Huge Watchmen Updates!

It’s been quite the week for Watchmen news, and quite the week for my central nervous system as I’ve had a series of body racking love-spasms ever since my eyes beheld the alternate trailer shown at the Spike TV Scream Awards bullshit. Get your eyeballs on that, it’s wonderful.

We also get a new poster to spread out on our bedsheets and leave our sweet love seed on. It’s kind of a departure from what we’ve seen so far, which has been direct samples from the book’s original promo art, but I’m digging it. It certainly does look like it was designed in the same vain as the 300 posters. Click the image to Dr. Manhattan size it!

Lastly, the subject that has set the internet ablaze with debate… the ending. Apparently the film screened in its entirety in Portland last Thursday, and contrary to what Zach Snyder has been saying all along, the film’s ending has been altered from the book’s.

Wanna know what this new ending is, and our thoughts? Highlight the wondrous invisi-text below…

Apparently, the “giant squid” is no more. Manhattan, and other major cities globally, are bombed with a device made by Ozymandias (under the guise of a “free energy” solution) that mimics Dr. Manhattan, thus framing the blue-skinned man-god. Rorschach still bites the dust, and the Cold War crisis is still averted.

Now, I’m going against my intense fanboy instinct to not scream blasphemy to the high heavens because… I actually don’t mind this. Granted, this revised ending may be a ruse, a red herring if you will, used for the screening, with the book’s ending being in the finished cut, but if this is truly to be the movie’s conclusion then I think I can get behind it. My biggest fear with the book being adapted to film, is that damn squid-monster. It does come slightly out of left field, and I can see that mainstream audience hating it. Don’t get me wrong, I am a big yay-sayer of the squid, but let’s be real, it is part of what has deemed the flick “unfilmable” for years. And with the concurrent Tales of The Black Freighter story being told in between chapters of the book missing from the film, that’s another factor taking away from the squid’s relevance.

Let’s be real though, the change makes perfect sense. Instead of adding an element completely new and unrelated to the previous events, you utilize one of the main characters, bringing their arc full circle. There is certainly undertones of a fear of Dr. Manhattan throughout the book anyways; he’s basically a cancer-causing war machine with no immediate loyalty to the human condition. Although we, the reader, understands Manhattan’s dilemma, having him as the other-worldly threat that stops a nuclear war is actually quite fitting. My only worry is that with the book so incredibly layered and dense that it would create a plot-hole looking back, but as of writing this I can’t think of any that would make this ending unreasonable.

I’m pretty used to having my favorite properties raped. Time after time I give a big fuck you to the Hollywood big-wigs, but I’ve generally come to terms with being a minority, as a big fan. It is kind of a new feeling to not be enraged with revising such a huge part of the source material, you might say I feel like a turncoat. But if there’s anyone this film has to impress, its me. I’m the biggest critic. As is everyone else who read and adored the book. But you can guarantee, squid or no squid, I will be there at the midnight showing on opening night, excited to see what could be my most anticipated film to date. If we get what I think we’re going to get, based on what we’ve seen so far, then March 6th should be a glorious day. I have faith in this.

So there you have it. I would love to hear your thoughts all this, and I certainly welcome any and all debate, so let the games begin!