Watchmen (HBO) TV Show • Page 41

Well a perfect example is Angela accidentally telling a past person about something that affected her current situation: almost all time travel stories involve people over correcting things, and making bigger mistakes. I’m sure Jon has a plan or saw another future possibly where if he isn’t captured.

 

Loooool

 

I can’t make sense of that, maybe others can help me out. If it never happened Angela never would have mentioned it. So how is that a perfect example? It doesn’t make any sense to me.

 

I’ve always interpreted it as Manhattan can only see the future he’s experiencing, he’s powerless to change it. If he could change it, he would have seen something else.

 

Doctor Manhattan’s actual powers boggle the mind

From the moment of his accident, Jon Osterman ceased to experience time as a linear progression. He experiences his own past, present, and future simultaneously. He first describes this to his then-girlfriend, Janey Slater, after the assassination of President John Kennedy. As he does it, he’s gazing at Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” which is a little on the nose.

Doctor Manhattan can appear to others to be a person who knows what is coming and goes blithely along with it, making no choices. But just because he’s aware of the future, doesn’t mean that he can change it.

“Everything is preordained. Even my responses,” he tells Laurie Blake in the Watchmen comic

 

I guess then it just seems to me that even though everything is preordained it just doesn't make sense that it would happen that way unless he wanted to get caught for some reason. Why would it be preordained that he's caught in such an easily avoidable situation otherwise.

 

So he can explain what happens in the future in great detail but he can’t waive his hand and get rid of the guy about to zap him? By describing the future he’s potentially changing it, he even withholds certain information on purpose. I think he just chooses not to

 

Alright just watched. Jeeeesus Christ. I both understand what’s going on and also am entirely confused. I hope/assume John has not actually been destroyed.

 

Essentially he only knows it’ll happen because he’s experiencing it. He can’t change him getting teleported because it’s happening at the same time as he’s meeting Angela at the bar / etc. if he knows about it, it is too late / already happening, leaving no wiggle room for things to be done differently.

I think.

 

He’s not describing it like it’s happened, he’s living it simultaneously.

 

I get that it's all at the same time for him I would just think it would have to be something crazier that captures him that he wouldn't be able to avoid somehow but he's so powerful I can't even think of what that could be lol

 

“We’re all puppets, Laurie, I’m just a puppet who can see the strings.”

 

this is exactly correct and stated better than I could have

 

If there’s no room for things to be done differently he wouldn’t be able to have long conversations about what happens in the future

 

“Get the fuck up off the pool”

 

I liked this without seeing who tweeted it and I just looked back at it and lmao

 

But having those conversations about the "future" (it's only the future for Angela) are what bring those things to pass in the first place. It's like how he has always loved Angela even though the thing that gets him to fall in love doesn't happen until moments before he is destroyed.

 

He’s not having a conversation about what “happens” in the future, he’s living it simultaneously. Past/present/future ... he’s experiencing all of it at the same time. It’s not linear to him.

 

It's pretty genius how they rigged his mocap suit with blue LEDs to create a natural glow on everything around him in the movies. It made him look so much more tangible. There is zero glow on Angela in that screencap

 

I could care less how much better Dr. M may have looked in the movie. This show is so much better.

 

Of course it's better than the movie. Doesn't mean the VFX can't be appreciated! Just thought it was a really smart and cool way to prevent unnecessary CGI

 

This show's portrayal of the way that politeness is used to mask racism's genocidal intent is peerless. The senator and police chief befriending and integrating blacks into their social circles, treating them as peers or extended family in order to pacify(?) them while seeking to harness Manhattan's powers for their transhumanist solution only for themselves is an especially insidious example of this. Serves as a real-world analog of how institutional racism sustains itself and of the white supremacist view that progress is only attainable for and owed to whites.

I have cross feelings about how this show handles the original's themes of nihilism in tandem with its effective critique of racism, but I need more time to clarify my thoughts on that and need to see the reveal of Trieu's motive before I comment.

 

really good point here

 

That kind of reminds me Don Johnsons' character in Knives Out, speaking on how important Ana De Armas' character is and how much of a member of the family she is, while holding out a plate for her to take away.