Watchmen (comics)/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

Line 82:

**** There are more ways to disable bombs than taking them apart in a big obvious way. If he were to teleport into a hidden place and start secretly turning all the uranium into iron, for instance.

***** This is adressed in the story. Even if he could stop many of the missiles, he couldn't stop them all. Even 1% would be enough to cause enormous damage.

***** No, that was refering to Dr. Manhattan's ability to intercept ~~[[ICB Ms]]~~ in the air. He could try render warheads inert while they're still on the ground, however, it only takes 1 sighting of him disarming missles to put people on alert and he doesn't know the location of every missle on earth.

***** No, that was refering to Dr. Manhattan's ability to intercept ICBMs in the air. He could try render warheads inert while they're still on the ground, however, it only takes 1 sighting of him disarming missles to put people on alert and he doesn't know the location of every missle on earth.

** I personally found it incredibly stupid. Nixon says something like "we will fight them, and we will prevail". Is he out of his gourd? Fight Mr. Manhattan. You might as well try to fight Q, or sue God for damages. Heck, yelling at a cloud would make about as much sense. But in the movie, they all seem blind to that fact and cooperate for no reason. In reality (and it seems that Watchmen tries to be realistic), such a peace would last days, at most, since then, with no more sitings of Dr. Manhattan, they'd realize how silly their cooperation was and go back to a Cold War, a real one with deterrances and proxy conflicts without Dr. Manhattan's supernatural intervention. It also slighted the real differences between the US and USSR, and the seriousness of the capitalist/communist split and their opposing worldviews, thinking that a little ol' [[Enemy Mine]] was going to stop all US/USSR conflict. So, Ozymandias killed millions of people for no good reason in persuit of a truely crappy plan. In the words of Detective Del Spooner Ozymandias is "the dumbest smart person, I have ever met in my life!"

*** Right, so you think that both sides should have just decided it was hopeless and given up straight away? Dr. Manhattan is incredibly powerful, but not omnipotent - he himself says that he would "only" be able to stop about 60% of Soviet missiles if they were launched. Ozymandias, working alone, was able to come up with a plan that he believed had a chance of destroying Dr. Manhattan. It didn't work, but if he thought he could come up with a solution then the governments may just decide that all of their best scientists working together would have enough of a chance for it to be worth trying. Hell, Ozy could suggest a vague outline of his plan as something they should work on, he doesn't need to tell them it's useless.

Line 159:

* I agree with you except for about Night Owl. he seemed the most normal. Rorschach was by far my favorite and the 2nd least meesed up in my opinion. but Night Owl is even less messed up than he is.

** Please don't project your own biases on everyone else. I still had quite a lot of sympathy for Nite Owl and Silk Spectre, all their personal problems aside, and even had sympathy for Ozymandias. I actually think Moore uncovered something very disturbing about comic book geeks by using Rorschach as, well, a Rorschach blot. The fact that you can dismiss Nite Owl -- who has the most recognizably human motivations of anyone in the cast -- as being a "whiner who quit when the going got rough" because he chose * not* to spend his life in a quixotic battle of violence and bloodshed, because he aspired to some kind of normalcy, says something about you (and the comic book fans who agree with you). The fact that Rorschach seems sympathetic to so many people because he * denies he has* human failings or human weaknesses or the natural, human revulsion toward violence and conflict says something disturbing about the comic-book archetype Rorschach embodies.

*** ''"...natural, human revulsion toward violence and conflict..." "...says something disturbing about..."'' Please don't project your own biases on everyone else. This troper, for one, has long found human failings and weaknesses to be some of the most pathetic things in existence, and the heroes [[Shinji and ~~Warhammer 40 K (Fanfic)~~|who refuse to bend to them]] to be, in turn, the definition of admirable, if not awesome.

*** ''"...natural, human revulsion toward violence and conflict..." "...says something disturbing about..."'' Please don't project your own biases on everyone else. This troper, for one, has long found human failings and weaknesses to be some of the most pathetic things in existence, and the heroes [[Shinji and Warhammer40K|who refuse to bend to them]] to be, in turn, the definition of admirable, if not awesome.

*** This Troper would like to make the observation that most people who idolize those characters who "refuse to bend to their emotions" tend to be, for lack of a less blunt term, losers with little to no social interactions to speak of. Through forming bonds, you realize the importance of emotion, like Nite Owl did. Rorschach's fans are something like people who hate romances because they've never experienced love. They identify with his lack of emotion because they wish to harden themselves against the tough truths of the world: Emotion is all we really have. You experience all the emotions you can, then you die. That's life. Heroes who strive for normalcy are the most real in this Troper's eyes.

*** Characters without failings and weaknesses just aren't realistic, and are frankly boring. Watchmen isn't supposed to be an escapist adventure story, but an exploration of some messed up people. Everyone has flaws and weaknesses, and makes mistakes, and fails. You linked to a fan-fic featuring a Marty Stu (inspired by a tabletop game...) to demonstrate your idea of heroism and you classify a revulsion toward violence and conflict as a weakness. Holy shit. Face it, Rorschach is all about human frailty. He is, ultimately, a failure. That's why he's sympathetic - out of all the characters, he's the one on the verge of total collapse. His ideals just don't match up with reality.