Rorschach...and some Watchmen talk.

So pretty much everyone is having Watchmen drawing jams, thought i might as well contribute. Here's a little drawing that started out just as a portrait of Rorschach, but i decided to go in another direction. It's funny, A year ago i had never heard of Rorschach, or Watchmen for that matter. Then the movie trailers began to surface, all kinds of hype (negative and positive)was floating around. i decided to see what it was all about. so, late last year i went out and bought the graphic novel. It deserves all the praise that it gets, a real masterpiece of literature and art. i've already reread it many times, sometimes just going back over my favorite parts. i was skeptical, much like everyone else, how this could be made into a movie.

!Little bitty spoilers ahead!

Fast forward to last Saturday. Some friends and i went to see Watchmen at the local theater. At this point the reviews were mixed, some loved it, some hated it. so i went in without much bias. the movie was fun, and as a stand alone piece it was a unique, epic, and action packed film, though a bit confusing to my friends. For me, there was no stopping comparing it to the book. in that department it fell short. I was very bored through the entire movie, as it felt like a sort of cliffsnotes version of the book. they tried to cram so many iconic images and scenes of the book in, the missed out on the meat and potatoes of those very scenes. i was especially disappointed in both Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan's origin stories. as a consequence i think the audience didn't know what to think of it, in terms of it's tone. litterally, people were giggling when Rorschach got blown to bits. so i guess what i'm saying is that they aced the aesthetic but totally forgot the pathos, which left me very detached from the film.

i suppose it's not all bad, the movie got a lot of people, including myself to take a look at, and fall in love with, the graphic novel. Some say the comic industry is now just a source for Hollywood to harvest, yeah, but there's also return. the comic book movies get more kids interested in comics.it's not just a one way relationship. of course i'm not basing this on any fact. Personally, this often happens when movies come out and I'm not familiar with their source material, i go out and read the book, comic or whatever before the movie comes out. I did this same thing with 'Lord of the Rings', never heard of it before the movies, but as soon as the first film came out i felt like an expert on middle earth. I think it's a good way to introduce new generations to classics, much like remakes of other movies. even if they are shit, they introduced more people to the original.

Anyway, turns out Moore was right, you can't film this book. at least not without ripping out all that made it worth reading. well, maybe it would have worked as a miniseries. oh well.