Viewed Watchmen again, on DVD
POSTED BY: AURaptor
UPDATED: Tuesday, May 4, 2010 23:06
VIEWED: 3549
PAGE 2 of 4
Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Actually, I was the first person who said it, and I said it because Alan Moore has gone on record to indicate that he regrets that Rorschach has such a fan following, and that Rorschach was meant to be an unsympathetic character. I'm trying to find a damn cite and source for it, it's not coming up, but apparently it was said SOMEWHERE because the Watchmen fan-community refers to it endlessly.
Yes, but Alan Moore defies anything someone agrees with. If he wrote it, and too many people fall in love with it to the point of commerciality, he will loathe it. He's an odd bird that one.
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70's TV FOREVER
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Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Actually, I was the first person who said it, and I said it because Alan Moore has gone on record to indicate that he regrets that Rorschach has such a fan following, and that Rorschach was meant to be an unsympathetic character. I'm trying to find a damn cite and source for it, it's not coming up, but apparently it was said SOMEWHERE because the Watchmen fan-community refers to it endlessly.
Well, I can see that. The character was Moore's way of commenting on the underlying semi-fascist attitudes associated with vigilante characters, primarily Batman in this case. But I still don't think Moore ever considered him a villain - just an anti-hero.
And, sometimes people do lock onto, and become fans of something for reasons other than what the character intended. It's a bit like - the number of Fight Club fans who missed the point of the movie, and really think it is just about how manly it is to fight.
"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."
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Quote:
Yes, but Alan Moore defies anything someone agrees with. If he wrote it, and too many people fall in love with it to the point of commerciality, he will loathe it. He's an odd bird that one.
But look at the evidence: despite being the only honest character with any integrity in the end, Rorschach is written, in the COMIC, on a shallow level as a repulsive, bad smelling, and ugly-looking character under the mask. On the deeper level, he was written as a murderous sociopath who disliked and didn't trust most everyone, who thought everyone needed to be punished and upheld to his very strict moral code, and he has a piss-poor freudian excuse to account for it.
He really wasn't supposed to be sympathetic.
But to suggest that he DESERVED to die because of not going along with Ozymandrius? Perhaps you're right SM, perhaps Moore didn't intend Rorschach to be THE Villain, and certainly he was commenting on and denouncing the authoritarian ways of Rorschach.
But much like Tyler Durden (who is a douche), Rorschach is an authoritarian anarchist. He is in direct opposition to fascism. Fascism, represented by Ozymandrius, wins. That is some nasty values dissonance. Given a world where no character is really that admirable, I'm going to grab on to the one character who does TRY to do the right thing, even if his methods are suspect.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Given a world where no character is really that admirable, I'm going to grab on to the one character who does TRY to do the right thing, even if his methods are suspect.
Hmmm, given the characters in question.... which one IS that then? Ozzy or Rorschach?
Both truly believed they were trying to do the right thing..... Both used unsavory methods..... (this is why I love Watchmen, btw).
"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."
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Rorschach's kill total is lower. ._. But good point.
I still have to go with Ozzy for the villain, at least for my interpretation. Creating a world of peace based on the bodies of half the world's population and a lie? I mean, that's off the OMFGWTF chart. Ozzy's a villain, I don't think there can be any doubt about it. Just because he's the well-intentioned extremist type doesn't change that.
So, then, is Rorschach right to expose it, even if it'll destroy the illusion of peace?
...I say yes, because chances are good it'll unite the entire world against Ozymandrius and his corporation.
Which might have been Ozymandrius' plan all along. :o
Select to view spoiler:
Ever heard of Code Geass and Lelouch? Ow, my mind has been BLOWN. :O
But even if that was the case for Ozymandrius, he's still a bastard for what he did. Always, always raises the question of whether the end justifies the means.
And so Rorschach is still right, even if it DOES play into a possible Ozzy plan B.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Rorschach's kill total is lower. ._. But good point.
I still have to go with Ozzy for the villain, at least for my interpretation. Creating a world of peace based on the bodies of half the world's population and a lie? I mean, that's off the OMFGWTF chart. Ozzy's a villain, I don't think there can be any doubt about it. Just because he's the well-intentioned extremist type doesn't change that.
I would be inclined to agree - though your off on scale. It was hardly half the world - just one city.
And look at the choice he was facing. He wasn't dealing with street thugs like Rorshach, where maintaining that ultra-strict moral code is easy, because it's black and white - he was fighting nuclear holocaust.
Trading one city for the whole world, while a brutal choice, seems like the correct one to me. Good of the many, over the needs of the (relative) few and all. If the end is the preservation of all life, can the means be "bad"?
"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."
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Quote:
Originally posted by Storymark:Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
But the idea of making Rorschach the villain is just plain wrong.
Where'd you get the idea that he was, or they were trying to present him as such? That totally flies in the face of the film itself. He was the one guy who refused to compromise his ideals.
You're the first person I've ever seen even make such a comment.
As noted, I got it from Byte's remark -
But according to what I read at tvtropes about "Misaimed fandom" and "Ensemble Darkhorse" Alan Moore intended for Rorschach to be unsympathetic, implying that he deserved his death for being so uncompromising (and socially uncomforming).
Sorta sounds like a bad guy to me. Maybe not THE villain, but still.... I wasn't the 1st person to make that comment (yeah, I know you qualified it with " I've ever seen ".)
It's interesting how you changed your tone, after things were cleared up.
I had already said that I hadn't read the graphic novel , and that all I knew of the Watchmen 'verse was from watching the movie itself.
Bones: "Don't 'rawr' her!"
Booth: "What? she'rawred' me first."
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SM: You're right, it was only New York. Weird, why did I think it was the whole world? And why did the synthetic psychic "alien" limit the attack?
You know, I think I like the movie a little better than before. Even though it doesn't as overtly imply that deep down it's really just a power grab for Ozzy, that element could still be there if you squint. And in the movie, not only does Ozymandrius point the finger somewhere else, but multiple major cities in every country get torched, which actually works much better for my argument.
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Yanno, that's what drew me to be sympathetic to Rorschach despite being in serious disagreement with him philosophically.
He's portrayed as a chump for having moral standards, and as a complete nutter for sticking to them no matter how tough that gets...
Yeah, I can sympathize, and while I disagree with him fundamentally on most of his viewpoints, but not quite all of them.
Quote:
You see, Doctor, God didn't kill that little girl. Fate didn't butcher her and destiny didn't feed her to those dogs. If God saw what any of us did that night he didn't seem to mind. From then on I knew... God doesn't make the world this way. We do.
-Rorschach
As for Ozzy, he's just another would be tyrant, using fear, threats and lies to get people to listen to him, do his bidding, it's the same old story...
But in the movie, he's far worse - he knows WHY the world is at the brink, the "fear of not having enough", and so with Manhattans assistance, he manages to produce renewable power (which was the design of those reactors, which was WHY Manhattan was helping him, he just corrupted it for his own purpose), but instead of offering it to all and sundry, removing the primary reason for the imminent conflict, instead he uses it destructively, to create more fear, more mass psychosis, in hopes of a world grasped within *HIS* fist, cause he thinks no one else qualified to run it - you did notice what company was in charge of the reconstruction efforts, right ?
And people thought The Comedian was a monster...
You almost feel sorry for the old bastard when he begins to come to truly understand how he's played a part in making the world so fucked up.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeelRealization
Rorschach was undergoing some of that towards the end too, I posted a rather longish bit about that but can't find it right now, but the realization that he and his nakama were in fact villains would be, and was, psychologically catastrophic to him, at that moment he had no fear of death because he felt it was the only atonement he could make.
Select to view spoiler:
As for Code Geass, which I think you particularly would enjoy watching in full, Byte - my primary reaction to the fruition of that plot was "what an idiot" cause he makes the same damned mistake Robespierre did, skimming the top instead of addressing the root causes and problems which make people so screwed up it produces the kind of sociopaths who rise to power, and unthinking reactionaries who are what give them that power in the first place.
Watchmen is a good story, morally grey and viewable from many a perspective, but I've never been able to see Ozzy as anything but just another would be tyrant, no matter his excuses.
That said, I save most of my bile for the Comedian, who's direct hand in certain actions influenced history in a seriously negative way, a lesson there in that every time you listen to, you obey, do the bidding of, the powers that be without thinking it through, without questioning the impact and purpose, you make the world a worse place by just that much - not them, YOU.
-Frem
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Oh, also SM, I reread your post and I think I see what you mean. Why do I grab on to Rorschach for doing what I think is the right thing when Ozymandrius also thinks he did the right thing?
Because under no circumstances can I ever accept Ozzy DID do the right thing. For one time, in the entire comic book, I think we see something that is a moral absolute. Don't kill millions of people in pursuit of making the world a better place, it's seriously self-defeating.
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