Writing about the movie Watchmen, I could easily get all geeky and go into how Rorschach is too heroic when he should have been deadpan and how Laurie Juspeczyk is too detached. I didn’t frantically read the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons last week for nothing.
Or I could approach it as if I had no previous knowledge of the source material – like most people reading this. Will you be entertained? Is it a good movie?
Being a geek at heart, I’ll take a middle approach, but, since my overall impression was one of disappointment, I’ll definitely gravitate toward telling you to keep your money in your pocket, unless you want to buy the graphic novel, which is pretty terrific.
Amidst the novel’s mumbo-jumbo about the end of the world and an aging Richard Nixon navigating his way through his fifth term, two things give the work a genuine thrill. It offers a collection of truly anti-heroic superheroes. These guys – and gals – aren’t only bad because they’re drawn that way. And it’s delightfully kinky.
Our narrator and central character is Rorschach played by Jackie Earle Haley. In the novel, he’s a bundle of villain-making back stories – his mom abused him, he was bullied. He is also given heroic motivation.
A customer in his employer’s garment shop was raped and killed while her neighbors stood and watched. Repulsed, he decides to protect others like her. A dress she’d refused to purchase from the shop – “too ugly” – had a Rorschach-like pattern. The fabric became his mask.
In the novel, Rorschach’s evil and good impulses cancel each other out leaving him opaque, fascinating. His mask origin story has been cut from the movie and replaced with moments calculated to try to make us perversely cheer for him, such as scalding a fellow prison inmate with hot oil. It’s like being asked to root for a psychopath.
.jpg?t=20130517094513)
Article comments
1 - Connery
That movie name attract me and i am planning to see it.I will buy that book later.