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I had the same reaction to Rorschach in the comics, he gave me chills. He is a monster, he’s ugly, cold, and seriously evil but he’s a “hero”. And he’s dirty and smells really bad which he covers up with cologne which must smell horrendous. In sum, he’s absolutely fucking crazy. He’s not someone that should have action figures (which considering the photo above of an action ironic especially considering the action figure line Veidt rejected). I don’t think there was ever a moment in the book I wanted Rorschach to win, to be honest. To me, and this may fly in the face of what Moore was doing (but I doubt it), he’s the ultimate condemnation of the Randian ethos. He’s a monster created by society, he never really had a choice.

What concerns me most about Watchmen the Movie is how it will end, I cannot possibly fathom how Warner Brothers would green light a superhero movie as dark as this is. I cannot imagine the ending in the hollywood movie playing out the way it does in the book. I can’t imagine modern movie audiences reacting positively to moral ambiguity and the horror of Veidt’s solution. It just seems to me that there has to be some kind of change from what happens in the book than what happens on the movie screen. Even if some of the shots in the movie seem to be lifted by frame from the comic; and that flash in downtown Manhattan is pretty obviously the thing Veidt creates. I just can’t see how the “heroes” of this movie are going to just go along with it without modern audiences crying about the ending. Maybe they will do it frame by frame, but I can see people panning it on that regard which will suit me just fine, I suppose. I always wondered why the ending of that Tom Hanks survivor movie thing was so bad. His wife re-married and moved on, what do you want everything to end happily? Come on. Whatever happened to tragedy?

I do have to say that Silk Specter’s face looks just like the character does in the comics, even if the costume is made for movies.

That’s a pretty good catch right there. It’s the Catch 22 of most superheroes – you’ve escalated the use of force to the point where it’s no longer solving anything, just creating more problems that it solves.

I’m also wary of the portrayal of Rorschach, among other things. One positive of the Watchmen movie is that it got my wife – who would’ve never read it despite my requests – to read it. Even if it doesn’t really catch the entire spirit of the series, it will bring curious minds to read the actual Watchmen. Anything that brings awareness to such a well-written comic is a bonus in my book.

Interesting. I wonder if that analysis is correct re: Rorschach’s “suicide” being really a matter of him compromising his way out of the choice to let the world see the Veidt was the culprit. I didn’t get any sense that he was conflicted about what to do at all. I always saw his reversion back to Kovacs as being the frustration of meeting a god and realizing that he can’t stop him from doing whatever it is he wants to do; his sense of humanity and helplessness comes flooding back to him. In a way, I see that final moment as one of utter surrender to the very futility he created Rorschach to ward off, a breakdown of the Rorschach identity as a shield.

Still, I admit there’s elegance to your reading – that Rorschach faces Manhattan and quickly sizes up his options, concluding this would be one way to avoid the catch-22 of his moral dilemma. I guess my issue with the reading boils down to how I see Rorschach – I just don’t think that, for him, there is any real dilemma. It’s all pretty clear to him what the right thing to do is and he just walks out of there intent to do it.

I love that reading of force not solving any of the real issues, however. I think that’s a critical reading of the text, as it’s such a vital critique of the whole superhero genre and one of books primary concerns.

As for my reading of the trailer, I fully admit that I’m taking 30 seconds of dialogue and basing a perhaps spurious argument against the film and performance from that. I guess I was just trying to articulate why the trailer worked so much better for me without any sound than it did with the volume up. I broke down the elements in the soundtrack and realized that it wasn’t the music or any of the other actors’ voice work, but that it was Rorschach’s dialogue that was digging at me. So the essay was just my way of working through that to find out for myself why that was such a big deal for me.

We’ll know in a few months how the performance works as a whole and then I’ll probably do a follow-up to see how my early reading measured up to the real deal.

Thanks for your comments!

The biggest overarching theme in the book, for me at least, as that force used for good always results in bad consequences. Nobody, not the heroes, not the politicians, not the psychologist, nobody in the book who tries to force their help on anybody succeeds. Until Adrian uses major force and kills rather large numbers of people – and I think that it’s pretty unclear at the end whether that is really going to work out in the long run, either.

So, I enjoyed your analysis, too – Rorschach is a machine. Or at least he tries to be.

Where this post breaks down for me is in your critique of the upcoming movie. I think you’re stretching it a bit, given how little info we have – I don’t expect the movie to live up to the book, but I’m not willing to say that they’ve missed the point just yet, either. People might misinterpret Rorschach as a hero? Well, as your Alan Moore anecdote points out, people have been doing that since the book first came out.

I’m more concerned about the depiction of Night Owl in the trailer – instead of being based on Blue Beetle, a fun character after the fun has ended, he seems to be based on Batman, a dark character all along. That’s just from looking at the costumes, but that would be a really significant change.

It’ll be interesting to see how the movie ends up.