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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Watchmen movie news

  
  

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Spaniel
19:27 / 12.03.09
This is all a bit of a false dichotomy, surely? I think people's initial reactions to Rorschach tend to be complicated - mine certainly were/are. Yes he's appealing on some levels, and yes he's utterly repulsive on others. He's both monster and superhero, in fact it's the monster that makes it possible for him to be a superhero. Rorschach is defined by this deep tension, this play of opposites

Wonderstarr, I appreciate what you're saying re the Batman/urban vigilante connection, only a complete fool would fail to pick up on that stuff, but let's not forget that Watchmen was published only a few short years after Taxi Driver was released and that the first voice we're exposed to is Rorschach's, by way of a very, very Bicklesque rant in his journal (It's also worth noting that Bickle's very own rants have the air of the journal about them). If you ask me the idea that Rorschach isn't immediately framed as a very troubled individual indeed is rather odd.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
19:34 / 12.03.09
When I read it, I was too young (legally speaking anyway) to have seen Taxi Driver, but I'd read a lot of Batman. In fact, when I saw Taxi Driver at last, the parallel with Rorschach hit home to me suddenly but belatedly.

I think I did make my point above at unnecessary length, but maybe the main thing I wanted to say was that a person's engagement with and relationship with Watchmen and its characters is shaped to a great extent by the way it grabbed him or her immediately. In my case, my lasting feelings towards it now, and my understanding of the characters, are shaped by Watchmen having impacted upon me at quite a young and naive age.
 
 
Dead Megatron
21:53 / 12.03.09
If you ask me the idea that Rorschach isn't immediately framed as a very troubled individual indeed is rather odd.

Personally speaking, I remember coming to the conclusion that Roscharch was a complete nutjob at the moment he wrote in his journal about Veidt: "Possibly Homosexual. Need to investigate further". Up until that line, his ranting could habe been justified in that right-wing, street-hard, Charles Bronson way (which I do not agree with, politically speaking, but recogize as a "not-quite-crazy-yet" point of view) and not just some paranoid, misanthropic, where's-my-medicine? way, When he said that homophobic line, tho, any hopes of the character's respectability went right out of the window...

Which does not preclude the character from being a cool character. Just from being a heroic, role-model character.



(damn, missed the 666th post by one...)
 
 
miss wonderstarr
22:04 / 12.03.09
Doesn't Batman spit "filthy degenerate!" at a Joker who seems deliberately coded as "queer", in Arkham Asylum (89)? I don't think being uptight and homophobic actually marks a vigilante out as particularly unusual in the comic books of the 1980s and 90s. I don't think it immediately signals the writer saying "this guy is messed up, don't trust anything he says."
 
 
miss wonderstarr
22:13 / 12.03.09
Still, quite possibly you're all right and my bizarre investment in trying to argue that Rorschach wasn't clearly signalled from page 1 as a nutjob is just an attempt to justify the fact that I thought he was an ambivalent, in some ways appealing figure when I was 16, and can't quite get over that first attachment even now.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
22:40 / 12.03.09
There is a level of ambivalence about him, I'm not denying that. Your heart can't help but break for the abused kid that he was, and that's the version of him that creeps out every now and again when he's making a determined effort to be human towards the only people he can begin to call friends.

At the same time, though, it also makes him even more pathetic. Which is why the slo-mo Spidey-jump Rorschach in the trailers is such a laughable idea.
 
 
doctorbeck
06:07 / 13.03.09
it is a long time since i read the comic, but my memory seems to suggest that there is a pre-murder of child rorschach and a post-murder one. he goes from troubled right wing vigilante to nut job when he starts killing criminals. the first one being the guy with the dogs. as he explains to his psychiatrist. i always took that at face value rather than self-justification.

hated both of them at the time, and somehow the film got me to feel more empathy with him. but then i work with a lot of troubled young men with troubled childhoods these days.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
07:35 / 13.03.09
he goes from troubled right wing vigilante to nut job when he starts killing criminals.

There are significant changes, acknowledged by Rorschach, fellow characters and the conventions of the book itself, when he kills the child murderer: Rorschach says he was just Kovacs before that, and was soft on criminals ("let them live"), Comedian says he went nutty after that particular case, and Rorschach's voice even changes (as signalled by the speech balloons, in the Crimebusters meeting he has "normal" dialogue).

So that is a revelatory moment for the character, when he decides there's no god and truly becomes, in his own mind, Rorschach not Kovacs (again, this is something we now associate with the contemporary Batman, for whom Bruce Wayne is more the mask).

But prior to that case, he had the same social attitudes, messed-up childhood and methods (apart from the killing) and still lived in a crummy apartment and went out wearing a mask.

Much as I hate the idea of spin-offs, it would be interesting to see what the character was like back in the day ~ during the anti-mask riots when Nite Owl and Comedian are sorting out one crowd of protesters, Rorschach is supposedly holding down the entire East Side! How the hell he could control a city-sector of rioting people would be something I'd almost like to see in a flashback.
 
 
Eek! A Freek!
13:02 / 13.03.09
Rorschach is a right wing nutjob: His apartment is filled with hundreds of back issues if "New Frontiersman". Of course he's homophobic. And xenophobic ("French Love, Swedish Love, no American Love..."). He's lived in an escapist right wing fantasy world where he believes that President Truman sent his daddy on a secret mission to save America. He believes that Right(wing)=right. This is all revealed to us over time.

I never had a problem with his "possible homosexual" line in the book: it fit his character. I didn't feel "ick" that he would say such a thing because it was a telling insight into the way his mind worked. He tries to make connections between things to fit into his skewed worldview.

To say that there should have been warnings or indications that he was a nutjob from the first panel he's in doesn't fly for me: Moore believed that the readers would be smart enough to make up their own minds rather than spell it out for them. His intention was to portray people who dress up to fight crime as deeply flawed people. Every single one of them…

Snyder may have slipped in the "Boys" folder on Veidt’s computer into the scene with Nite Owl and Rorschach (I haven't seen it yet, I'm going this weekend, so I'm basing this on hearsay) because of his own baggage and ill-formed ideas and adolescent sense of humour, but even then, it would still be within character that Veidt is gay: not in any gay=bad equation, but more because he just happens to be gay and is as complex and fucked-up as any other character in the book. If Snyder's intent is to equate gay with evil, in my mind he failed: Veidt's (potential) sexuality just adds another layer of complexity to the character. Hell, in the comic, the world is falling apart; socially, morally and politically. Veidt, who may be gay (and has to hide that fact), still wishes to create a utopia, perhaps in part because there is so much fear and hatred that he himself may fall victim to, if he was open about his sexuality.

Veidt is the "world's smartest man": in the book, what he does is reprehensible but he sincerely believes it's for the greater good. In many ways he's no more a villain than Rorschach (violent vigilante sociopath) or the Comedian (rapist, war criminal) or Dr. Manhattan (war criminal, amoral "God"). In reality, his sexuality, gay or straight, should have nothing to do with his actions either way, but realistically how others perceive him is a different story...

Personally I inferred that Veidt was either gay or asexual. It wasn't a judgment, but just another facet of a complex character (Nite Owl - "If the 'world's smartest man' is crazy, how can we judge that?") Veidt was the man with the plan. He felt he had the weight of the world on his shoulders and his ego forced him to try and carry that burden alone because he truly believes that he’s the only one in the world with the vision, understanding and intelligence to pull it off. He's tragic both in his brilliance and ignorance.

Rorschach earned my sympathy in the comic when he attacked the other boy with a cigarette: No matter what, no-one would ever listen to him or take his side: because of his mom, because of his appearance. His actions weren't justified, but in the book, his hopelessness was heartbreakingly portrayed. He was alone in the world. He made bad choices and stuck with them, sure, but the cards were stacked against him. That he turned into a sociopathic right wing homo/xeno-phobe with a conspiracy complex isn’t a leap. Not to mention it helps drive the story.

Anyways, I look forward to the film even after reading this entire thread. I'm optimistic that I'll think of it as Watchmen-lite, and that people like my wife, who will never read the book, will like it.
 
 
grant
14:30 / 13.03.09
Frankly, I think the story of Rorschach was told pretty elegantly in a few fractions of a second - the lettering of his diary is both childlike and disturbing. THe lOWeRcASe "eS" FoR oNe THiNg.

---

freektemple: the issue isn't so much that Veidt would have a folder with pictures of young men in it on his computer - it's that he'd leave it on his desktop and label it "boys." As the world's smartest man, that's a little off.

---

By the way, my stepson, who's never read the comic, thought the movie was a little too long and "really gory, especially the end." He also thought one of the coolest things in it was Veidt's lynx.

He gets to see all the good movies before I do.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
15:17 / 13.03.09


I never had a problem with his "possible homosexual" line in the book: it fit his character. I didn't feel "ick" that he would say such a thing because it was a telling insight into the way his mind worked. He tries to make connections between things to fit into his skewed worldview.


I think that's right. He isn't saying "possible queer, sick deviant"; he's saying Veidt seems pampered, liberal, and hence (in Rorschach logic) may be possibly homosexual. It just makes sense to him that "liberal" means weak and a bit effeminate, and that weak and a bit effeminate mean possibly homosexual; just like "woman who wears skimpy outfits" (Silk Spectre I) becomes "whore", and "man who never compromised" becomes "hero" because, again, of the way Kovacs' mind was warped by his upbringing.

Thus Comedian, in Rorschach world, is a figure like Kovacs' imaginary father, or President Truman ~ not perfect, but strong and principled ~ Sally Jupiter is a figure like Kovacs' mother, basically a floozy.

It's obviously messed up and kind of pathetic ~ it's particularly sad that Rorshach talks about Comedian as "friend of mine", when they barely knew each other ~ another example of his rich imaginary world ~ and Ozymandias laughs at it a bit when Rorschach says something like "if Comedian was a Nazi, you might as well call me one".

Basically, obviously, it is a black and white world, and I think knowing Kovacs' vulnerable side and past, we can feel sorry for him because of it, rather than seeing him as a scumbag.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
15:19 / 13.03.09
I also think it's correct that in deciding Veidt is "possible homosexual", Rorschach is making himself feel better, because his own world is pretty shit really. He walks around muttering to himself about how everyone else is corrupt and doomed, and how he's one of the few normal ones, and classing Veidt as weak and unmanly (in his eyes) is a strategy for consoling himself.
 
 
deja_vroom
15:25 / 14.03.09
OT: There was a little sardonic payoff that I noticed the second time around: In the final shot of the New York crater, you can see Veidt Industries' construction machinery rebuilding the city. So the bastard is also making a lil' profit on top of everything. I really liked that.
 
 
doctorbeck
18:57 / 14.03.09
never quite figured out if rorschach was wondering round new york with an End Is Nigh sign because it was a good cover for his crazy assed surveillance-of-the-underworld fantasies or because he just believed it was true.

interesting how 20 years on and watchmen is still interesting and worth thinking about no?
 
 
miss wonderstarr
23:40 / 14.03.09
I think it's just a front. In the book he is obviously putting on a mad conspiracy-theorist persona, too. He tells the newsvendor the world will end today because (I think I recall correctly) a two-headed cat was born in Queens. It's a distraction from his actually very canny, though distorted, intelligence and detection.
 
 
CameronStewart
01:07 / 15.03.09
If I picked up the book now, I don't even know if I'd finish it. It looks crude and clumsy ~ the art and colour are often a bit horrible

Oh come on now. Horrible? Really? Maybe you and I look for different things in a comic but I think Gibbons' art on Watchmen remains one of the great achievements in the medium - to pack in all of Moore's dense writing and still be clearly readable, the attention to rich detail, the pacing and clever, elegant page layouts - it's almost a textbook of perfect comics storytelling. I have his "Watching the Watchmen" book, providing a showcase of all the behind-the-scenes work that he did to create the finished pages and am humbled and astonished at the amount of thought and care and effort put into every panel. People always seem to solely credit Moore for Watchmen, or at the very least tip the scales in his favour, and I think that's wrong, Gibbons' work on that book is equally important and impressive.

The palette of secondary colours is garish to be sure but it's ballsy and effective - there are panels in there coloured in such a way that would never even occur to me if I was doing the same job - but they create an impression, a feeling of ugliness and discomfort that complements the story being told. I wish I had access to black and white pages from the book so I could colour them in a more "attractive" way to demonstrate how bland it would be in comparison.

Higgins on the colour:

"I tried whenever possible...to go beyond what was usually done in American comics at that time. I had a number of conversations with Dave as to why I had coloured such and such a scene in a certain way, particularly some of the more unique colouring choices I made that initially surprised him. I always had a reason and an explanation of why I had coloured it in that way, and he always accepted the explanation. It was never just because it was a nice colour combination." - Watching the Watchmen

I suppose that after 23 years of hyperbolic praise it's only natural to kick back a bit and say "well, it's not really that great, is it" but while the book is certainly not without some flaws, "clumsy and crude" it ain't.
 
 
Mark Parsons
02:16 / 15.03.09
And Bob Dylan can't carry a tune to save his life...

  
 
miss wonderstarr
08:56 / 15.03.09
Well, those are good points, and "clumsy" wasn't accurate. "Crude" I think is sometimes right. I've been reading it one chapter per day, and I think (I remember Moore suggesting too) that Gibbons' art becomes finer and more accomplished by book 12, but there are some faces within the first three or four chapters that just don't work for me. They have an almost caricatured, wood-cut look.

In the "motion comic", where they tell the story by enlarging individual frames to screen-size, this really shows up: on the other hand, I suppose if you enlarged details from anyone's comic book art, you would have simpler, more suggestive, background drawing brought to the foreground where it was never meant to stand and be closely examined.

You're also right to suggest that the art and the colouring fits the ugly world. I'm sure Higgins and Gibbons would agree that they were constricted by the printing technology of the time, and I agree the colouring does an interesting, distinctive job with a limited palette.

I also have Gibbons' Watching the Watchmen, and I think it's disappointing in some ways, as it's clearly presenting the material he still has left, and he admits he's sold a lot of it. But I fully agree that his art is a great achievement in terms of the breadth of the project, the consistency of the world he creates, the sense of believable space and the background detail (on which the recurring motifs all depend).

I just don't always love the look of it. And I think Gibbons does have weaknesses, which include facial expressions.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
08:59 / 15.03.09
I wish I had access to black and white pages from the book so I could colour them in a more "attractive" way to demonstrate how bland it would be in comparison.


I would love to see someone like you or Jamie Grant re-colour a black and white Gibbons page. I would pay to see that. I agree, the results might not look "better" because of Higgins' deliberate artistic decisions, but it would be so interesting to see the pages coloured within modern sensibilities and using contemporary technology. I don't know why they didn't opt for digital colouring in any of the later, more expensive editions. Maybe it was, again, a deliberate decision, and maybe a good one, like opting not to colour in a black and white film or remake Psycho shot for shot, or "improve" Star Wars with CGI.

PS. you could always do it with one of the black and white one-page adverts showing the main characters with a tagline...
 
 
Alex's Grandma
16:22 / 15.03.09
Going back to Rorschach, if that's okay, I'd tend to go along with Wonderstarr. Alan Moore's said;

'I originally intended Rorscach to be a warning about the possible outcome of vigilante thinking. But an awful lot of comics readers felt his remorseless, frightening, psychotic toughness was his most appealing characteristic - not quite what I was going for'.

I can't speak for other comics readers, but I'm not sure if that's a fair assessment. Certainly, going back over the book recently, (still haven't seen the film), it's not what I liked about him. While Moore goes out of his way to flag up Rorschach as 'nuts' at pretty much every available opportunity, it must be a tough read if you take that entirely on board, seeing as to begin with anyway, Walter's the point of view character, seeing as to the extent that there's humour in 'Watchmen' (pitch black admittedly, but it is there) it comes from Rorschach (this is possibly just me, but isn't there something quite funny about the logical disconnects in his crazed inner monologue?) and seeing as Moore, perhaps inadvertently, gives him all the best lines. I dare say I knew the 'knew what cats know' speech off by heart when I was seventeen, and even now, issue six stiil seems like the most powerfully realised. There's something quite bracing, I suppose, about that level of nihilism - there's a sense of the character being almost out of the writer's control. Even wandering around in a rotting, blood-soaked vest (he gets a harder time in the narrative than all the other characters put together, it seems, including the far more morally suspect Comedian - I can imagine Moore thinking 'Christ, am enjoying this too much - better mention the smell again') you still find yourself rooting for him. You know, a bit.

The other thing is; doesn't the narrative tend to sag a bit when Rorschach is off screen, as it were? While I haven't seen the movie, I've read a lot of reviews, and nobody's had a bad word to say about the actor in question. Possibly, this is because he's a talented man, but equally, couldn't it be because Rorschach is the only really decent role in the whole thing?

A critic in The Guardian, I think, while complaining that the film was almost too faithful to the source material, (not sure if this is reasonable, but it's been mentioned fairly often) went so far as to suggest that 'Watchmen' could have been usefully reimagined with Rorschach's investigation as the main plot thread. Obviously, that would have presented various, nightmarish problems script-wise, but on the other hand, it might have made for a more manageable viewing experience for the uninitiated. I'm guessing.

Diary entry ends.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
16:45 / 15.03.09
If I had to explain the plot of Watchmen in a nutshell, I would put it "one member of a group of retired superheroes is murdered, and Rorschach, a hard-boiled vigilante, investigates what he thinks is a conspiracy to kill them all off."

That's also how the trailers seem to represent it ("Watchmen! One of us DIED tonight!") and that is certainly the engine that gets the story running. The narrative branches off into origin stories and character reflections in the middle (mostly around the central question of responsibility, "who makes the world"?) but Rorschach's conspiracy theory that someone's "killing off masks" is not only the drive for the last few chapters, but it's also, actually, correct: someone did kill Comedian, someone did discredit Manhattan, and someone did frame Rorschach.

Rorschach's journal remains the key storytelling frame until they go to Karnak (apart from Black Freighter, which is clever-cleverly coincidental anyway, it's the main source of the narrational captions), and it's the prop on which the possible future of the world rests, at the end. Even with Rorschach dead, his version of the story is the only text that could still possibly undermine Ozymandias' new society.

So, yeah, I would say Rorschach is the central character and the main storyteller ~ I think the fact that a lot of readers who aren't psychopaths, bigots or naive teenagers find Rorschach so compelling and sympathetic suggests not that those readers are missing Moore's clear signals, but as AG proposes, that he was perhaps enjoying Rorschach more than he intended, and more than he admits.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
16:50 / 15.03.09
About the humour, I also agree: there is something bleak and endearing about Rorschach trying to tell a joke ("everybody laugh") and something very sad and touching, and stupid, about this New York street urchin not just trudging through the vast snowy wastes of ANTARCTICA, a world away from anything he knows ("fine like this!" tucking in his scarf) but, in the film, apparently proposing to walk back to New York! to tell people what Ozymandias has been doing. He's so out of his depth it's sad but it's kind of brave the way he just keeps going, pointlessly, a small man determined to stick to his own path.
 
 
CameronStewart
17:14 / 15.03.09
 
 
miss wonderstarr
18:16 / 15.03.09
How can you not want to cuddle that.
 
 
penitentvandal
19:22 / 15.03.09
I was going to say something here about Rorschach being a vigilante hero without a secret identity, but then I remembered the End-is-Nigh Man thing. But I think it does kind of hold - Rorschach's non-costume persona is very thin, more just something he does than someone he is, and that persona has minimal purchase on society. Contrast that with, say, Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent or Peter Parker - all are involved in society, all have networks of social relationships, all have jobs (even if that job is just 'billionaire playboy') which come with expectations and ideas of how these characters act. A recurrent trope when Batman has to, say, fight some thugs at a society ball out of costume is that he has to do it in a clumsy way, to suggest that he's a bit tipsy and throwing his weight about - because that's what people expect Bruce Wayne to do. Superman changes not just his eyewear but his body language to become Clark Kent. Arguably, all these things keep these characters sane, and grounded in reality.

Rorschach's secret identity consists of doing one thing, obsessively, which deliberately alienates other people and comes with no expectations other than that he eventually walks on. This is not an identity which grounds him.

I've been reading about 'deep acting' and 'surface acting' recently, states of being in which people assume a persona to fulfil the demands of a job. Surface acting (SA) is just wearing a mask - doing surface-level behaviours to convince people you're doing the job - deep-acting (DA) is internalising those demands and altering your personality to fit. DA helps you adapt more successfully, while SA causes all kinds of psychological problems. Superman, Batman and Spiderman, among others, all deep act when in their secret identities - Kent, Wayne, and Parker are all real, felt aspects of who they are; whereas Rorschach's persona is totally surface acting. I think that's one of the things that sends him (further) off the deep end. He can't take off his costume and become Dan the inventor, or Adrian the business guru, or Eddie the drunk washed-up madbastard, or anybody else. The best he can do is walk around and mark time among the normals while he waits for the sun to go down.
 
 
doctorbeck
20:07 / 15.03.09
god i hope they use that sketch as the basis for a doll. my daughter has her third birthday coming up and i don't know what to get her.
lovely. and yes, i think it shows that all kovaks really wanted in the book is a cuddle. 'french love, swedish love...can't a man just get a hug around here?'
 
 
Eek! A Freek!
20:40 / 15.03.09
I...Loved...The Movie.

For all the faults that I can pick apart, I'd rather not.

Like Sally's real and sincere reason for giving Eddie a second chance, "Only once..." in the comic, is completely missing in the film; leaving someone who hadn't read the comic scratching their head especially after the brutal attempted rape, but my fanboy memory filled in the gaps. All that was missing wasn't missed by those who didn't read it first, I think, and for myself, I filled in the gaps.

The casting was bang on: they didn't go too Hollywood pretty I found. Even the bit roles: the Psychiatrist was perfect down to the gap in his teeth and the hat he wore before dying. Only casting I wish was different was I wanted a skinny black kid at the newstand. I think they could have at least given a nod by showing him in the first scene with no hat, and then later with the newsvendors... But that's just me. The relationship between Bernie and Berine was one of the most touching things in the book and was the biggest thing I missed.

And... I would have liked a squid. And Manhatten to tell Veidt that nothing ends.

If I think of all the things I'd have liked, I could type all night, especially having just poured my first glass of wine, but that really does the film a disservice. The book, too. Both of which I really really like.
 
 
CameronStewart
21:55 / 15.03.09
Only casting I wish was different was I wanted a skinny black kid at the newstand. I think they could have at least given a nod by showing him in the first scene with no hat, and then later with the newsvendors... But that's just me. The relationship between Bernie and Berine was one of the most touching things in the book and was the biggest thing I missed.

It was all filmed and will be in the director's cut dvd in July.
 
 
Colonel Kadmon
22:37 / 15.03.09
Has there been an official statement about that, Cam, or did you hear on the "comics grapevine"? Just wondered 'cos CGS said the same thing, but I don't know what the source is and I want details.

I personally liked it a lot, as a "faithful adaptation". Probably one of the best ever, up there with Lord of the Rings. But as a standalone movie? I, for one, will never have that experience. But according to Newsarama this week, takings are down considerably on last week, and still a way to go to make back costs. Looks like it hasn't crossed over into the non-comic reader market like DC hoped.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
22:38 / 15.03.09
On Rorschach's persona: journal October 21st, 1985. He recovers his outfit from an alleyway.

"Putting them on, I abandoned my disguise and became myself."

And the unwitting comedy in his commentary:

"My coat, my shoes... my spotless gloves" as he pulls on some ratty, blood-stained items.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
22:51 / 15.03.09
On the gay material, we also had in the comic that one panel which showed a restaurant scene with two men in the foreground affectionately holding hands. Speculation was that this indicated that this alt world was a bit more "out" than the real 1985.

I've read a short essay on the Watchmen wikipedia that suggests these two are Hooded Justice/Rolf Muller and Captain Metropolis/Nelson Gardner. It sounds ludicrous but it's actually more convincing than you might think. The two older guys do look like those characters, and I'm not sure if there are any other examples in Watchmen where Gibbons (and Moore) have placed distinctive figures with an obvious story about them in the foreground, without it having any further significance.

Rolf Muller as an older man also strongly recalls Wulf, who is also gay, German and a superhero, and in a long-term, loving same-sex superhero relationship within Moore's The Forty-Niners and Top Ten. It doesn't seem tremendously far-fetched that Moore was repeating and evolving this motif of older gay lovers who had maintained a successful relationship from a more homophobic, contained society into a (relatively) more open present day.
 
 
CameronStewart
23:07 / 15.03.09
Has there been an official statement about that, Cam, or did you hear on the "comics grapevine"? Just wondered 'cos CGS said the same thing, but I don't know what the source is and I want details.

It's been confirmed in numerous sources, I've read/seen interviews with Snyder and the writers in which they all say that the scenes with the Bernies were one of the first things that were cut for the theatrical run time but will definitely be in the extended dvd. There's also plenty of photographs of the Bernies on set. The dvd will also include Hollis Mason's murder (shots of which are seen in one of the trailers, the Japanese one I think), and many other scenes cut for time. The deluxe extended version will be nearly an hour longer than the theatrical cut and is the director/writer's preferred version, similar to the extended Lord of the Rings dvds. A reassessment of the film is due after it's released, I think.

I've read a short essay on the Watchmen wikipedia that suggests these two are Hooded Justice/Rolf Muller and Captain Metropolis/Nelson Gardner.

Wasn't Muller's corpse found much much earlier than this scene would have taken place? Hollis writes about Muller's death in Under The Hood.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
23:44 / 15.03.09
How can you not want to cuddle that.

Indeed.

In a way, isn't Rorshach the Paddington Bear of hard-edged adult comics? There's the hat and coat, but also the odd eating habits, and the occasional hard stare ...
 
 
penitentvandal
23:46 / 15.03.09
The article that puts forward the 'Nelson and Rolf live' hypothesis does seem to be reaching a bit, but it does include one piece of information that I think lends the idea credence - the fact that Hooded Justice is used as a red herring for the Comedian's murder in the story. I remember when I read it the first time that, when I heard HJ had only disappeared, I at first thought, 'aha, but now hw's back and he killed the Comedian!' (an idea visually reinforced for me by the fact that when we see the silhouetted figure killing Blake in the flashbacks in Chapter One, he's picking him up and chucking him about - moves which seem more fitting for an ex-wrestler like HJ than a cerebral martial artist/gymnast like Ozymandias).

If the guy in the foreground of that panel in the first issue is Rolf, though, that could be read as Moore and Gibbons giving the game away to the reader, right at the start of the story, that the obvious red herring should be ignored - in a way that they know no-one will notice on first read, and probably not on some subsequent reads, either. For some reason I think that idea would appeal to them.

There is one odd thing about the article though. At the end the writer urges us to 'remember that Rorschach lives', and uses 'Paage 24, panels 2-3' as his evidence. Not having a copy of Watchmen to hand, I can't check that - anyone got any idea what he's talking about?
 
 
Alex's Grandma
00:43 / 16.03.09
A pretty butterfly, dude. A pretty butterfly.
 
  

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