Spoilers beware: in the comic, Ozymandias’s quest to end the Cold War comes to fruition with his hatching a giant squid and dropping it on Manhattan, causing the populace to have such a mental breakdown that millions of Manhattanites die from psychic heart attacks. In the movie, energy-based Dr. Manhattan, played by Billy Crudup, has the ability to liquidate any form of matter. Ozymandias (Matthew Goode) manipulates him to create an engine of renewable energy based on Manhattan’s unique energy signature. Instead, Ozymandias uses the engine as a way to ignite a Hiroshima-sized explosion in Manhattan. The result is the same in both works: an attack so devastating that it unites Russia and the U.S. to form a relief effort, which effectively ends the Cold War.

In film there is a desire to make these comic book adaptations as realistic as possible, a hang-up that is counter-intuitive to comics. Dropping a giant squid that kills millions of New Yorkers in a film would lead to mass audience rejection and poor receipts. (It didn’t help anything, as the film adaptation was a fiscal and critical flop, whereas the book is widely considered to be one of the best works of literature in the twentieth century). Yet that giant cephalopod makes up a distinct aspect of what makes Watchmen a comic book—it is not restricted by a need to be realistic. Moore’s modus operandi, oddly enough, is to make comics’ characters more realistic than their predecessors, Moore wants these colorful characters to be deeply flawed people, which is a belief that Grant Morrison—writing in his memoir Supergods—abhors.