|
Veidt is an incredibly relevant character in the current world of objectivist tech billionaires. I hope they go full ham with him.
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2019 17:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 09:24 |
|
|
Steve2911 posted:Veidt is an incredibly relevant character in the current world of objectivist tech billionaires. I hope they go full ham with him. He's so much more amazingly relevant now than when the comics were written, I'm super excited to see how they treat him in not-2019.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2019 17:32
|
|
|
Veidt is a utilitarian and one of the primary problems with utilitarianism is the limits of your ability to see the future to know what ends your actions will have. In the context of the novel we see that he’s right, for at least a little while, but he still killed millions because he took a guess that it might work.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2019 17:43
|
|
|
massive spider posted:There are a couple of commenters saying things like "its not Watchmen its just cops vs the KKK" completely ignoring the fact that in this story both are acting as self proclaimed superheroes. You are right and what I think is being ignored but is in the realm of possibility for this show to go is Jud's death be analogous to Comedian's death and Sister Night's investigation into it being analogous to Rorschach's investigation into the "Cape Killer" which would lead to the revelation of a greater conspiracy connecting the Tulsa Police to the 7th Cavalry mirroring the real world connection of Law Enforcement to right wing ideology. Like, there is almost no outcome in this show where it stays "Cops vs. the KKK." It is setting up a huge reveal and twist (at least I hope it is).
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2019 19:21
|
|
|
How much I like this show will be directly related to how quickly it establishes that all cops are bastards
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2019 19:31
|
|
|
By all accounts from the reviewers who have seen the first 6 episodes, yeah there’s more to it than what we see in the pilot.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2019 19:32
|
|
|
i can only hope that the series maintains this level of references to the musical "Oklahoma!"
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2019 20:00
|
|
|
DickStatkus posted:You are right and what I think is being ignored but is in the realm of possibility for this show to go is Jud's death be analogous to Comedian's death and Sister Night's investigation into it being analogous to Rorschach's investigation into the "Cape Killer" which would lead to the revelation of a greater conspiracy connecting the Tulsa Police to the 7th Cavalry mirroring the real world connection of Law Enforcement to right wing ideology. Like, there is almost no outcome in this show where it stays "Cops vs. the KKK." It is setting up a huge reveal and twist (at least I hope it is). Yeah, I'm pretty sure that closing shot of the blood spatter on Judd's badge was meant to have a lot of meaning beyond just being a neat visual. The things I read over the summer about this show's production had me a bit worried that the cops would be portrayed uncritically, but I don't think that's going to be the case. I will be surprised and disappointed if a show that cold opened with a depiction of the Tulsa massacre, which the Tulsa police helped perpetrate, does not take a harsh look at the cops at some point. In addition to that opening, there's just too many little tells - like the emphasis on Judd powdering his nose, or the lingering shot over his old photograph - to think that the cops are what they appear to be on the surface. My pet theory is Judd is going to turn out to be a Comedian-like nihilist who enjoyed power for the sake of it, and Sister Night is stepping in for Rorschach as the moral absolutist at the core of the story who serves as the foil for Veidt and some new horrifying, morally-compromised plan he's cooked up.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2019 20:29
|
|
|
Ghosthotel posted:How much I like this show will be directly related to how quickly it establishes that all cops are bastards Does Regina King besting the blood and piss out of someone she kidnapped based on nothing more than intuition not count
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2019 20:38
|
|
|
I mean she ended up being 100% right so not really. I’m not gonna judge the show off the first episode especially if what critics are saying about how it progresses is true but I feel like the show could very easily end up falling into “hire 👏 more 👏 women 👏 cops” rhetoric.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2019 22:05
|
|
|
Escobarbarian posted:Does Regina King besting the blood and piss out of someone she kidnapped based on nothing more than intuition not count I kind of expect a lot of fans to be hurt and betrayed that the masked vigilante cops aren't the good guys just because we first see them as a multiracial force fighting white supremacists. It reminds me of the first season of Korra, where the villains from the start were consistently portrayed as a fascist cult using "equality" and some initial attacks on unpopular mobsters as cover for genocidal goals, but a lot of goons had their hearts set on them being misunderstood socialist revolutionaries with a lot of good ideas.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2019 22:26
|
|
|
I see it written a lot (mainly on Reddit) that Rorschach, despite his personal flaws, was at least consistent in his morals. One of the first lines in the whole book is him saying the world doesn't have "Good men like my father and President Truman." He never knew his father, and it's discovered in a later excerpt that he idolises Truman because he constructed this fantasy in his head that his dad was like Truman's personal assistant or something. He says that President Truman dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was heroic, because by sacrificing millions of innocent lives, it ultimately saved millions more by ending the war. The exact justification Veidt uses. Dude is just a crazy hypocrite.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2019 22:56
|
|
|
Ghosthotel posted:How much I like this show will be directly related to how quickly it establishes that all cops are bastards If the cops torture-interrogating, then extrajudicially killing someone that they nabbed from his home without so much as an arrest warrant ('I knew you'd order us to round them up') doesn't establish that the cops are bastards in this show, I don't know what will.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2019 23:10
|
|
|
Family Values posted:If the cops torture-interrogating, then extrajudicially killing someone that they nabbed from his home without so much as an arrest warrant ('I knew you'd order us to round them up') doesn't establish that the cops are bastards in this show, I don't know what will.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2019 23:38
|
|
|
Killer robot posted:I kind of expect a lot of fans to be hurt and betrayed that the masked vigilante cops aren't the good guys just because we first see them as a multiracial force fighting white supremacists. Exactly why this set up is so good. The cops in the show check off all the neoliberal boxes for what is “good” but are also show being fascist thugs with no respect for the rule of Law. Even their choice of mask being yellow is a hint as that they are being garbed in the symbolic color of the Comedian’s Smiley Face pin. The Comedian of course being a fascist nihilist who happily allows the state to use him for their oppressive agenda (ya know, like cops). I gotta calm down because the set up is just so perfect for something new and relevant to today and I don’t want to get hyped on the potential only to be let down by the reality.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2019 23:45
|
|
|
The cops are portrayed like a cult in the show.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 00:00
|
|
|
Professor Dog posted:I see it written a lot (mainly on Reddit) that Rorschach, despite his personal flaws, was at least consistent in his morals. I forgot about the Hiroshima bit. If that's accurate holy hell he is ABSOLUTELY a hypocrite. I'm rereading now so I guess I'll find out.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 00:00
|
|
|
It's in one of the extra materials at the end of the issue (I think following issue 6). It mentions that he wrote an essay praising Truman's decision to nuke Japan.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 00:03
|
|
|
Tiggum posted:Like Ghosthotel said, the show portrayed her as being 100% right and justified though. You can disagree with what the show is saying, and the show may yet reframe that incident (and I would be surprised if it didn't), but as of right now the cops are positioned as the good guys and their actions are framed as correct. It's pretty easy to predict that the cops will end up being the bad guys, but that hasn't happened yet. No, actually. Even white supremacists deserve due process, which includes a trial, and not summary execution by the arresting officer. If labeling someone a 'terrorist' suspends their rights, then rights effectively don't exist because cops will just label everyone a terrorist. I think the show was a lot less ambiguous than you seem to.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 00:05
|
|
|
“Her hunch turned out to be correct” is not the same as “she turned out to be 100% right and justified”
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 00:08
|
|
|
I am very wary of cops being portrayed as cool and good in media, and to me this first episode portrayed the cops as almost cultish and very eager to get lethal force approved. They all hate Panda for not wanting to let them use their guns all the time. They only seem "good" in comparison to the fact that the Seventh Kavalry are white supremacist terrorists.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 00:11
|
|
|
Family Values posted:If the cops torture-interrogating, then extrajudicially killing someone that they nabbed from his home without so much as an arrest warrant ('I knew you'd order us to round them up') doesn't establish that the cops are bastards in this show, I don't know what will.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 00:14
|
|
|
I will point this out: The police are regulated in such a way that they are not allowed to use their guns without sufficient clearance. Unless an article four is called. But who has the authority to call for an article four? The Police. The scene ending in asking who watches the watchmen is an answer to that very question. No one.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 00:24
|
|
|
Klungar posted:Since I didn’t see anyone else say it, I will: I think “Veidt” is actually Dr. Manhattan and his servants are life forms he said he was going to go off and create. The transition from the stars in the sky to the Scottish moors is actually to show that this is taking place on some other planet Dr. M hosed off to to play God. The Dr. M playing in the sand on Mars is just a copy to make humanity think he’s otherwise occupied. The anniversary referenced is not of Squid Day, but the intrinsic field accident. That'd be loving crazy. Way crazier than my clones to recreate Dr. Manhattan theory. I like it. All of that was filmed at some castle in Wales, apparently.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 00:31
|
|
|
Necrothatcher posted:No it loving wasn't! He's an insane mass murderer. I'm sorry, but if you're asking to end the lives of 15 million people or god knows how many billion plus the end of civilization, it's not even a choice.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 00:50
|
|
|
Oh god
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 00:51
|
|
|
Even Zack Snyder understood that part...
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 01:03
|
|
|
Why is Ozymandias British now? In the book he was born in America to german refugees. Something’s weird with that beyond allowances for good casting, since he’s also in a conspicuously British Isles setting inconsistent with the source material—and if there’s a whole location unit in Wales for his scenes, there will probably be a lot of action there. Obviously, the perfect villain for a black American hero is an old British man in a mansion in Britain. There’s also a black Dollar Bill in the framed ad in the white supremacists’ hideout, which is a conspicuously weird thing for white supremacists to have around, but if there’s a black Dollar Bill along with the white one in the tv show, maybe there can be a 100-year-old black Hooded Justice in the same town. What was the book Captain Metropolis had on the table in the cartoon on tv? Is that some appendices poo poo I skipped over as a teen?
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 01:04
|
|
|
This argument about whether Veidt was justified reminds me of people trying to prove the top in Inception was going to stop spinning.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 01:09
|
|
|
I mean, depending on how "alternate" the Watchmen alternate universe is, the fact that the Cold War didn't in fact end in nuclear armageddon is enough to show that Veidt's reasoning was incorrect. But I think even if you accept the fact that in the Watchmen-verse nuclear war was a certainty, his solution being framed as the "only" way to avert it is still pretty flawed. Rather than taking the approach that the way to resolve conflict between two societies is to begin dismantling the zero-sum capitalist vs communist framework that they have locked themselves into, his approach was to just instigate some kind of third threat that the existing societies could unite against without changing. He began as a "superhero" who punched "villains" in the face, and then transcended that paradigm by turning into a superhero whose method for resolving international conflict is basically punching nations in the face. He is still just as limited in his ideology as Rorschach.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 01:26
|
|
|
The cop taking his eyes off the suspect at the beginning was very dumb. Also I would think standard procedure for pulling people over would be different in a world where police didn't have ready access to weapons. His car was like 10 feet away from the perps truck. If you seriously believe someone is armed and may intend to kill you then parking your car 10 feet away and taking your eyes off of them is really stupid. I guess I'm just having the same difficult time many people are in framing the police as victims in a "liberal" society.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 01:38
|
|
|
Tiggum posted:Like Ghosthotel said, the show portrayed her as being 100% right and justified though. You can disagree with what the show is saying, and the show may yet reframe that incident (and I would be surprised if it didn't), but as of right now the cops are positioned as the good guys and their actions are framed as correct. It's pretty easy to predict that the cops will end up being the bad guys, but that hasn't happened yet. Again, Sister Night's actions are an explicit callback to the comic. Specifically to this scene.  You've seen other people being directly compared to Rorschach earlier in the show. You should know that it's bad when you act like Rorschach.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 01:43
|
|
|
Midgetskydiver posted:The cop taking his eyes off the suspect at the beginning was very dumb. Also I would think standard procedure for pulling people over would be different in a world where police didn't have ready access to weapons. His car was like 10 feet away from the perps truck. If you seriously believe someone is armed and may intend to kill you then parking your car 10 feet away and taking your eyes off of them is really stupid. That scene is meant to play with your sympathies: a white man being treated by a black cop as black men are treated by white cops, and then the cop’s unjust behavior ends up being justified. It’s a journey. As others have said, the narrative of the season will probably involve the lead cop lady discovering through investigation that the cops are not in fact good and somehow serve the same ends as the white supremacists. The old black man who escaped the Tulsa riots (where there was a silent film playing about a black hero who exposes the crimes of a local sheriff) probably did not lynch the chief because he was a good person.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 01:48
|
|
|
This argument about Moore's intention with how Veidt's solution is presented and the justification or otherwise for it is kind of missing the point if you do not include the context within which the original graphic novel was written. The mid-80s Cold War rhetoric and missile flexing between the US and it's Not long before Watchmen #1 appeared I had probably the worst wake up call I've ever had - I was at my parents house in a village over which the RAF would perform (technically illegal) very fast low-flight training flights at odd moments. Some jet screamed over the house early one morning and as I woke up I looked out of the window where the rising sun was blocked behind a thick sea-fog, the whole sky was glowing white. My first thought was "gently caress. They actually did it. I'm dead." It felt poo poo and didn't really improve when I worked out what I was actually seeing. The option of removing this creeping dread permanently by the sacrifice of a single city was something that many people at the time would have had a hard time ruling out if it were offered. tldr:Context is All. Moore's story was written in a time that is not now and you wont get fully at how it was written to be read then from how it reads now. Thoroughly enjoyed episode 1, no idea where it's going and that's perfect.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 01:51
|
|
|
Jeremy Irons is playing Dr Manhattan I think. He wanted to go off And create life. And the life that surrounds irons character seems still kinda dumb, like he's still working through his designs. He has a castle which we see Dr Manhattan prototyping on Mars. The Jeremy Irons scenes don't have to be on Mars or contemporary to the case of the Calvary story. I just read a screenrant article and they assumed all this would be told at the same time but like completely overlooked that Dr Manhattan gives a good excuse to time skip around when you tell your story. See Westworld
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 03:25
|
|
|
Preston Waters posted:I'm sorry, but if you're asking to end the lives of 15 million people or god knows how many billion plus the end of civilization, it's not even a choice. It was only two million, as if that's a small number, but still.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 03:26
|
|
|
Is Ryan Murphy involved in American Hero Story? That's what I want answered.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 03:27
|
|
|
Rorschach isn’t a good guy. He’s a really hosed yo dude in fact, and warped, but he’s a complex Nuanced character. A major point of Watchmen wasn’t just everything we’re bringing to it now. You got to remember it in context of the time and it being about the morality and character of, specifically, COMIC BOOK SUPERHEROES. It’s a spoof of the simple black and white good guy can bad guy dichotomy and Rorschach is our POV through much of the story to that. It’s funny because he’s a good comic book hero but a bad hero in reality. So it’s not as simple as he’s a psycho you should be against or a badass you should root for. Much like with what Veidt does, the story is about setting up situations where there isn’t a clear cut answer. Rorschach is a hosed up psycho but he’s also right about nearly the whole thing, and that dichotomy, that complexity is why Watchmen remains so good and interesting. I think the show is going for a similar thing. It understands the source material is about those complicated and uncomfortable quandries. It’s probably never going to frame anyone as entirely right or wrong or good or bad because the original comic was a rejection of that simplistic view. In the preview when Sister night gives her speech about the world being black and white, she’s basically establishing the view she has which the narrative is going to force her to confront and change. Watchmen isn’t a morality play, it’s a rumination.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 04:17
|
|
|
There's a "Pirate Jenny" listed in the credits. What character is that? The owlship pilot? Cops can just take on superhero names in this show?
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 04:31
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 09:24 |
|
|
Antifa Turkeesian posted:There's a "Pirate Jenny" listed in the credits. What character is that? The owlship pilot? Cops can just take on superhero names in this show? Yeah, it's the Owlship's pilot.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2019 04:39
|
|
