8 Things Watchmen TV Show Must Do Differently To Zack Snyder's Film
6. Represent Rorschach Properly
DC Comics
Undoubtedly one of the most annoying things regarding Watchmen's reception is how spectacularly the book's fans manage to misread its darkest and indeed disturbing protagonist, Rorschach. Failed 2016 GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz famously included the character in a list of his top five favourite superheroes, and that - precisely - typifies the problem at play here.
You see, Rorschach is not a hero, but rather a deconstruction of the superhero genre's darkest elements. He's a satire of Steve Ditko's Mr. A - a stalwart of Rand's objectivist school of thought and indeed, a pretty repulsive character when you get down to it. He describes Comedian's attempt to rape the original Silk Spectre as nothing more than a 'moral lapse', and his murderous tendencies are as much a foible as they are a commentary on the decline of the superhero genre since the silver age.
While Snyder didn't explicitly misrepresent the character in any way in his film, there was a resurgence in fans lionising Kovacs in the wake of its premier. Yes, the delineation between Rorschach's ideology and that of Veidt's is an interesting enough one to consider, but it's important to illustrate that the character isn't the hero fans make him out to be.
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.
