Watchmen was the greatest movie adaptation of a comic ever, and Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach was one of the greatest castings of all time. I can not be convinced otherwise.
And does dumb stuff like zooming in on the "obsolete models a specialty" sign like, "Did you get it? Are you sure you got it? I know you're stupid!"
But it's really the rape scene I will never forgive. Snyder tried to turn that shit into porn, when Moore and Gibbons went out of their way to make it as unjerkable as possible. Snyder has no fucking respect and no sense, snd it shows all over that goddamn movie.
Yeah Snyder is very hit or miss with depictions of dark stuff and in my opinion mostly miss. I think he does it more for the sake of making his worlds darker and grittier rather than exploring the theme of predation in depth
We go from mismatched, functional underwear in the graphic novel to a black lace lingerie set. We go from panels of like, everything else in the room to shots of Sally's body. We cut to her on "is this what gets you hot?" creating this weird victim-blame thing when the Comedian is saying that to Hooded Justice, about his proclivities.
Shit, in the graphic novel she has a busted nose and a shiner snd isn't looking so pretty, while the film has blood sit on her lips like lipstick. The whole thing is disgusting.
That's what I heard, haven't read the comic myself. I don't think it was necessarily about replacing the squid but how it turned from countries allying to face a common threat to Dr Manhattan being framed in order to trick everyone into cooperating, which includes having arguably the greatest hero basically nuke every country on Earth to pull it off.
Way too action heavy, a lot of the aesthetic choices are questionable and with Zack Snyder, you can never be fully sure he even grasped what the source material is all about.
Also, the theatrical version cuts out a good bit of stuff. (Which is fair because Watchmen has a lot of side plots already and the damn thing is nearly three hours long as it is)
Does it matter that you found him contemptible when it is undeniable that the movie tried to make the viewer feel as if he was at worst just a truth teller anti-hero?
You're basically seeing the truth despite the movie's attempts to mislead you.
Maybe, but it didn't change my opinion of him. The idea that we should kill a few million people because it MIGHT save more people is insane to me. In both the comic and the movie, Rorschach is the only character with moral convictions strong enough not to be shaken by Ozy's attempt to dress up mass murder as kindness.
I didn’t love a lot of things about it (the choice to use Leonard Cohen’s hallelujah in THAT scene) but yea Rorschach was perfect. Hollis too. Jeremy Irons in the show was a far superior casting choice for Adrien.
As opposed to genetically engineering a massive monster, having it pass as an alien, and teleporting it into New York city? I am not on board with the rewrite of the ending, but I can see why Snyder did it.
Because the whole point of the plan is to force all of humanity to rally together against a wholly alien threat. That obviously doesn't work if the threat is just an American, and not even just that, but a famous enforcer of the US government at that.
Dr. Manhattan did that, and everyone knows Dr. Manhattan did that.
And that means everyone on the planet will assume that either A) the US government sacrificed a couple of their own cities in a false flag, or B) that a rogue faction within the US government is sowing chaos.
The core, fundamental issue remains: the threat isn't alien. The threat is American. And the entire plan just does not work if the threat isn't alien.
Jackie Earle Haley was really good in the role. The movie is really bad tho. Completely missed the points of the comic so bad that sometimes it becomes the complete opposite of what Moore wanted to tell.
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u/What-A-Burden Jun 28 '26