Watchmen - We need to talk

[Relish in Chaos]

OK, so there are a couple of things that have bugged me about Watchmen that I'd like to discuss.

1. The inconsistency with Laurie Juspeczyk's birth date. Apparently, it's officially 1949, as stated in Under the Hood and that Laurie mentions she's 13 in 1962 when Hollis Mason lets slip about his biography at Sally's place, but Dr. Manhattan mentions that they move into their Washington apartment in 1970 on Laurie's 20th birthday. But Laurie should be turning 21 in 1970, if she was born in 1949, rather than 1950. So, was Jon just wrong (which could be more likely than Hollis Mason being so, since he initially only went out with her for her looks)?

2. Why does everyone think Ozymandias is "the world's smartest man"? From what I saw, he's just a charismatic, successful businessman with above average intelligence and an Egyptian fetish. I know he said he has "an over-enthusiastic PR team", but it seems somewhat unbelievable that they'd be pushing such an idea as "the world's smartest man" to the public, not to mention - judging by the end - Veidt almost seems to believe this himself; that he's destined to follow in the footsteps of Alexander the Great. I mean, this is a man who took 17 years to realise the futility of crime-fighting and whose best plan he could think of to stop World War III was to trick the world into believing an alien invasion.

3. Why did Dr. Manhattan not take any control in his or others' destiny. If it's really inconsequential to change anything if it's "preordained", then shouldn't he just take action to save someone's life anyway? He's fucking Dr. Manhattan; why should he be bound by the rules of fate, whereas ordinary humans go about their lives with free will? Just because you know what happens doesn't mean you can't try to alter it. Like I said, if he really didn't care about humans either way, he could've prevented the death of JFK and just sat back to see what'd happen. I mean, why did he pretend to be annoyed at the Comedian for killing that pregnant women in Vietnam, when he knew it was going to happen anyway? That's why Jon Osterman is just a maddening yet interesting character for me.

4. How can Rorschach still fight crime on a diet of baked beans, sugar cubes, coffee, and a little sleep, all at the age of 45?

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Not really sure about 1, I haven't read the book or seen the film in a while.

As for the second, well, I think the PR team might not have had to do that much work. He's in remarkably good physical shape (in the book he's on tv performing acrobatics, he throws the Comedian through a window, he catches a god damned bullet) and he's insanely successful- doesn't he say he can buy all those businessmen a few times over? It's hinted that he's verging on having a monopoly in a lot of different industries. He also has a massive ego, you pretty much said so yourself. He compares himself to Alexander the Great and, given his stance on killing millions of innocent people, sees himself as above the rest of humanity.

Dr Manhattan's humanity is fading over the course of the story, so I think he feels annoyed with the Comedian for shooting the woman partially because he feels that's what he's supposed to feel in that situation, despite not really feeling that much. Unlike Ozymandias who feels above others, Dr Manhattan- who actually is set apart from the rest of humanity- just feels distant. The Comedian sees through this and points out that he could easily have stopped it if he really did care.

Well, you might be overthinking things, but I gather he's batshit crazy, highly experienced and very dedicated. As I said, I haven't read/seen Watchmen in a while, does it explicitly state that's his diet? We might just not see him eat a lot of the time.

 

[Queen Michael]

1. I guess Alan Moore made a mistake here.

2. People want to believe it. And concerning the alien, the megasquidmonster seemingly appearing out of nowhere is the kind of thing that would make people at least consider the possibility that aliens are real.

3.

I mean, why did he pretend to be annoyed at the Comedian for killing that pregnant women in Vietnam, when he knew it was going to happen anyway?

That you know something's going to happen doesn't mean it's not annoying when it does happen. And concerning the entire see-the-future thing, that's not what he does. What he does is experience all times all the time. The reason that he doesn't try to stop the JFK assassination is that to him it already happened while it also is happening right now while it is also something that hasn't happened yet. And besides, he can't try to change it. It's ipossible for him to do anything other than following his pre-destined route. (Also, I've never bought the entire changing-the-future thing in general for various other reasons. Gonna have to make a thread about that someday.)

4. He probably eats more than that and we just don't see it.

 

[Axolotl]

Yeah, why would people think Ozymandias is the smartest man alive, all he did was invent a teleporter, master genetic modification (to the extent of being able to breed whole new species), render the internal combustion engine obsolete and make himself one of the richest men alive from almost nothing. Being called the smartest man alive isn't really unreasonable especially given superhero nicknames in general.

As for Dr Manhattan, he can't prevent the Kennedy assassination, he can't alter the future, that's the point he has no free will. There is a set sequence of events that will happen, Dr Manhattan knows what these events are partly because he's unstuck in time like the dude from Slaughterhouse Five or The Sirens of Titan. He knows what actions he's going to take, this doesn't allow him to change them.

 

[RikuoAmero]

I'm going to comment on number 3.

For Dr. Manhattan, what he went through and what he felt was despair, hopelessness and powerlessness. I know, that last one might throw you for a loop. Manhattan, without power? He had absolute power, but at that point, the difference between absolute power and absolute powerlessness is unnoticeable. If you have absolute power, there's nothing else to strive for, nothing to do.
You also have to understand that for someone who sees and believes the future to be immutable and fixed, he won't ever bother trying to change it. He can't. In fact, he's already seen his attempts to change the future and seen that he fails. For him, all moments in time occur simultaneously. If you watch the end of the movie, the confrontation at the end, he repeats a line twice something along the lines of "I'm telling Rorschach 60 seconds from now". 60 seconds from now, he sees and knows he's going to tell Rorschach something.
And just in case you respond with "If he can see all of time, how come he didn't stop Ozy...", Ozy had blocked his time-vision. It stands to reason that Jon couldn't see beyond the time-frame of the movie, beyond the point of the tachyons since it would require seeing the results of decisions he's gonna make during the "invisible" time-frame and since he doesn't know what those decisions are, he can't predict their outcomes.

In fact, I highly suspect that Jon was a sort of literary experiment on Alan Moore's part, a take on Jesus/God, on what exactly their character would actually be - he probably wondered what would happen if you got your 30 year old male and made him into God, what exactly would change in their personality, how they would react and deal with the rest of humanity.

 

[Something Amyss]

2. Why does everyone think Ozymandias is "the world's smartest man"? From what I saw, he's just a charismatic, successful businessman with above average intelligence and an Egyptian fetish.

So he's an alternate reality Steve Jobs or Gabe Newell?

3. Why did Dr. Manhattan not take any control in his or others' destiny. If it's really inconsequential to change anything if it's "preordained", then shouldn't he just take action to save someone's life anyway?

First thing that comes to mind is "self-fulfilling prophesy." Seems to fit.

 

[JimB]

The inconsistency with Laurie Juspeczyk's birth date.

No idea. Typo, I guess.

Why does everyone think Ozymandias is "the world's smartest man?"

He's smarter than anyone else they know.

Why did Dr. Manhattan not take any control in his or others' destiny?

Because he perceives all time happening simultaneously, and he perceives himself in those perceptions. You seem to think that because he sees what we would call the future, it's the future to him too. It isn't; to him, it's the present, and the way he acts isn't something that's coming down the line for him to plan for and respond to. He's already done what he's going to do.

I mean, why did he pretend to be annoyed at the Comedian for killing that pregnant women in Vietnam, when he knew it was going to happen anyway?

Force of habit. He still thought he had human empathy.

How can Rorschach still fight crime on a diet of baked beans, sugar cubes, coffee, and a little sleep, all at the age of forty-five?

The same way a dude can be hit by a death ray and instead of dying, come out of it as Naked Smurf-Jesus. It's not meant to be literal; it's a sign of how poorly Rorschach's mind is equipped to deal with human reality.

 

[johnzaku]

The thing about dr manhattan that I felt really should not have been cut out of the movie was his dad. He was a watchmaker and obsessively trained Jon to take apart and put back together more and more complicated things. By the time he was in his his pre-teens he could disassemble and reassemble an antique pocket watch in a very short amount of time. Then his dad read about this new nuclear power and literally trashed all of Jon's work. He told him that THIS is the future, and this is what you need to strive towards in order to be successful. Jon never protests or complains. He does as he's told.

He's been so infused with the idea that everything should fit together in just this one way, this one way of assembly is the only way the whole can function, he transitions that viewpoint onto his reality. The other part is that he is an incredibly weak man. His dad told him to completely change his life. His first real girlfriend introduced herself to him and she bought him a beer. in the 50s. He doesn't try to change the future because it never occurs to him that it's even possible. Everything is fit together, there are rules. "Lead does not spontaneously morph into gold" It's a really important window into why he is the way he is and why it's such a revelation to him later that things CAN change. He does have the power to influence destiny. "Perhaps I'll create my own life"

That's my take on him anyway. as for the other three, I think it was a minor glimpse that yes Jon was a little out of touch with dates (or moore just oopsied); Ozymandias is a brilliant man, maybe not the most brilliant, but he is certainly at a genius level and like you said, aggressive PR; Rorschach's just one of those guys I guess.

 

[GodzillaGuy92]

Since everyone else is already taking it upon themselves to answer #2 (basically every technological advancement in Watchmen was invented by him) and #3 ("We're all puppets, Laurie. I'm just a puppet who can see the strings."), I'd like to propose an explanation to #1 that isn't "typo/continuity error"; Jon did indeed simply get it wrong, and Moore threw the mistake in there intentionally as another very subtle indication that Jon has grown detached from humanity - in this instance, no longer able to so much as remember the age of his life partner. (And even if it was a mistake, death of the author dictates that this explanation remains completely valid anyway.)

 

[Olas]

#2 Intelligence is more or less impossible to quantify in any meaningful way, so obviously the term "world's smartest man" isn't meant to be taken literally. Basically if he seems really really smart and is constantly outsmarting everyone he meets, then it's fair game to call him that since it's impossible to disprove.

As for the crazy plan to fake an alien invasion: IT WORKED DIDN'T IT?

#3 Seems like a time travel paradox with weird implications.

For example: Dr. Manhatten knew the JFK assassination would happen before it did because he remembers it from the future right? So if he stops it from happening, say by teleporting Oswald into a prison cell the day before the shooting, it won't have ever happened and thus he'll have no future memories of the shooting. So he'll remember that he teleported Oswald into the prison, but he won't remember WHY he did it, since as previously stated he has no recollection of the JFK assassination. Without remembering the JFK assassination he'll have no reason to choose to teleport Oswald into prison, and thus wouldn't do it causing the assassination to occur all over again.

Essentially Dr. Manhatten would be caught in an in-deterministic state of remembering and not remembering the JFK assassination. This would also be true of every other event he'd decide to "change"

My only explanation is that it's impossible to both know the future and be able to affect it, and that Watchmen is just a story.

#3 ("We're all puppets, Laurie. I'm just a puppet who can see the strings.")

This doesn't solve the dilemma though. Free will isn't needed for someone to try to change what they know to be the future. Determinism is based on the idea that you can only be affected by the past. If you know what you are going to do next, there is no reason you couldn't deliberately do something else.

#4 Because he's just that awesome. Really I don't think it states anywhere that he only ever eats just those things, and even if it does it still seems conceivable for someone to more or less live off of them. The human body can survive on very little.

 

[Fox12]

OK, so there are a couple of things that have bugged me about Watchmen that I'd like to discuss.

1. The inconsistency with Laurie Juspeczyk's birth date. Apparently, it's officially 1949, as stated in Under the Hood and that Laurie mentions she's 13 in 1962 when Hollis Mason lets slip about his biography at Sally's place, but Dr. Manhattan mentions that they move into their Washington apartment in 1970 on Laurie's [ii]20th birthday[/i]. But Laurie should be turning 21 in 1970, if she was born in 1949, rather than 1950. So, was Jon just wrong (which could be more likely than Hollis Mason being so, since he initially only went out with her for her looks)?

2. Why does everyone think Ozymandias is "the world's smartest man"? From what I saw, he's just a charismatic, successful businessman with above average intelligence and an Egyptian fetish. I know he said he has "an over-enthusiastic PR team", but it seems somewhat unbelievable that they'd be pushing such an idea as "the world's smartest man" to the public, not to mention - judging by the end - Veidt almost seems to believe this himself; that he's destined to follow in the footsteps of Alexander the Great. I mean, this is a man who took 17 years to realise the futility of crime-fighting and whose best plan he could think of to stop World War III was to trick the world into believing an alien invasion.

3. Why did Dr. Manhattan not take any control in his or others' destiny. If it's really inconsequential to change anything if it's "preordained", then shouldn't he just take action to save someone's life anyway? He's fucking Dr. Manhattan; why should he be bound by the rules of fate, whereas ordinary humans go about their lives with free will? Just because you know what happens doesn't mean you can't try to alter it. Like I said, if he really didn't care about humans either way, he could've prevented the death of JFK and just sat back to see what'd happen. I mean, why did he pretend to be annoyed at the Comedian for killing that pregnant women in Vietnam, when he knew it was going to happen anyway? That's why Jon Osterman is just a maddening yet interesting character for me.

4. How can Rorschach still fight crime on a diet of baked beans, sugar cubes, coffee, and a little sleep, all at the age of 45?

1) The first ones probably a plot hole, so good on you there.

2) As for Ozzy, I think that was the entire point. I don't think the author meant for him to be taken seriously as "the smartest man in the world." Keep in mind that the real Ozymandias built a massive monument to his glory, and wrote "look upon my works ye mighty and despair." The great irony is that the monument is in ruins. There's even a poem about it. Now Ozymandias is a byword for someone who commits the sin of hubris. He fails to destroy Dr. Manhattan, and their final conversation suggests that Ozzy may have failed in the long term. He also failed to account for Rorschach journal, which means he may have lost to Rorschach. To make matters worse for him, the book suggests that his whole philosophy may be completely wrong. While he gives his speech about how humanity can never achieve peace we see a scene where a fight is broken up by pedestrians who want to do good, and help people. The fight represents the cold war, and the people stopping it represent us. The implication is that peace can be achieved if people stand up and do what's right. It also suggests that there is an inherent kindness in people, which stands as a counter argument to Ozzy and Rorschachs world view. The whole point is that Ozzy has bought into his own legend, and committed hubris by placing himself above others. In some ways his contest against Dr. Manhattan could be seen as a contest against God, but Ozzy realizes that he never stood a chance against God. Again, the sin of hubris. Everything about him suggests he is not what he think he is.

3) He can't prevent anything. He exists in the past present and future simultaneously. That means he can already see how everything turns out, he can't prevent it because it's already essentially happening to him. He sees how everyone's decisions will end, and the great irony is that he has so much power and yet he can't really change anything at all. The fact that he saw the JFK assassination automatically means that it has already happened because he wasn't there. If he had stopped it then he wouldn't have seen it in the first place. If he sees it then it's already guaranteed to happen, and it's too late for him to do anything. Keep in mind this goes back to the idea of fate in Greek Mythology. The Hebrews believed that fate was controlled by God, but the Greeks believed that the Gods were controlled by fate. Zeus couldn't change his destiny any more than a poor beggar could. Everyone was a slave to this mysterious force called "fate." Watchmen is drawing from that. It also draws from the idea of "The Divine Watchmaker." The idea that God created the universe, but he doesn't get involved personally. An impersonal God. That's what Dr. Manhattan represents, an all powerful being that doesn't want to get involved in human affairs. There's a ton of philosophy behind his character, it's very complex.

4) We don't know about Rorschach. He's obviously getting money from somewhere because he can afford an apartment, basic commodities, and a newspaper. We never see him do anything, but he's getting money from somewhere other than his friends. That said, he still lives in poverty. Supposedly he has a brilliant mind and keeps in good shape, he's even more obsessive than Batman. He's only 5'6, so it's made clear within the book that he's not some macho karate master. He's more ruthless and clever than his opponents, which allows him to outsmart or slaughter enemies that are much stronger than him because he's willing to do things that other people won't. Torture and murder are his primary options, so he's basically a total nut.

 

[BabySinclair]

The moment you have perfect clarity of the future you lose the ability to change it. Seeing possible or probable outcomes of events is not the same as having exact knowledge of the future. Once Jon attained perfect foreknowledge of time then time became objective, what he knows will happen is guaranteed to happen. Objective reality is one in which everything in its existence is quantifiable and exact. There is no free will in an objective reality because every event is already an objective reality waiting to happen. What I'm typing now would not be because of my own choice but because it is what I was always going to do. Jon just knows what the objective outcomes are, if he could change future events he foresaw then he would not have seen the objective future and he would have been unable to know what to change or prevent. Objective knowledge of the future makes you unable to change it because the ability to change it would make the future subjective which is not the case in Watchmen.

 

[Adamantium93]

1. Probably a typo

2. Well, he somehow built up a massive corporate empire and invented at least a few brand new fields of science. He also manipulates all of the characters into doing exactly what he wants (his only real hiccup is that his plan to kill Dr. Manhattan failed...but he does admit that he was unsure if it would even work). Maybe he isn't the smartest, but he's definitely pretty damn smart..

3. As far as Doctor Manhattan, you're assuming that he sees possible futures like most fictional future seers do.

He doesn't see a possible future, he sees the one true future.

If you flip a coin, there is a 50% chance it will land on heads. Now, say you record a video of that coin flip. You flip the coin. It lands tails. Now watch that video. What is the chance that the coin will land heads? 0%. Because no matter how many times you replay that video, the coin will always land tails.

This is essentially Dr. Manhattan's world, only he is seeing all time at once. He sees it like its a movie and he's but an actor playing from a script. He implies that everyone in the book is doing the same thing, he's merely the only one who realizes that he's doing it.

For a time, he acted out human emotions because it was expected of him and because it was a habit. Over time, he both stopped caring about what others thought and lost much of his old mannerisms.

Of course, it may be that Dr. Manhattan is wrong. Each character in Watchmen sees the world differently and its up to the reader to decide which character had the right of it.

4. Also, about Rorschach...how do you know that? We never see any of the characters go to the bathroom. How do they live without going to the bathroom?! (Actually we may see one or two coming out of the bathroom haven't read it in a while). I doubt all he eats are beans and sugar cubes.

 

[DataSnake]

The other big problem is that Ozymandias's master plan is really fucking stupid. Let me count the ways:
1. The initial attacks. Imagine you're a missile silo operator in the cold-war-era USSR. Suddenly all contact with Moscow is lost, as if the entire city had just been blown right the hell up. How would you react? By launching the goddamn nukes.
2. Even IF the nuke operators all decided to ignore their standing orders to launch if they lost touch with HQ, several of the Soviet (and probably American, but I haven't seen any sources on that) missile silos were on dead man switches [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail-deadly]. Go too long without someone putting in the "don't launch" code (for instance, because everyone in the immediate area is too busy being dead) and out come the fireworks, auto-targeted at the USA.
3. Even if there's no immediate war, there's still the question of whether Rorschach's journal will be published, which Ozy really should have planned for. It doesn't take a genius to see that Rorschach is paranoid enough to have put a contingency plan into place before taking off to confront someone he knew damn well could easily kill him.
4. Even if everyone was fooled, how would the nations of the world react to the threat of alien invasion? By arming themselves with bigger and better weapons than ever before. And when, decades down the line, the now much more heavily armed USA and USSR each realize that there aren't any aliens coming, who do you think they're going to suspect of orchestrating the whole thing? Each other. And how do you expect them to resolve this disagreement? Here's a hint: they've got all these shiny new superweapons they now know they don't need to save for the alien invasion.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

As for the second, well, I think the PR team might not have had to do that much work. He's in remarkably good physical shape (in the book he's on tv performing acrobatics, he throws the Comedian through a window, he catches a god damned bullet) and he's insanely successful- doesn't he say he can buy all those businessmen a few times over? It's hinted that he's verging on having a monopoly in a lot of different industries. He also has a massive ego, you pretty much said so yourself. He compares himself to Alexander the Great and, given his stance on killing millions of innocent people, sees himself as above the rest of humanity.

Yeah, you see, I don't buy the fact that Veidt could've caught a bullet on training alone. I think there's something he wasn't telling us, which would be in line with his narcissistic character. Remember that, thanks to Dr. Manhattan, he'd experimented with advanced genetic engineering, so who knows, perhaps he could've done that to himself. There's no other explanation to how a normal human, even one as strong and intelligent as Veidt, could catch a bullet.

But yes, I think his greatest flaw is probably his short-sighted idealism. After the Crimebusters meeting, he didn't lose it. He just shifted into a new form of idealism. I just think I probably would've been more likely to believe the whole "world's smartest man" thing, despite all of his achievements, if it came until after he'd retired his Ozymandias persona and set up the all-encompassing "Veidt Enterprises".

Dr Manhattan's humanity is fading over the course of the story, so I think he feels annoyed with the Comedian for shooting the woman partially because he feels that's what he's supposed to feel in that situation, despite not really feeling that much. Unlike Ozymandias who feels above others, Dr Manhattan- who actually is set apart from the rest of humanity- just feels distant. The Comedian sees through this and points out that he could easily have stopped it if he really did care.

Yeah, I'd agree with that, actually.

Well, you might be overthinking things, but I gather he's batshit crazy, highly experienced and very dedicated. As I said, I haven't read/seen Watchmen in a while, does it explicitly state that's his diet? We might just not see him eat a lot of the time.

I have just mentioned that we see Rorschach drinking egg yolk at Moloch's house, and later thanks Dan for "cereal". But yeah, he probably doesn't eat only that stuff. We're probably meant to focus more on his determination and experience than his diet.

He can't prevent anything. He exists in the past present and future simultaneously. That means he can already see how everything turns out, he can't prevent it because it's already essentially happening to him. He sees how everyone's decisions will end, and the great irony is that he has so much power and yet he can't really change anything at all. The fact that he saw the JFK assassination automatically means that it has already happened because he wasn't there. If he had stopped it then he wouldn't have seen it in the first place. If he sees it then it's already guaranteed to happen, and it's too late for him to do anything. Keep in mind this goes back to the idea of fate in Greek Mythology. The Hebrews believed that fate was controlled by God, but the Greeks believed that the Gods were controlled by fate. Zeus couldn't change his destiny any more than a poor beggar could. Everyone was a slave to this mysterious force called "fate." Watchmen is drawing from that. It also draws from the idea of "The Divine Watchmaker." The idea that God created the universe, but he doesn't get involved personally. An impersonal God. That's what Dr. Manhattan represents, an all powerful being that doesn't want to get involved in human affairs. There's a ton of philosophy behind his character, it's very complex.

This is actually probably the best explanation for Dr. Manhattan's perception of time that I've seen before. It's probably true that, if he did stop JFK's assassination "in the future", then because it wouldn't have happened at all, he wouldn't have been able to see it. And the thing about Dr. Manhattan is controlled by fate is also interesting, like how, towards the end, Dr. Manhattan repeats the same event ("Excuse me, Rorschach; I'm informing Laurie ninety seconds ago") because he's getting muddled up by Veidt's tachyon interference. So, yes, it's ironic that Jon Osterman is the most powerful being in the world, but due to his passive personality and inability to have any say in his own free will, he's nothing more than "a puppet who can see the strings".

Funnily enough, this probably negates the possibility of "alternate universes" too, since Dr. Manhattan literally can't change the universe that has already been laid out for him. He can tell people about "the future", and it's still going to happen no matter what, but he can't alter the events and perhaps even subconsciously manipulates people into following that path (like when Laurie tells Jon she won't follow him up to his watchtower balcony on Mars, but then does it anyway because he doesn't reply).

EDIT: I still think Veidt's plan was stupid, though, even accounting for his megalomaniac fantasy of "uniting the world" like Rameses II. He moved World War III a decade earlier than he'd predicted by exiling Jon from the planet, then somehow manipulated US and USSR into a truce by faking...an alien invasion. I know he's a so-called "futurologist", but how does he know he hasn't doomed the world even further. The US no longer has a God on their side. I agree with you, DataSnake. Who's to say US, USSR or even other countries like China don't just build more nuclear weapons to protect themselves against a future "alien invasion" that might never happen.

Not to mention the "smartest man in the world" apparently didn't consider the possibility that an insane detective investigating a "mask-killer" plot, no matter how erroneous or illegible it may be, could still have his findings floating out there and it may be picked up by someone else. I mean, seriously? It was Jon who took the action to kill Rorschach, while Veidt just stood there not giving a shit because, well, Rorschach's a batshit crazy fugitive. I mean, how long could Veidt keep up the lie if The New Frontiersman publishes Rorschach's theory and potentially provokes a just-in-case investigation into Veidt and the whole unexplained "alien attack"? What happens after Veidt, who is not an immortal like Osterman, dies? He certainly doesn't seem to have any plans to have kids, especially since he couldn't relate to anyone but a dead emperor whom he'd wanted to surpass too.

So yeah. That's all I have to say on the matter. For now, at least.

 

[K12]

1. Because writers are shit at Maths.

2. I think the marketing vs. reality of his claim to be "World's smartest man" is up for interpretation. You often get the same kind of problem when writers create characters that are smarter than they are. Pick a master villain and their plan will seem stupid/ unnecessarily elaborate if you scrutinize it.

3. I don't really understand Doctor Manhatten's thought processes on any level at all, I think that's largely the point. He doesn't see the future he experiences all time simultaneously (sort of)

4. He's running on crazy (or possibly a massive amount of steroids)

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

1. Plot holes happen, even in comics. Not all continuity errors get caught, even in a mini-series.

2. Maybe its a PR stunt, but maybe he's just on a different level than the rest of humanity and thus is why he's willing to kill a lot of people in order to prevent a genocidal event.

3. Dr. Manhatten is no longer a human being and as such has different motivations than a human would. He has a lot of power but we really aren't told what his power limits actually are, nor can we see things from his perspective. The best we can do is see that a part of him wants to remain human and maybe by attempting to alter events he would forever separate himself from that humanity he still desires though no longer has. Also perhaps he sees the consequences of his actions if he were to alter the events he sees. I feel that seeing time would be like looking at a painting containting ALL possible outcomes, not just what is going to happen and as time draws closer to an event the most likely outcome becomes clearer.

4. Some people can live off less, and still look healthy even if they aren't. Crazy runs on itself.

 

[Boris Goodenough]

1. You will be two years of age in a year, unless you are born on the 1'st of January.

 

[Furbyz]

OK, so there are a couple of things that have bugged me about Watchmen that I'd like to discuss.

1. The inconsistency with Laurie Juspeczyk's birth date. Apparently, it's officially 1949, as stated in Under the Hood and that Laurie mentions she's 13 in 1962 when Hollis Mason lets slip about his biography at Sally's place, but Dr. Manhattan mentions that they move into their Washington apartment in 1970 on Laurie's 20th birthday. But Laurie should be turning 21 in 1970, if she was born in 1949, rather than 1950. So, was Jon just wrong (which could be more likely than Hollis Mason being so, since he initially only went out with her for her looks)?

If she were born in December, she would be 20 for 11 months of 1970. I've never read Watchmen and don't even know the movie that well, but it's entirely possible.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

OK, so there are a couple of things that have bugged me about Watchmen that I'd like to discuss.

1. The inconsistency with Laurie Juspeczyk's birth date. Apparently, it's officially 1949, as stated in Under the Hood and that Laurie mentions she's 13 in 1962 when Hollis Mason lets slip about his biography at Sally's place, but Dr. Manhattan mentions that they move into their Washington apartment in 1970 on Laurie's 20th birthday. But Laurie should be turning 21 in 1970, if she was born in 1949, rather than 1950. So, was Jon just wrong (which could be more likely than Hollis Mason being so, since he initially only went out with her for her looks)?

If she were born in December, she would be 20 for 11 months of 1970. I've never read Watchmen and don't even know the movie that well, but it's entirely possible.

Yeah, of course, I know that, but she'd still turn 21 in 1970. Yet, Jon Osterman says they move into their Washington on Laurie's 20th birthday. But if they moved to Washington on her 20th birthday, that would've happened the year prior, in 1969.

But I do think Laurie was meant to be born in 1949, since, by the way Mason's Under the Hood reads, the remaining superheroes from the late 30s disbanded in the Minutemen in 1949, soon after Laurie was born and they realised Sally Jupiter, the first Silk Spectre, wasn't returning.

Similarly, something else I discovered when reading through Watchmen, for, like, the fifth time, is there seems to be a discrepancy with Kovacs/Rorschach's birth date. The graphic novel clearly dates his birth as March 21st, 1940. But Malcolm Long's psychiatric notes on him claims that he is 10 when he gets into a fight with those kids...in July, which means that he should've turned 11 by then. He'd have only been 10 if the fight occured in January, February, or early-to-mid March, at the latest. So, either Long's wrong, like Osterman possibly was about Laurie's birthday, or this is another typo/inconsistency.

I mean, maybe I'm just nitpicking here like I tend to do with fiction like these, or looking to deep into things, but there are even instances I could pick out where Rorschach or some other character claims that the Comedian has been active for "40 years" by 1985, when he'd debuted in 1939, which would be at least "40 years".