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that's sorta what my hunch was. Which is why I don't like it very much. But hey, what can I do about it. It just seems very strange to just turn a blind eye to stuff, when for the last ten minutes of the film you've championing justice. I can't remember seeing the bit about justice for the millions who died, or for Rorschach.

Currently, there's that fella who blew up the plane over Scotland, killing 270 people, and what's his justice? He gets to go home to his mummy cos he's not very well. And America, and the rest of the world, except Libya and the Scottish parliament, are outraged.

That's normal people being outraged. So surely Superheroes should be a bit outraged, not complicit in a devastating evil. What's buggin me is that we're expected to accept that the world becomes a lovely place after 'Dr M/Vients mass murder. Come on. That's like an 'ooh, it was all just a dream' ending.

Anyway, as Squid told me, I'll Read W/men & Philosophy. just amazoned it now. Cheers.

The point isn't that everything will be just swell from now on, that any kind of evil will be eradicated forever from the world, but that mankind won't threaten to nuke the shit out of each other anymore, for a while at least... Adrian is enough of a megalomaniac to actually think he can change human nature for good, when even the omnipotent Jon admits it's the only thing he can't do. Which brings us to the whole "nothing ever ends" thing. Will the peace last forever, ushering in an endless utopia? Most likely not, but as i said, Adrian thinks highly enough of himself to think he's the one able to bring this about and what could Daniel and Laurie do about it, rock the boat and render all those deaths futile? All they can do at that point is hope that the peace will last.

As for Rorschach and his death, there's more to it than what's on the surface. I think the real reason why he was so upset, the reason why he was was crying at the end, is that secretly he knew that Veidt was right in that they couldn't risk exposing him and thus risking even more people dying. However, unlike the others, he couldn't admit to it. After living most of his life without compromise (in his mind at least), knowing only right and wrong, black and white, this realization that there could also be shades of gray must have been a huge blow. As his world began to crumble, he stormed out, refusing to admit he was wrong. But deep inside, i think he realized Rorschach's sense of right and wrong was misplaced in this world.

Also, i think it was Alan Moore himself who said in an interview that Rorschach had a death wish at the end, which i think fits into my reading of his final scenes. After all, what could he really have done after storming out of Karnak, walk back to New York? I don't think he could fly the Owlship either, and even if he could, Dan locked the Owlship before they went to confront Adrian, which i always thought was curious. I think we can safely assume that Rorschach knew exactly that he wasn't going to get anywhere, but like a little kid, which in some ways he was, he stuck to his credo of "Never compromise", because the alternative would mean openly admitting everything he believed in was wrong. But he also couldn't go on living with this realization, so when Jon killed him it was more of an act of pity than protecting Veidt's new utopia.

Btw, in the comic when he went back to his apartment for his clothes before going to Karnak, the trenchcoat he got was the one he wore when he became Rorschach, which i always thought was interesting and is part of why i think he became Walter again at the end, along with the removal of the mask, somehow coming full circle.

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You humans are insane! No other species abuses its own nor enjoys doing it.

Who said he was a bad guy?

I wanted to do something like this

rorschach had to be the only character in the movie who could be defined as a hero. in order he was the only masked hero who didn't back down when the anti-masked hero law was passed. he continued fighting. he was the only one who constantly stood up. then he gets murdered, and not even by the main "bad guy", but rather by someone who should have been his friend. i've heard some go into the whole "he had a death wish and asked for it", but that falls into the fact he'd rather die than be forced to live in the false peace. the scene mad me HATE dr. manhatten. and i mean really hate. in the gn rorschach made it clear that he intended to go to archie and wait for the others. from this point on he posed no real threat to the false peace, i mean he was practicly homeless, he walked around with a "the end is near" sign for the love of gawd. no one would have listened to him, he would have stuck to his morals, being the only one there who really did, and continued as a true hero. but dr manhatten refused to let him pass. it was here that rorschach truly realized he was to die. he tore his mask away and faced dr. manhatten not as the masked hero, but rather as the man. his final speech spoke of the true pointlessness of even killing him. then he dared dr. manhatten, or rather jon, to "do it", that is to kill him for this false peace. to me the only reason he had to yell it a second time was because dr. manhatten went from the logical hero to the enemy. rorschach's death became meaningless. in the movie his "remains" form the final rorschach ink blot, note this was not in the graphic novel, and to me this is a desprate attempt to give meaning to a death that could only be called a meaningless murder. it is this scene which truely shows that dr. manhatten is no longer a man, dispite the obvious crocth shoot throught out the movie and gn. as for the bit of him looking down not wanting to kill rorschach, this to me is a moment of self doubt on this part. jon killed the hero, and walked away. and why did he walk away? because no one could stop him...
i supose what really got me is that someone wrote this scene. someone thought it through and this was the best they could come up with. it is at this point that the movie might as well have ended, rorchach was arguably the main character of the movie. the only reason i even sat through the rest of the movie was in hopes that somehow rorschach would return, if only as a memory to speak about his death and what it would mean... no such luck. the movie up to this point as an A+ movie, but from here it stripped any sense of purpose or hope that you might have gotten from it. i was left with the single feeling that somehow i was cheated, that i as the viewer had been as cheated as rorschach himself.
but that's just me...

Rorschach stopped being a "hero" after Grice. From then on he became a vigilante.

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his role as hero of the story is pretty clear >.>

Is it really? The beauty of watchmen in my opinion is that there really are no clear cut heroes, every character is flawed. In a lot of ways Rorschach is selfish and puts his own values before others, in such his not that different from Veidt. I disagree with his death being pointless, because that was the definitive point of the graphic novel for me, because at that point it stopped being about heroes and villains, but rather just people. People with all the power in the world and yet cant seem to deal, it made the characters more human, especially Manhattan.

perhaps i can't make this clear enough, manhattan murdered rorschach. perhaps calling rorscahch a hero is a bit much considering her has committed murder as well, but it felt when manhattan killed rorscach that something terribly wrong had been committed, that some how there would be no sense of closure to the movie. perhaps it's just me, but i was hoping for a sense of completion. i supose the biggest problem to me was manhatten faced no true consequences for killing rorschach. no one did anything to him because no one could do anything to him, rather dan beats up veidt, who by this point is near meaningless to the story. i wanted so much for someone to at least yell at manhattan a little, to make him feel guilty for it, to question it. to be honest by the end i hated manhattan more than veidt. it strikes me as odd that manhattan cam back to earth for some sort of miracle and when he finally uses his power to do anything besides try to grab veidt he uses it to kill rorschach. by the end of the story "bad guys", which i use in the loosest possible sense, have already one and the character i'm pretty sure we're meant to relate to the most is murdered by the character i find it the hardest to relate to. what it really comes down to is when rorschach died it affected me because it felt so wrong. manhattan who in the next scene stats that nothing ends ended rorschach's tale. when you say that at this moment the story became about just people you forget something very simple. people by our very nature don't like killing each other, war scars people for life just because of the killing. the only way around it is insanity, that is to stop being human. by the time manhattan killed rorschach it was well established that he had no issues with killing humans, and this is quite simply because he doesn't see himself as human. manhattan himself stated that a live body and a dead body were practicly the same thing to him. i seem to think of the scene where two men pull guns on him and he destroys the men, i find myself asking "why didn't he destroy the guns?" or in the veitnam scenes, why did he not simply destroy the weapons? and the answer comes when i think of when the comedian killed the pregnant woman. she meant as much to him as a pregnant cow. a man with power must face the responsibility of how to use it. i know that plays into that great spider man quote, but it really is true. manhattan was no longer human because though he had feelings, he detached himself from them. in truth this is a scene of mental disorder. it all really lead up to the murder of rorschach.
but what really got me about rorschach death and the events that followed was the lack of any sense of moral to the story. i mean the man who stuck to his morals was slain for that reason. every other character takes the dark secret in hopes that this false peace would last. so in a sense rorschach died for peace. but i want people to remember the three beat of time, war, peace, revolution... nothing ever ends, peace never lasts... >.> and besides nuclear war was averted without the help of veidt in the real world...

I do get where your coming from and I understand how you feel but Rorschach's morals mean nothing to others that aren't Rorschach. What I am trying to say here is that morals are subjective, I might think XYZ is better than ABC but to you that can be completely different. Morals are the same way, there is no universal truth on whats right and wrong. In a few ways he is selfish, he wants to destroy the "peace" not because the world would be better off, but because he will feel better about himself.

Human nature in my opinion is not wholesome, people would do whatever they needed to do to get ahead,(steal and Kill) if there were no laws or threat of jail time to stop them. Hell some people still do it even with the laws. Death and war do scar people, but they also bring glory to those who win them, right or wrong.

I like Rorschach as a character and his death was the most jarring thing in the graphic novel, his moral code is both a strength and a weakness as one can not be judge, jury, and executioner at the same time.