Watch the Watchmen

I just finished reading Watchmen again for the first time in a few years. My word, but it’s meaty. This time I made sure to read all the interior text parts between the comics. All together, it easily takes the same amount of time to read as a short novel, pictures or no. It’s so dense and so rich.

It got me thinking that there’s no way this should be made into a movie. It’s a great story that doesn’t even seem to have any right to exist. It’s a paradox, being the comic to end all superheroes, like Unforgiven is the movie to end all westerns. It uses the idiom of the superhero to portray how silly the superhero is. The problem with that is that only those who are fans of the superhero will really get it. But either way, it’s too expansive to be filmed, and it should, by all right stay a comic book, and stay pure.

SPOILER WARNING

And I must say, this time I experienced something I’d never experienced before. At the end, Jon is forced to kill Rorshach, and it’s got to be the most emotional moment I can think of in comics. The words Moore chooses, and Gibbons’ depiction of the pain of Rorschach’s face, at a moment when he realizes he can’t compromise, and therefore, he cannot continue to exist in this world that Veidt has created. It was moving. Go grab a copy and look over that page in the last issue. It’s incredible.

Go read the whole thing again. You’ll appreciate it all over again.