21 Perfect Superhero Movie Casting Choices That Nailed Their Characters

2. Jackie Earle Haley As Rorschach - Watchmen

Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.

This whole film was a panel-to-panel love letter to Watchmen and the world it created, and no actor nailed their part better than Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach.One of the most morally and psychologically complex characters in the comic book medium, Rorschach's vigilante escapades could have easily been misread or misinterpreted by a deluge of actors rushing to cash-in on the comic book movie renaissance, but the page to screen transition went ahead exquisitely when Haley got the role.

Whilst empathetic in most instances, Walter Kovacs is by no means an easy personality to approach. The many nuances, mannerisms and experiences the character retains in the film are largely indebted to Haley and his faithful recreation of the trilby-clad vigilante.

Working with such a morally questionable protagonist isn't a task easily accomplished, but in this case, it more than paid off.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.