manhattan couldn't stop them
That's where the whole story breaks down. There are countless ways Dr. Manhattan could stop the nukes and/or avoid war altogether.

Reagan and Gorbachev had an agreement that they would pause the Cold War in the event of an alien attack.

>he thinks comic books are real life
hahahah holy shit dude. Ozy's plan only worked in the comics because thats what Moore wrote. Same reason it worked in the movie. It was written that way.
Its almost like you don't understand fiction. Dr.Manhattan was basically as Alien as a fake space squid to the average person anyway.

but again since he had the ending since the beginning, it's not that it's poorly thought out. you can say you don't find it original. but it's the opposite of not thought out, it's completely purposeful to the entire story.

>head-canon
it's not head canon in this case because it's a single contained story with everything explained and in detail. there's no guess work. or alternative story lines or writers.

well until dc fucks it up with it's new watchmen shit.

This.

All I'm hearing is some fake-ass Moore fanboy who probably wasn't even alive in the 80s beating his feet against the carpet with MUH SOURCE MATERIAL...

Jesus, stop behaving like a retard. Both will work if the author desires it, it doesn't keep us from analyzing which is better constructed, better presented, more creative, makes more sense in the context and could possibly work best.
Oh, you're one of those "just turn your brain off" guys, aren't you...

And yet so far everyone agrees with me besides a couple bran dead fart heads like you.
Also you don't know what headcanon means.

Which episode of Outer Limits are you referring to?

He can think of a poor ending and then write a story around it and maintain the poor quality of the ending

Nice blog post.

Right, but do you have any objective argument as to why it is poor other than "it's a rip off"?

The plan wouldn't work though. Manhattan is an American. No matter how much you played into his self-imposed exile to Mars people would still consider the attack an American attack.

The Watchman movie is literally just some retard skimming through the book and then explaining it back to you poorly. There is not one single aspect of the book that Zack Snyder has any understanding of.

>And yet so far everyone agrees with me besides a couple bran dead fart heads like you.

You sound upset, kek.

>Also you don't know what headcanon means.

Like bringing up Project Blue Book? Where the fuck is that mentioned in the entirety of Watchmen?

Where is ANY of the 50s UFO craze mentioned?

Blowhard.

I wonder if people would eventually discover what Veidt did and how long it would take. Sure he killed everyone who knew or was involved apart from the capes but the fact is that the creature was genetically engineered so study of it would likely show some evidence. And walking around with a genetically engineered animal on full display showing everyone that that's something you can do isn't exactly smart. Or was bubastis never seen by the public? I can't recall.
Anyway, there aren't any aliens and if there are, they likely aren't like that one so eventually people have gotta question the details. Not even necessarily laymen, but government officials and scientists and shit, the ones who would research this after it occurs, would eventually figure it out.

imdb.com/title/tt0667826/

did you not read that post?

yeah you keep saying poorly thought out, but i think you mean is
>i think the ending sucks

which is fine but your only argument is
>outerlimits episode would use a squid
which okay, sure. but that doesn't mean it doesn't work in the context of this story. because outer limits didn't invent
>aliens
>squids
>alien squid being used to cover up a conspiracy that there is no squid, to attempt to stop world war 3, by a businessman who used to be a superhero, but secretly turned and murdered all the old superheroes and committed a terrorist act and drove the only superman away to mars.

Squid ending is the best ending. Also, yuu are an insufferable cunt.

You do realize it's set in the world as ours so even if it isn't mentioned those things had still happened and that was the context in which the story was told? Like both URSS and USA having a treaty in the real world to join forces if aliens even attacked earth?
This isn't Star Wars, where only what's mentioned can be attested to ever happening.

the entire idea was forcing mutual cooperation so neither side could pull out of the new global economy without losing more than they'd ever gain.

That is pretty close, but I'm glad Moore was able to use the idea so well in graphic novel form. Treating it as a "one-use only" concept for a 60's syndicated TV show would be a total waste.

Both were likely written with the context (that I keep bringing up all the time, but yes it's important) in mind.
The notion that only an alien threat would unite mankind was a common one.

The opening credits alone redeem the entire film.

>A secret group of scientists decide to surgically alter one of their members into an 'alien', in order to convince the world that an alien invasion is imminent. They hope that such a threat will force all governments to make peace with one another.

Top kek.

>Snyder not only came up with a better ending, he saved Warner Brothers from being sued by a dead writer's estate...

Yeah and I also enjoyed the part before that where Veidt kicks the shit out of the Comedian but that whole sequence isn't in the book so I guess that makes me a pleb

So even if it's discovered, they'd want to stick together because now you're over that hill and profiting from it? Just need the mystery to stay and motivate for X amount of time eh?
It would still make waves I think, world's big and complicated even if from the bird's eye view you achieve some kind of cooperative utopia. I mean, that's the point of Rorshcock's journal in the news office at the end, no?

it is the very first thing in the book

You're only a pleb if you think the ending is better.

The movie has plenty of nice things, like the opening credits, Rorschach's casting and the death of the original Owl.

He didn't use the squid because Alan Moore said the squid wouldn't work outside of the comic medium.
This means that even if it could work outside the comic medium almost everyone watching it would be thinking about what Moore said and would conclude it didn't work.
I don't think anyone thought Manhattan was better, it was just a decision to avoid the inevitable criticisms that would come from trying to do the squid on film.

If it came out the fall of the berlin wall was a CIA operation, do you think russia would instantly revert to the CCCP and re-annex all of it's lost territories?

Agreed, but is making him the bad guy the correct option?

>and the death of the original Owl.

This. Severely underrated moment. Fucking beautiful.

I've heard it was a direct studio order to not use it.
I doubt Snyder gave a fuck about what Moore thought, otherwise he wouldn't have done the movie at all, something Moore also said it couldn't be translated into film.

Reminder:
ADRIAN'S PLAN DOESN'T FUCKING WORK AND DOCTOR MANHATTAN CREATED THE DC UNIVERSE HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAAHHAHAHAHAHA
ALAN MOORE ON SUICIDE WATCH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHA

I think it'd stir some shit up, and this is much bigger. Millions of death, worldwide destruction, the birth of a unified world through horror. It's like the blue man says, nothing ever ends.

>its implied the lie was never going to get anywhere because of Rorschachs journal
>the very obvious implications is the lie wont last long

>Rorschach
BLACKED
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

DAS EBIC, FREN

Anyone with half a brain recognizes that snyder is a fucking hack

underrated

The US suffered the worst attack of them all and the soviets and everyone else saw it happen.

Already addressed.

Not canon

Just when I think DC can't be any more creatively bankrupt...

Plague of fags ruins another thread