I thought the film was visually perfect, but it was emotionally dead. It somehow lost the heart of the story while trying to remain faithful.
One of the important missteps was making the “heroes” into superhuman fighters. Only Ozymandias should have been more than a humanly competent fighter. The jailbreak scene was particularly egregious showing Owlman and Silk Spectre displaying superhuman abilities.
No. I feel Rorschach does believe in a universal moral code - his moral code. He applies his moral beliefs to other people on a regular basis.
What makes him a nihilist is that he doesn’t think some higher power made his moral code. He understands that he created the moral code he lives by.
A moral relativist is somebody who thinks that Christianity and Buddhism and Hinduism and Islam are all equally valid moral codes, even though they contradict each other in some regards. A nihilist is somebody who thinks that Christianity and Buddhism and Hinduism and Islam are all equally wrong because all religions are made up.
I don’t follow. You say a nihilist would think those are all equally wrong because they’re made up – but you add, in that same post, that he understands that he created the moral code he lives by. If so, his problem with other moral codes isn’t that they’re made up; it’s that they aren’t his made-up code.
I gathered both the Comedian and Rorschach felt free to operate by their own codes, but the Comedian enjoyed sadism while Rorschach used sadism for specific ends, i.e. breaking a man’s fingers for information.
That is emphatically NOT what nihilism is. And the definition of moral relativism is off too.
A nihilist believes that nothing matters so there’s no reason to care about morality or ethics.
A moral relativist believes that morality can only be judged from your own point of view—someone else can’t judge what’s moral for you.
You can believe that all religions are equal and not be a moral relativist.
Well, look, if we put it that way, then – are we doing spoilers? – they all pretty much “felt free to operate by their own codes,” didn’t they? Dan felt free to break a guy out of prison – and Laurie shrugged, and felt free to help out – sure as Adrian felt free to murder people; and that combination of events led to Jon deciding, on his own initiative, to calmly kill someone in cold blood.
No, not at all. It’s not an issue of whether the moral code is made up; it’s an issue of who made it up. For example, I know I’m real. So if I decide that murder is wrong then I know who made that decision. I’m not going to question the belief because it’s my belief.
Now consider a person who believes murder is wrong because God says murder is wrong. Suppose you then lose your belief that God exists. Do you also lose your belief that murder is wrong? If God never existed then he couldn’t have said that murder was wrong.
That’s the basis of nihilism. It says you should decide for yourself what is moral and what is immoral. You shouldn’t think something is wrong just because you were told that God thinks it’s wrong or your parents told you it’s wrong or the government tells you it’s wrong.
Granted, this is the positive spin on nihilism. In reality, a lot of people abuse nihilism and use it as an excuse to abandon any moral code and just do whatever they want to do. And other people condemn nihilism because of this.
Nihilism is not based on any connection between god and morality and a loss of such a connection due to a loss of belief in god. That’s just atheism and dealing with its consequences.
Nihilism might or might not result from a loss of belief, but it’s something very specific. It’s saying that preserving human human life—or some other value underlying all moral systems, including atheistic ones—has no intrinsic value.
Heath Ledger’s Joker is a nihilist. He is willing to do any horrible thing to anyone because he believes human existence is just a joke, it has no value. He has make people suffer just to make a point, just to entertain himself. Their well being, their lives are without intrinsic value. That’s nihilism.
Well, look, you define his position as nihilism – by defining “nihilism” to mean that “you should decide for yourself what is moral and what is immoral.” I define his position as moral relativism – by which I mean, ah, “the position that moral or ethical propositions do not reflect objective and/or universal moral truths, but instead make claims relative to social, cultural, historical or personal circumstances.”
At that, I suppose I’m defining nihilism as “the rejection of all moral principles.”
So by my definitions, someone who lives by a personal moral code – while granting that it doesn’t reflect some objective moral truth – could be fairly described as a relativist; by contrast, someone who doesn’t live by a moral code could be fairly described as a nihilist who lacks any regard for right and wrong.
I can support my proffered definitions with cites. Can you, with yours?
Fair point.
I didn’t think the movie was emotionally dead but I did feel like something was missing. And I do remember that fight scene and thinking that it was like that because this was a superhero movie and there needed to be something for the trailers, not because it fit well.
I liked the movie OK, thought it was nothing great but also not terrible. But even if the movie was great, I would be interested in a TV show, just because it can give more depth and go into more of the story and expand on it some.
Also the movie didn’t have great casting across the board. Jeffrey Dean Morgan as The Comedian and Jackie Earle Haley as Rorshach were perfect. While Matthew Goode is a good actor who has been great in other things, but he wasn’t the right choice for Ozymandias. And Malin Akerman is a good comedic actress in other things (I don’t remember if I’ve seen her in any dramas), she wasn’t good as Silk Spectre, though that also could be because of writing and directing.
I agree with you on all of the above. I really liked Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl, too - he seemed to really get into the role (and I heard he was a huge fan of the character to start with).
There’s been a lot of comment on this that I think is mostly in agreement with my previous post, but, yes, moral relativism.
The Rorschach Test is about imposing personal meaning on meaninglessness. His mask is a shifting series of black and white shapes (but never shades of grey).
Yeah, I can see that point of view that Rorschach, the character, is a moral nihilist. But that statement is also pretty much a statement of moral relativism. There are morals, but they are individual interpretations, not inherent or universal. Either way, Rorschach is at a different end of at least one moral dimension than the Comedian, who clearly has no moral code whatsoever.
I’d again ask for specific things the filmmakers should have done differently. I mean, if the film just didn’t hit you emotionally, that’s one thing (hey, art is subjective, that’s a valid opinion), but saying that the film didn’t convey the themes of the original is more of an objective claim. What did it miss? How could it have done so?
There are two minor changes I’d make to the film:
Speed up the scene where the Comedian shoots his pregnant former girlfriend - there’s a wholly unnecessary pause while he points his gun at her before he fires.
Trim down the love scene between Dan and Laurie in the Owlship. It went on waaaay too long and in my theatre, the audience was starting to chuckle.
In my opinion, part of it is just that they made it as a film instead of doing a version for TV: even though it’s just 12 comic books, they pretty much had to pare away everything that didn’t directly relate to the superhero plot to get it down to a runtime of, what, somewhere between two-and-a-half hours and three?
So, consider a specific: Dan breaking Rorschach out of prison. In the book, there’s a set-up: he’s visited by Steven Fine, an NYPD detective who (a) doesn’t come out and say it, but (b) lets him know that, hey, based on what the reader has seen, I’ve put together that you’re Nite Owl – and, while I’m willing to look the other way when it comes to you rescuing those people from a burning building, don’t make this a thing where I’m going to have to come back here and arrest you, okay?
And, well, that’s pretty cool. I mean, we’ve seen Fine working multiple cases with his partner; and so it matters when we see his partner trying to talk him down later: when, despite being in hot water due to not acting on those suspicions, he’s still out there on the street, trying to break up a fight, when he dies, and he matters to us.
And that warning from Fine has ramifications for Dan, too: he knows he’s going to be a fugitive on the run, hiding out under a dye job and a new name, as a result of that prison break, and so it matters more when he does it anyway. And while he never seems to figure out that Hollis gets murdered as a result of that prison break, we see it play out and we see the effect that has on Dan likewise: we’ve seen more of Hollis, and we see how much he meant to the guy, and it’s all meaningful.
And all of that Is cut from the movie to get it down to a still-a-little-long runtime, and so the prison break – which, in the book, is just Dan punching one guy while Laurie knees one guy in the balls – gets done as a wow-look-at-that action scene.
I could do that same kind of description for other examples: the ‘backstory’ stuff gets cut, and the almost-an-afterthought fight scene that’s left in gets made – well, more cinematic, if you see where I’m going with this.
(Though if you are committed to doing it as a three-hour movie, for heaven’s sake don’t make Veidt a chilly guy with a German accent. I mean, either you think he really is a warm and generous hero with a big heart, or at the very least you think he’s pretty much the best in the world at faking it; that carries the whole story!)
Bumped.
A new trailer is out. Check out the revised 51-star American flag at 1:02, and President Robert Redford on the classroom poster at 1:19: - YouTube
Jeremy Irons is playing an older Adrian Veidt, it seems…
That trailer gave me a headache just trying to follow along.
The trailer looks…interesting. Clearly this is a “years later” sort of Watchmen. Could be good, could be “Doomsday Clock” awful.
I love Regina King so I am down for it. Even though I am not at all looped in about what Watchmen are all about.
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That trailer looks awesome and I’m all in for this. I think a big part of what made the Watchmen movie feel “off” was that it was made during the height of the “wire-fu” style action sequences, and it always looks ridiculous outside of Japanese martial arts movies.