More Fuel to the 'Watchmen' Ending Fire

"fan reaction"? So the climactic ending of a film is based on some studio suits reaction to popular demand, not the director/writer's overall vision? Do they have applause meters built into the seats now? :p

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Totoro - ummm... yes. As it has been for decades in the movie industry.

It's odd, I skimmed the post at first, hoping to avoid the spoilers... then realized that having read Watchmen, the only thing that could be spoiled would be my disappointment at a changed ending.

While I'd prefer squiddo to be present, I could possibly stay sane if they at least kept the same tone of terror and the atrocity of the act. If they made it a happy ending, THEN I'd be pissed.

Of course, removing ol' spacekraken defeats an entire subplot of the story, untethers a few more ties, and would make the fan-friendly DVD even more confusing to those who haven't read the book. Sigh.

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The squid was just weird in the book. I didn't care for it, it felt like it really didn't belong. I am all for testing different endings. You can easily replace the Squid with a myriad of different "apocalypses" and still maintain the flavor of the story.

Should the Squid ending be made? Yes... Should it be in the theatrical release? Maybe... Should it be on the DVD? Yes...

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This is ridiculous. The audience have paid their money and it shouldn't matter what the ending is.

Keep the squid.

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I understand the concern and all.. but would it be the end of the world (no pun intedned :D) if the squid really was out of it? Viedt could launch a missle instead and have the same reaction. The incident would be the same and it would still inspire the idea of the action.

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If they remove the squid I will still go see it; I will be purchasing a ticket for a different movie and go to Watchmen. I refuse to give a studio my money for drastic changes like that.

DareDevil - Kingpin is now black, I'm ok with that.
LoTR:TT - Aragorn falling off the cliff then returning, I'm ok with that.

COMPLETELY changing a shocking/perfect ending... no money.

I'll gladly give that 10.00 to a indie movie who needs it.

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They must have cut a fair bit out to get the running time to get it under 3 hours, which is fair enough.
With novel to movie adaptions thats somthing you have to expect but the watchmens climactic ending is too good not to have.
Space squids, Rorshach's exit, ketchup on a fat guys tshirt.
Class!!

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Replacing the squid with an atomic bomb would NOT have the same effect. The whole idea was that all of earth would unite against a nonexistent foe. If an a-bomb was used, they would believe it was an earthly attack and everyone would be suspicious of each other. The alien aspect is essential to the intentions and effect of the action. IF an alternate ending were chosen, it would have to avoid implicating another country attacked the city. Then, and only then, would the movie not suck.

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director got that spot on. That's exactly what I was going to say. The whole story is about Cold War tensions and the high probability of nuclear winter happening at any moment. Veidt's alien attack was the solution to that problem. I'm not sure how any non-alien threat could solve the problem. And given the fact that we're talking about the screen-writing geniuses behind 300, I'm pretty sure it'll be a disappointment.

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I was just thinking about that nuclear holocaust ending. Perhaps in the atomic bomb ending, Veidt did not succeed in releasing his space squid and instead Rorchach, Doc Manhattan, Night Owl and Silk Spectre succeed in stopping the squid only to see the world powers destroy themselves in nuclear fallout.

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Multiple atomic explosions in various parts of the planet ( and because of FUCKING alternative fuel resource ), completely spits in the face of what the novel is about and the single premise it's entire point is astutely hinged on : which is that of superpowers ( i.e. United States ) using doomsday weapons to ensure world peace. Alan specifically takes America to task here, as much as the Mutually Assured Destruction Soviet clause, and for a good reason - it's the only nation present who's strategically realized this. Hence the persistent Hiroshima references ( i.e. Knottop silhouetes vandalisms ).

The integral issue here is not the mechanism perse, or whether it should have had to be the squid ( even though creatively and artistically, yes,, that's one of the most iconic, storied, strikingly defining, memorable images and ideas in the comic, and should be a dealbreaker of an event cinematically ). It is whether it is right to bomb civilian populations to halt warring : since it was apparently ok to do so in Nagazaki and Hiroshima to end World War 2, shouldn't it be moral as well to do the same thing to America for similar goals ? The watch-making motif, nuclear imagery, evocation of superheroism's American indigineity, brimming world war, and the march to armaggedon scenario is supposed to build up to this critique.

Zach Snyder spreading the climax across various cities not only is a blatant act of betrayal of the work, but also a despicable pussying-out on a very provocative, yet nonetheless important point the work was actually CREATED FOR, that the writer has been trying to hold us all accountable to, in favor of empty posturing. It forever ruins its relevance in ways you can never possibly believe.

The way it's presumably going, the project is better off shelved.

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That being said, where is the news ?
I thought something definitive was gonna get spilled here, yet it was more like what cannot be clearly seen.

For now, I think we're gonna be stuck with assumptions until the final product fully comes into print.

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Like, duh.

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Like, ' duh '.

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About 15 years ago a friend recommended Watchmen to me. I hadn't read a comic (graphic novel) in over 25 years and really wasn't that interested. But...

I started reading it and was utterly drawn in, staying up all night until I'd finished it. Thank God I started on a Friday night. I was struck from page 1 that this resembled a movie more than anything I'd seen up to then. Since then I've re-read it several times and given many copies to friends for birthdays, Christmas, and just because I thought they'd like it.

But changing the ending? I don't think I could take that. The ending was both positive and negative, with a nice tone of ambiguity on the last page. Nuclear bombs? As others have pointed out, it would rip out an entire section of the novel that lead up to the finale. And, it would seem to let the air out of what was, to me, an excellent ending.

I'll probably watch the movie but if the ending is so radically different, I won't see it a second time and I won't buy the DVD. Sometimes even high-level studio executives need to take a chance and go with the gut feeling of the creator. It's time to give the audience a little respect, address their intelligence, and admit that not everything in life is wrapped up in neat packages that contain little inside the ornate ribbons.

Watchmen was not aimed at "Joe Sixpack." The movie shouldn't be, either.

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Everything I've seen leads me to believe that everyone envolved in the production is more concerned with being true to the story than pleasing general audiences or making money. Then I noticed the shot in the trailer with Spectre II and Owl II kissing in front of a mushroom cloud. It's probably just Night Owl's dream from chapter 7.
However, in the twenty-first century, there's more than one way to fake an alien attack. A guy like Veidt, who owns a chunk of the military-industrial complex, could simply level Manhattan with nukes or lots and lots of shaped charges. Then all you would need is something like the preexisting Project Bluebeam to project the illusion of aliens. That would be much easier than cloning a giant squid with the brain of a dead psychic and would not require teleportation technology, or any other tech that has yet to be actually developed.
So I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I think that, as long as the ending has the same point and the same effect, the lack of a squid could be acceptable, as long as no other compromises to the story are made.

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if they don't put the squid in I wont see it. Only because it wont be as good so why would I waste my money when I already have the comic? Taking that out basically ruins the whole message as people have stated above. It all makes sense in the book and is perfect in weird way. IF it is changed and it is told around the internet I will dress up as a squid with loads of people and start squiddin the theaters.

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