Destroy All Comics!!! – Life In Mono

King Ink strolls into town
he sniffs around

King Ink kicks off his stink-boot
sand and soot and dust and dirt and
he’s much bigger than you think

a bug crawls up the wall

King Ink feels like a bug
and he hates his rotten shell

- The Birthday Party

The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else. Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose.

- Rorschach

First, if you haven’t seen it, here’s what I’ll be addressing:

Rather than continuing to flood Collin’s comments section with fanboy crap, I thought I’d address the whole “Hey, they don’t sound like the Watchmen to me!” debate. First of all, I have no issue with Billy Crudups’ voice in the trailer. Sounds dandy to me, actually.

However, I do have a teeny tiny problem with Jackie Earle Haley’s delivery as Rorschach.

Snyder and co seem to be either playing Rorschach as a straight-up badass or a parody of said bad-ass. The problem is neither approach manages to capture what was so compelling about the character in the comic. If you paint Rorschach as Batman in ink splotches, you simply repeat the same mistake countless writers in comics made following the introduction of the character – you ape the actions and not the meaning behind the character. You rob him of his depth.

Badass Ink

In the comic, Rorschach was meant to embody the Ditko/Randian/ Mr. A philosophy – that we choose to be good or evil, and there is no ambiguity between the two. You cannot compromise, you cannot backslide. What makes the character work in the context of the comic is that he is the only character who sees the world in these terms. He walks around in a story where moral and ethical choices are at the forefront. It is a world where people must make tough compromises as to the greater of two evils, the lesser of two sins. He stands out in a kaleidoscope of colors.

Mr. A

On the other hand, if you use Rorschach simply as a parody of the dark and gritty hero, you sell the character short as well. For the sake of argument, say that the voice is meant to remind us of the Dark Knight, and, as such comment on the vigilante superhero in film. I’d argue that is far less interesting than keeping him intact as a literal embodiment of a particular philosophy rather than a character type. The difference between the two is this: one allows you to comment on character and themes, and the other limits you to commenting on genre conventions.

Conventions r bad

All that aside, here’s where I think Snyder and co make their biggest mistake in giving Rorschach the body language, and particularly the voice, they apparently have.

No matter what the reason, Rorschach shouldn’t evoke Batman.

He should evoke Anton Chigurh.

Do You See Me?

Rorschach is a scary character. He’s a relentless, cold, calculating engine of destruction that can’t be reasoned with and can’t be escaped. His most terrifying quality is his calm, his capacity to destroy without remorse – because for Rorschach, it’s not an emotional thing, fighting crime. To him, it’s a matter of choice i.e. reason. You can’t calm him down, because he’s not angry. You can’t weep and plead your way into his sympathies, because he has none. And, as Veidt learns, you can’t even reason with him, because in his mind there is good and there is evil and there can be no compromise.

Rorschach is, at heart, an existentialist – one who has adopted a rigid formula for how he behaves and how he expects others to behave. He answers to no one but himself. Part of the reason so many people dug Rorschach in the 80’s and why so many writers pasted his world-view onto other characters was because it’s so damn simple and it sounds so heroically American. The rugged individualist who never surrenders, always does what he believes is right. The only problem with that is Rorschach isn’t a heroic character. He’s a monster.

Which is why I compare him to Anton Chigurh. All the things that make Rorschach so distinctive as a character also describe Chigurh, yet I’d defy anyone to describe him as a hero. He’s a beast. And in my mind, that’s how Rorschach should be. Sure, we can trace his psychosis back to the whole thing with his mother, and the kidnapping of the little girl, but in the end all that really matters is that when Rorschach steps onto the screen, you should be unsettled. You should be a little nervous. Hell, with the exception of Doc Manhattan, the people who have known him for years in the context of the story are creeped out by him! Folks, Rorschach is supposed to be creepy.

Which brings me back to how he’s apparently being presented in the film.

He ain't playin' around

Let me list a few of my favorite screen baddies for you: HAL 9000, Agent Smith, Mr. Blonde, Hannibal Lecter, Pinhead, Top Dollar from the Crow, John Doe from Seven, and the aforementioned Mr. Chigurh. What do these guys have in common?

The voice.

Sure, Top Dollar may not be a top-tier villain as written, but once you hear Wincott’s voice…man, that’s a voice of raw, unmistakable bad. Similarly, Spacey’s John Doe has a soothing, almost patronizing cadence that says “It’s OK that you think I’m crazy. I know better.” And when that delivery does crack, when Spacey gets indignant or insulted, there’s a rage that comes in such contrast to the calm of his normal speech that it manages to become its own sort of violence, its own kind of ugly horror.

With the exception of Michael Myers (who is, I might add, also a cold, detached nutjob), every one of my favorite film badguys has a voice that is distinctive and perfectly suited to the character. Lecter’s voice is sophisticated and measured; Pinhead’s holds the promise of pleasure and secrets. Once more, even if these characters don’t scare the piss out of you, it would be hard to argue that they aren’t, at the very least, compelling and distinctive in their respective films. Part of that is the way each character is written, but a big part of that comes from the performance.

Strip away his inner monologue, and you would still find Rorschach a compelling and, yes, intimidating character. Look at his gait, his body language. His dead face when he’s being interviewed by the psychiatrist. The way he never seems to cock his head, but rather seems to have a steel pole running down his spine. This isn’t a grim and gritty bastard who takes pleasure in beating the shit out of people – this is a fucking machine, a robot that is self-programmed to feel nothing at all.

Awesome.

Part of the beauty of Moore’s approach to the character was to contrast that coldness with the fear, uncertainty, and the hope and love of everyone else. While everyone else is wrestling with their issues, Rorschach is breaking fingers and bullying cancer patients. While Sally is trying to convince Jon to see human emotion as something wonderful and worth celebrating for all its flaws, Rorschach is throwing hot grease someone’s face. There’s a reason Sally thinks Dan’s crazy when he tells her he wants to break Rorschach out of jail.

And, while I haven’t seen the film and am only going by two minutes worth of dialogue here, this seems to be missing from the delivery offered in the film. This isn’t the Rorschach that gave me, and every character in the story, chills when he walked into the bar to get information from a knot-top. This is a character that may be interesting and amusing in that black way that he is on the page, but he certainly doesn’t freak me out or make me sweat bullets.

And shouldn’t the guy who said “Give me smallest finger on man’s hand. I’ll produce information. Computer unnecessary.” be a little scary?

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