WatchmenComicMovie.com Forum

Rorschach does explain that he used to be soft on criminals - "I let them live." Also, in Ozy's flashback to the Watchmen meeting where Comedian burns the map, Rorschach's voice is softer and more normal, not as gruff and harsh. I assume that was intentional to show some difference between "Walter as Rorschach" and Rorschach. Obviously not as detailed as the book, but it is in there.


Here's what I wonder about people who thought the two-minute sex scene was "too long" - did it bother you while reading the book? Or did you assume that because the scene was only a few panels long in the book, the sex act between Dan and Laurie was just as short? All Snyder did was fill in the blanks by using the conventions of his own medium, and it worked very well. I especially dig that post-coitus panning shot of the various pieces of their costumes strewn on the floor of the Owlship, much as you see in other movies of the characters' clothes all over the floor to establish that they had sex. Brilliant and amusing.

Let's take a look at the scene in the book:


I defy anybody to convince me that Snyder didn't nail the tone of the scene. I think the complaints are pretty immature. It makes me think that the people complaining either don't have sex or are horrified at seeing their superhero idols engaging in such naughty behavior. It's an interesting psychological case study.

It's not even that. Most people have a problem with the sex scene(and the violence). For one thing and one thing only: IT'S NOT LIKE THE COMIC THEREFORE IT'S WRRRROOOOONG!!!!

This is a fair point. Unfortunately, Watchmen is now off my local cinema, so I'll be waiting for the July release to double check when it's out on DVD. Not that I needed an excuse!



It is more graphic than the book, though: in the book we don't actually see the act take place, so I can see why some people might find the book OK and the film not. I'm not in that camp: I've already argued that I think that what the movie did works better than cutting from an embrace to the post-coital activities. As to the length and pace of the scene, I'm ambivalent. I didn't have a problem with it, but whether making it shorter, longer, or changing the pacing would have improved things, I'm really not sure.



I'm with you on that one: I don't think most Watchmen fans would have a problem with the characters having sex. Complaints about the slow pace in a movie that's already struggling for time, I can understand. I don't agree - I enjoyed the movie's off-kilter pace, the fact that it didn't worry about conventional movie pacing - but I can understand.



My impression was that it was more people who aren't familiar with the GN who complained - though I could be wrong. They just don't expect Superheroes to have sex. Scott Kurtz, who writes the PvP Webcomic had a good take on this: if this were a spy movie, where a retired unit had to reunite to stop an old member blowing up New York, we wouldn't bat an eyelid. We don't bat an eyelid at James Bond - but as soon as superheroes are involved, it feels a bit too naughty.

But I keep coming back to the same point - as soon as you're watching a movie because it has a woman in latex in, it's all about sex. You can't complain when the characters start shagging, just because you don't like being caught out as a voyeur. Or because you don't like to see your fantasy figure attached to someone else.

I use the phrase "you" in a generic sense, rather than to mean you personally, SkaOreo. Just thought I'd make that clear in case my tone came out wrong.

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I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone intends to murder him.

No I understand that, and you're completely correct. However my response wasn't towards those unfamiliar the comic and it was more towards the people who are fans of the comic yet bitched about the sex scene(and the violence).

Yeah, mine too. Some people have this sweet, naive notion that Moore and Gibbons were such old-fashioned romantics that they never intended to show any nudity or actual sex in the sex scene. Maybe so, but I think the more likely explanation would be the restrictions of DC Comics in 1986, as Watchmen was already pushing the envelope for its time. Brutal violence? That's fine, but no explicit sex. Seeing what Moore did later in his career, I doubt it was an artistic choice to show less. For evidence, see Lost Girls, or the sex scene in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I really didn't need to see Allan Quatermain's wrinkly naked body.

The problem with the sex scene is that it looked like a sex scene (on the Owl ship). It didn't look like two people having sex; it looked like two people acting like they were having sex.

Malin Akerman is a pretty girl and I think we all appreciated seeing her naked... but if you pushed her off a building, she wouldn't fall... but she would act like she was falling.

I think the word missing from that sentence is "male" if the end result is anything to go by. I find it kind of offensive that "near-naked deer in headlights" was how they chose to present Laurie to try and improve her popularity.
Great for the "I like my womens quiet, busty and mildly confused" crowd I guess.
But what's wrong with imperfect, bold go-getter who has hang-ups like everyone else in the film but won't let them paralise her?
Why not give her some depth?

Surely it must be impossible to really like a character without it, especially one surrounded by people who do.

I like her boldness in the GN. At least she has a real fire to her.



Same here, and Laurie isn't even one of my favourite characters but I find her much more than a whiny bitch in the book.

But generic super heroins make me sad! At least all of those negative qualities would belong to Laurie.


But Sally wasn't bad she just tried to hard and was motivated by fear. In practice she was pushy and controlling but she had the best intentions and she does love Laurie. The worst actions with the best intentions, how very Watchmen.


I think it was more she started as a child and did what was expected like a good girl and by the time she was old enough to decide for herself she was used to it (she does seem to be slow moving on from things that aren't doing it for her ie Hatty. She seems to be one to get into a pattern and stay there until something big prompts her) or she was enjoying it and didn't want to stop (or a combination of the two).



That's a good point. It's easy to fill in the blanks when you have read the book but some things need to be made more clear and this should have been.

I love that, the psychological risk to superheroes. And don't we have the overflow of that all over Watchmen!

I do think the film was successful at showing this to an extent but, as I had read the book, I already knew the import of that scene. I don't know what a first-timer would make of it but I think it was glossed over a bit and it may have been missed that Rorschach was not just talking about his first big case.


Even a well meaning film can fall into the trap. Take Shallow Hal. It tried to show that inner beauty is the true beauty but that point was illustrated by depicting this beauty as a skinny, pretty blonde, basically showing it as the physical beauty it was trying to say didn't matter.

I think a similar thing may be happening here. To challenge a stereotype you have to do more than perpetuate it. But I think there really wasn't time to do that either so all you get is a girl in an exploitative outfit.

Shrek shows how to do it right.



Hey, why do you think Australia is so far from the rest of the world? So she wouldn't find us!... Don't tell her where he are OK?



Agreed and yeah, didn't need the slo-mo, though it matched the pace of the song better!


Yeah, except him. Even though he was technically the good guy you are right, they (Dan) feels he owes more to Rorschach than to society (though he seems to think he needs to rescue Rorschach for the good of society. He can tell something big is coming, someone wants the masks down and he would know what that means. He saws to Laurie he needs the information that Rorschach has to find out what's going on.



True. The reason why superheroes are "OK" is because, even though they can snap your head off, they won't unless you bally well deserve it.
A superhero that goes rogue is a very scary thing. I wouldn't say Dan and Laurie are rogue but I don't think they always have the purest of motivations.
Adrian is bloody scary because he does have the purest of motivations. He believes he has right on his side, that he is a saviour, and a guy like that isn't going to be deterred.

Because they only kill in the film I'm not going to take that as cannon though.

Adrian shows why the road to hell is paved with good intentions.



I was referring to her motivation to start but I agree with you that her motivation to continue came from her, despite her denial. Good point about Sally getting the credit. I think it was to her mother Laurie couldn't admit she was glad she was a mask. She needed to be angry at her mum. It was a bit sad for Sally actually.
Laurie may have been frustrated at being in her mum's shadow more than angry about being a mask at all.

Ah, dear Nixon, bless him. So cranky.


I may put someone else in from of him but oh yes, he was wonderful. So warm and genuine.


Ya, he was perfectly cast and rather endearing.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7LdBVzlW5s
Please don't hate me.



I'm not sure this isn't because it's meant to be very stylised though.
This scene is basically taking the piss out of itself and is meant to be over the top with this out-of-context song and kinky boots.
I don't think it's meant to be romantic as much as it's meant to illustrate the fact that the superhero gig gets Laurie and Dan hot.

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Nothing, dammit! Nothing at all!



Now, in fairness, movie Laurie also has real fire to her. Or pyromaniac tendencies, at any rate. Why else does she press a button with a flame on it when she's not looking for a dashboard lighter? Or was she practicing for a career in firefighting? Hmmm... no wonder she was so keen to get up close and personal during the tenement rescue.



Absolutely. And bringing back the original Laurie is one of the main changes I would want to make. But I've made my peace with the movie on this one. It's one of several points where it's weaker than the GN, but she's no worse than other movie Superheroines. In fact, she's no duller than Dan - who, to be fair, didn't have much to him in the GN. They've really merged them into a single character - generic superhero and generic superheroine. Their main character trait is that when they're not in costume, they're dull as ditchwater. Which I think is the point that is explored, here.

It's their interactions both in the sex scene and the prison scene that raise the spectre of ignoble motivations. You couldn't do that with one character alone. And it's much easier to bring that contrast out with the superficially likable Laurie that we get in the movie. It's something that the movie explores more than the GN, in fact.



Exactly - in the Graphic Novel all of these surface readings of the characters are wrong, once you pick under the surface. But you don't get the same richness in the movie - there really isn't time, especially with an ensemble cast. I mean, unlike the GN, there's no implication that Sally wasn't a real vigilante: "I was a hero, dammit!" and the fact that she can actually floor the Comedian with a punch, rather than just scracting his face. So equally, we just don't get the implications that Sally was trying to protect Laurie. And now she's an alcoholic, because that's much easier to show than her being a health freak. The characters here are sketched in much more broad brush terms.

And that rather ties in with the previous point. If you want to have the more complex Laurie of the GN, you'd then have to spend a lot more time unpicking her later in the movie - the Owl's Nest scene is much longer in the GN because it's the first time we see Laurie really let her guard down and start pouring out praise. You've already pointed out the pacing problems created by the Owl's Nest Scene in the movie - there really isn't the time to explore all these characters in depth.

So, that's why I'm OK with what they did. It's not perfect, they could probably have done it better - but I can understand how difficult it would be to explore the GN version of Laurie. It's hard enough with the GN, where there is all the background information to pick through - and it's hard enough to get general moviegoers to pick through the details of this movie as it is. Introducing a spikey version of Laurie, showing that she's got a nice side, then showing that she has a really nasty side - blimey. You'd need to have a Nite Owl/Silk Spectre movie of its own for that.

You can begin to see why it would make a good mini-series.



Or she thought she wanted to stop, and having got her wish doesn't like to admit that she was wrong. In a strange way, Laurie is the inverse of Dan. To Dan, ordinary life is boring, and being a superhero is fulfilling and interesting. To Laurie, life as a superhero is the norm - it's who she grew up around, it's boring, mundane. She knows that they become alcoholic, that they're all messed up under their maks. To her, working with animals is an exotic fantasy. I suspect Laurie always thought she was down on being a superhero, because she never had anything to compare it to. She's never even had a secret identity - something she envies Dan. The Keene Act finally givs her the excuse to act out that fantasy of being normal - and she doesn't want to admit that it doesn't measure up to her expectations.

Hatty's a different situation: there's a couple of things here. They've obviously had happy times together, and the unhappiness only seems to have kicked in with the move to Rockefeller and the loss of privacy (the loss of her secret identity perhaps?). A shared relationship of twenty years (fifteen in the movie) isn't easy to walk out on. Especially if you've been told that without you, Jon would be off, and the world would be in danger. I mean, isn't that what the significance of him working while they're in bed is to her? If he's more interested in his work than having sex with her, than a) she's just wasted the last eight years of her life; and b) she's free: if she wants to leave she can. And she does.



Yeah. It's hard to see how else they could have done it: there's a convention to conform to here. People expect sexy superheroines in superhero movies. Even if this one didn't manage to buck the trend, I'm glad they at least tried to do something with it.



And that's why the issue of psychological risk is so important. Like I say, Dan and Laurie deciding to stop being law abiding citizens, and go back into the fire: they're exposing themselves again to that risk. What happens when they crack? What happens to the other if one of them gets killed? They're timebombs: just like Adrian was a timebomb, and Rorschach. The longer they keep at it, the more likely they are to do something with their powers (and they may not have actual super powers, but they're clearly a substantial cut above most people) that people find unacceptable. Dan almost goes that way in the GN when he finds about Hollis Mason's death - I wonder if that will return in the DC?



You've got to treat the film and the GN as separate entities, I think. The film is so retooled that you can't apply knowledge from the GN to it without potentially coming a cropper.



Sad for both of them - those two are never good at showing their emotions to each other. This is a woman who has to dig out the old Tijuana Bible in order to make points about Laurie's relationship, after all. One thing I like about the movie and the book is that we only get the phrase "I love you" once. We don't get deep heartfelt "I love yous" between Jon and Laurie, or Laurie and Dan: only Laurie and Sally. That's one scene that Akerman nailed in the movie. I sometimes wonder if Sally found it easier to play the interfering mother, than admit her real motives to Laurie? Certainly the real tragedy is that she spends so long worrying about admitting to Laurie the truth about the Comedian, and when she does - Laurie's OK with it. Admittedly, Sally doesn't know what Laurie's been through to bring her to that realisation. If Adrian achieved nothing else with his Squid or S.Q.U.I.D., he achieved that. Maybe they should write him a thank you card, just to let him know it wasn't all in vain?



I bloody hope it was supposed to - otherwise the shot of the airship drifting towards the Twin Towers behind Adrian was either a sick joke, or insensitive in the extreme.



As yet, I haven't dared.



Now, there's an alternative to Hallelujah. If you're very literal-minded.

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I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone intends to murder him.

And here I was thinking she just wanted a smoke.


I did find Dan endearing and I enjoyed his friendship with Hollis but I see your point.
They are aware of this fact, too, and they crave the exciting transformation as much or more, than the audience.


You are right. Their shallowness in the film makes that aspect clearer for sure.
Since you only get a passing glance at their motivations they become even more hedonistic and sensual. The things that drive them to this point are lost and I think that people who only see the movie are not going to get the chance to really understand the characters.
It's a shame because I feel any opinions formed on them won't really be on them.



Just as long as it didn't turn in to a soap opera! (and, dammit, that's all I can see in my head now. Arg! The shoulderpads!)
*Sings* "Watchmen, everybody needs good Watchmen! With their narcissistic bitching, they will drive us all insane!"

I know they couldn't get all of her in but I feel we got multiple sides of the other characters and it's seems a tad unfair she is so thinly represented.
I mean, how layered was the Comedian?
How chilling and yet sympathetic was Rorschach?
Dan was a rather simple character in the book but even he seemed to have a bit more going on. Maybe because he got hobbies and Laurie didn't?

I feel hobbies can add a humanising element to a character and also give you a handle of what they are like, another layer and maybe something in common with them. Laurie has no hobbies or interests which seems kinda odd and unlikely.

Still, if you can come to peace with it, and you love Laurie so, then I can too.


I can't blame you.

It's 2am now so I'll do the rest tomorrow!

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This is serious

No, but then none of the characters are as rich. Even the Comedian and Rorschach lose some of their layers. Arguably, Sally comes off very badly indeed - reduced to alcoholism, and with much of the positive subtext of her character removed. But then, movies are never going to be a good place for an ensemble piece with in-depth characterisation.



As it happens, I've always characterised Watchmen as a Superhero Soap Opera! It's episodic, ensemble, and more concerned with individual character arcs than overall plot. And hey, what's the '80's without shoulderpads and a natty theme tune?



What hobbies? In the movie, all we see is him drinking with Hollis Mason. And eating. We don't get all his tinkering or his interest in ornithology. Laurie's lucky she got him back into the business - until that point their relationship seems to have revolved around food!



I watched it. Oh God, my eyes! My eyes! Nah, it wasn't that bad, but still.

After that, I will not hear a bad word said about the Archie scene. Not the editing, the pacing, the acting or the songs. At least it wasn't that.

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I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone intends to murder him.

No, not on the scale of Watchmen.




You just scared me severely. I love it, but it scares me. And, look, Eddie is driving a jeep and Dan has a mailbox on his lawn.


Well he had his amateur engineering and his ornithology. Admittedly he was neglecting the latter but he did other interests.



Oh dear, I didn't mean for that to happen.
Bugger...

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This is serious

What? LXG had a sex scene? DAMN YOU TELEVISION!

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Ha, I meant the book - Vol. II to be precise, in which we are "treated" to two explicit sex scenes between Allan and Mina, as well as Mr. Hyde raping the Invisible Man. I'm fairly certain that if Moore thought he could get away with it in 1986, we would have seen far more of Dan and Laurie gettin' it on.

The worst outcomes from the best of intentions? How very Watchmen...

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I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone intends to murder him.

I don't know>__>...

<__<...can I be here?

I know a lot of the GN fans don't like bandwagon jumping newbie movie first then GN fans, but I'm one of them (and I sort of get where the oldies are coming from- really I do).

I was never a real comic/GN reading kind of person. I've only started to get into it a few months ago (that's like Dec of last year). And even then, I didn't seep myself into the world- I just read bits here and there. Then I heard about Watchmen. How it's this big thing. Acclaimed. and that it's an unfilmable story. So I worried. Without even really knowing anything, I first worried. Oh gawd here goes another comicbook superhero movie that's going to get hit by critics and degraded down to the level of Xmen3/Fantastic4. Couldn't help it, despite that TDK and IronMan had set a new level. But I watched the trailer- saw Rorschach without knowing who he really was- though: wow, that guy's pretty cool- and then forgot about it. Until a very late April weekend.

I had no expectations. I didn't know what to expect. I expected action and kickassery...I suppose. The story started and when it ended, I realized that I have found my true starting point. I knew I had to get the GN. (and yes---the movie had plenty of kickassery for me). I didn't think it was slow- I didn't think that it didn't make sense. It made perfect sense! There was so much detail and yet it wasn't spewed at you. It was just laid out very easily and aesthetically. Within the few minutes of the film, I understood that this wasn't like normal superhero movies. That these weren't normal superheros. Rather, they were fallen. Tarnished. And better for it.

Perhaps that's the thing. Nonfans who went to watch it were expecting a superhero movie with explosions and sex and violence. They weren't expecting something much more complex than that. Something better. But because of our days today, they just wanted simple things with awesome visuals (which Watchmen totally had) only to later complain that it was stupid. Give them something rich and complex and they won't get it so they'll call it trash and throw it away.

Of course then I hear about the Fans who don't like the film because it didn't follow every single step of the story or added something. How can they complain? Zack caught the essence, the feel of the GN. He went as far as to make shots just like it. There was so much detail and homage in every background. He's a fan himself! He knew the pressures. But what little tweaks he made for the film, I feel, was for the good of the film (minus the sex and other stuff). I'm more or less talking about psychic tentacled vagina-alien. If he had seriously put that in the film- no matter how frequently and clearly Veidt would have explained it- the audience would have been "WTF???!!!111". Exactly like that. Changing the ending might have been the biggest thing, but the mood/feel was still there. It didn't really change the story- just how Veidt "35 minutes"ed ago.

<__< So that's just my blurb (without having read the 2nd page- just the 1st and 3rd).

After I saw the film with a friend who hadn't read the book, he asked me what was different and I tried to explain the book's ending. I stopped when I saw the "WTF?" look on his face and realized how utterly fucking ludicrous it sounded. Imagine if it had been in the movie.

Would have been hilarious...(sort of) and then the two things that people would have labeled Watchmen with is bluedong and tentaclevagalien (because that sort of thing is what people talk about instead it's complex story and awesome badassery of Rorschach who is made of win and the humanity of Dan).

Then at the box office it would have died. v__v that's not good.