11 Most Intense Performances In Comic Book Movies

7. Jackie Earle Haley - Rorschach (Watchmen)

Ignoring all the controversy surrounding Rorschach for one second (and he is controversial), Jackie Earle Haley's performance as Walter Kovacs' in Zack Snyder's genuine - if not wholly flawed - adaptation of Alan Moore's Watchmen, represents a high point in the genre.

The character, conceived by Moore and Gibbons as a means of satirising the superhero genre as it then existed, is at his most extreme in Snyder's film, and Earle Haley embodies him spectacularly. Psychologically intense, dogmatic and tragic to his core, Rorschach isn't a role any actor would be able to take lightly, and it's to his credit that Earle Haley didn't shy away from depicting the true ferocity of the character, which was in full display in the film's prison sequences.

One thing that Earle Haley never shies away from, however, is the character's tragedy. Rorschach very clearly isn't a character to celebrate, and his performance conveys that thoroughly. He's violent, bigoted and disturbed, and while it's true that none of Watchmen's heroes could truly be considered heroes - at least not in the traditional sense - there is something uniquely fascinating about Rorschach's place in both the film and novel, a nuance replicated by Earle Haley in spite of the adaptation's wider problems.