In some editions, the opening shot begins on the cover of "Watchmen": A black oval on a field of yellow with a drop of red liquid splashed on it. ("Bean juice?" "Human bean juice.") The first "shot" proper (comic book, not movie -- though the filmmakers find their own take on it) begins with the smiley in a sea of blood.
The "camera" pulls back from directly above the button. Carried by the flow, the smiley falls into the gutter as the blood pours down a drain. As the camera recedes further we see a man is washing away the stain with a hose. A pair of boots belonging to another, red-headed man carrying a "The End Is Near" sign wade right through the blood puddle and tracks red footprints down the sidewalk. From several stories up, we see a large delivery truck with a triangle on top. This will mean something, but we don't know it yet.
For now, the triangle that most draws our attention are the converging lines of windows down the side of the building that has come into view on the right. The lines point directly to the splash of red.
(Click to enlarge frames below...)
Over all this, we "hear" an entry from October 12th, 1985, in the journal of a sociopath who calls himself "Rorschach," and whose grotesque, tortured, apocalyptic/messianic language owes something to rantings of Travis Bickle: "Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout, 'Save Us!' And I'll look down, and whisper 'No.'"
(Compare to Travis Bickle, "Taxi Driver" (1976): "Thank God for the rain to wash the trash off the sidewalk.... All the animals come out at night - whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.... Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is a man who stood up.")
Again, we don't know it yet but the red-headed prophet of doom is this Rorschach character. He knows the man whose blood stains the street. And he's going to make it his business to find out how he splattered his guts all over that sidewalk. "Hmm. Quite a drop," says a detective, looking down, through a shattered window, at what's now just a little red spot far below, like the splotch on the smiley face. (Nice touch: We're looking down on the bald spot on top of his head -- something that, even from this vertiginous height, he can't see. There's always a higher level...)
"Watchmen" is about scale and proportion and perspective: Small details seen up close (in some cases really small ones -- so small they barely qualify as events at all); gigantic ones seen from a cosmic point of view. The infinitesimal and the infinite, the miracle of a single life and of all creation; the mystery of the human heart and the mysteries of the universe; the intelligence of man, and the intelligence of a termite. That's a lot to put into a comic book. Even a whole series. And to get into a movie that's only 15 minutes longer than "The Dark Knight"...
We'll see the smiley face -- a sardonic rictus, symbol of The Comedian, the masked superhero who met his end when his body met that pavement -- again. On Mars. (And, in the movie, a Rorschach version in the snow of Antarctica: What do you see? A pretty butterfly?)
Of course, we get to see the smiley face quite frequently in the comic. It is apparent in not just the Galle Crater on Mars, but in the juxtaposition of the hook and the smoke when Rorschach uses his grappling gun to climb up into The Comedian's apartment, or in one of the electronic charger things by the side of the street, or in the exact jack-o-lantern pattern Hollis Mason carves for Halloween.
And the stain is also mirrored quite often - in radar screens, on windows, and in other, unrelated, instances of bloody violence.
I read the comic again last night, and noticed something rather obvious on the first page that I had previously ignored. After Kovacs walks over the blood being washed away, he starts to leave after him bloody footprints. Where he goes, death follows - Kovacs realises that by the end of the book, and, albeit angrily, comes to terms with it. I was reminded of Dickinson:
While we were fearing it, it came —
But came with less of fear
Because that fearing it so long
Had almost made it fair —
You beat me to it! LOL. And here I thought I was so smart for thinking about submitting this for your Opening Shots project. It's just as well because you did a very nice bit with it. Good piece.
I'm going to say something for everyone, every post, etc. Let's just get it out of the way - SPOILER WARNING!
I love how much information is conveyed on this first page. Even on first read, before you know to look for the buried details, you get so much. You're introduced to the "lead," Rorschach; the style of storytelling is on full display; the desolate world view is front and center (complete with "The World Is Nigh" to really emphasize the tone); and the page is littered with puns between the words and pictures.
Right there in the first panel is an example of the way Moore and Gibbons play with irony, juxtaposing image and dialog to convey multiple meanings. "Dog carcass in alley" - is this the dog's blood we are seeing? On the second read through, we know that it's a man's blood and that the description of a dead dog is also a reference to the dead man - a man who was not much of a human being (the dead dog reference also foreshadows another dead dog later in the book).
"I have seen its true face." More (Moore) double meaning - visually, we tie it to the smiley button in the same panel; later we'll learn the button belongs to the Comedian. The smiley, and the name "Comedian", are sick facades. Rorschach knows the "true face" of the Comedian and it is representative of Rorschach's view of the "this city," which is itself just a way of describing his entire world view (and as we zoom out, we go from a view of the gutters to a view of the world). Also, by noting that he's seen the city's true face, Rorschach is indicating that the city itself is wearing a mask.
I also love the irony (and contradiction) of Rorschach's Truman reference in panel four. Truman, the man who unleashed apocalypse on Hiroshiman and Nagasaki, is a "good" man. Rorschach must believe that Truman sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives for the greater good. But why is he okay with it then but not...? Hurm. Maybe things aren't as black and white as Rorschach would like to think...
Thanks for doing this! I remember thinking when I first read Watchmen that there's no reason to adapt it into a film because it basically is one anyway.
Jim,
Good stuff. I'm really happy to see the Opening Shots project return, and this is a fine selection.
I like the design of the blood splatter on the smiley because it is also a problem of perspective. It's impossible to discern whether the blood is sliding up or down the face; if it were possible, would 'up' connote 'positive' and 'down' be 'negative?' Do such categories exist? I love the motif.
Also, I'd throw a warning out for the Rorschach spoiler. I recall that revelation was a bit surprising in my first read. (Also, I did not notice the truck before. Incredible.)
D'oh, I forgot, I'm not on my home computer and I actually have to fill out the name fields. My 'b.
I appreciate your analysis of the opening shot of the "Watchmen" comic book. I have taught "Watchmen" in a political science class before, and I always spend time breaking down this first page for my students to demonstrate to them how carefully the comic book is constructed. You should also compare the first page of the first book to the last page of the first book, where the panels start with an image from the roof of the building and then move up over the entire city, continuing the movement from the first page.
And you've managed to find one of the answers to the book in the first few shots. The answer to who watches the watchmen is...us. There is always a higher level both within the book and a level beyond the page. The level of the reader.
And the end of the book, without giving away any spoilers, brings this thought full circle when one character remarks to the other, (paraphrasing):
-It's over, right?
-No, it never ends.
Also:
Jim, I take it you've seen the movie? Can we expect a review?
JE: Yes indeed! I'm going back over the comics now (I think I appreciated the movie more for having re-read it in the days before seeing the movie) to check some details. I'll say this (at the risk of stating the obvious) for now: It's Watchmen, not Batman, so it's doing something completely different from "TDK" (another DC Comics-based superhero movie). Folks here know that I think "TDK" ultimately fails at the level of basic filmmaking and storytelling (though it has its moments -- like the opening shot for which I recently wrote an appreciation). "Watchmen" has bigger, riskier, more complex ambitions. No matter what you think of the movie (I guess it's been getting mixed reviews -- I haven't read them, but I'd expect that from anything as daring and sprawling as a screen version of the "Watchmen" series), it's a fascinating achievement in adaptation....
Wonderful, Jim. I can't wait to reread this (I don't have the book with me, sadly).
The "It never ends" line near the book's end never ceases to give me chills--nor the (SPOILER!) return of the red-stained smiley face and Rorshach's journal in the final panel....
Compare this shot to the opening "shot" of book two of Alan Moore's the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Identical arial pull-backs. In the later, all I could think was, "There's a sight so amazing we will never see in the movies." It's so sad that no one has ever treated Moore with the respect he deserves. I have a feeling the movie of Watchmen will be a landmark in that respect. Maybe one day we'll see a faithful adaptation of League and From Hell. Thanks for this analysis, Jim.
I wonder. Watchmen was a seminal work for a different medium, i.e. comics, which has its own history in terms of its OWN characters.
Wouldn’t movies be better served if, while adapting Watchmen, we not just blindly follow the book but instead follow the idea and use this medium to explore its own history and its own politics.
For instance, an assortment of such superhero archetypes as John Rambo, James Bond, T-101/T-1000, Harry Callaghan, Travis Bickle, The Man with No Name, each representing the politics of their times as well as the politics of the movies they represented.
I wonder how that would turn out.
Jim, now that you've seen the movie, could you please tell us how one of the scenes has been handled. I ask out of great curiosity because that would probably tell us about how interesting this whole exercise in adaptation is.
I'm referring to the final page of the first chapter. If we see, it kinda mirrors the opening of this chapter, albeit with no stain on the smiley. There’s some obvious warmth between them which we can feel. Romance? Possibly, as we learn later. How does the novel indicate/predict? By that little dash of pink in the second image, which later turns out to be the headlamp of a car on the street below. This one moment of warm feelings has overcome the feeling of dread that has been amongst them since the murder of The Comedian. The smiley now it no longer has the stain of blood signifying that in this moment of hopeful romance the grimness of the times have been temporarily forgotten.
One may ask – why predict such a thing? Readers of the novel would agree with me that the nature of time is a significant theme.
Now, here’s where the zoom out really blooms. The speech balloons are converging. And see how distance is actually bringing Dan and Laurie nearer to each other. Although from their mutual physical perspective they are at a respectable distance from each other, from a removed distance (perspective) they could be interpreted as essentially growing close to each other. The little pink dashes are pouring in, like little rose petals. The lawn provides for a green background.
And then eventually…the final frame where there’s only one speech balloon now. And herein Alan Moore’s great gift for irony makes its presence most felt, a gift which few authors ever have had in such measure. The Comedian is Dead from the proximity of the earlier panels felt like a light remark, but when viewed from this far, removed from all the subjectivity of the emotional tone of the relationship between Laurie and Dan to this distance of absolute cold objectivity, the line attains the gravity that it signifies, for it is the event that set the doomsday clock in motion. The petals are still there, but now surrounded by red. The great danger red that envelopes these masked adventurers. It is all a matter of perspective, as you state.
Now I ask - How has this been handled in the movie? Has it done by means of a standard zoom out, because that might not be the answer for it actually takes attention away from the image and turns it towards the feel generated by the movement. One would agree that zoom out isn’t really the cinematic answer to (a) romantic feelings (b) change of perception (c) fill innumerable details in an image and let a viewer soak it in because the movement prevents that kind of observation from him.
I do not wish to cause spoilers for anybody, and if that is indeed the case, Jim, it would be prefectly fine if you tangent your way around the answer.
JE: I'll have to give some thought to this, Satish. Great observations about some qualities unique to the long-form comic series/graphic novel!
Like Ali, I also noticed something new on the first page: the reaction of the hose-wielding shopkeeper as the red-headed stranger steps through the blood. A detail that adds life to the scene.
[Rorschach] knows the man whose blood stains the street.
Ah, but in this opening shot, he does not know that he knows that man. He doesn't learn that the murder victim was someone he knew until he snoops in his closet. Which creates a continuity blooper; it's unclear whether Edward Blake's identity as the Comedian was public or not. If not, someone would surely ask questions when Adrian Veidt and Dr. Manhattan show up at his funeral.
Re: "Which creates a continuity blooper; it's unclear whether Edward Blake's identity as the Comedian was public or not."
No, it's quite clear in the book that his identity was secret. The cops just call him "this Blake guy," and don't know why he's in a picture with "Vice President Ford." Daniel says to Rorschach, "What, you're talking about THE Comedian?" (perhaps one of my favorite uses of boldface in my entire reading of comics) Veidt acts clueless when Rorschach tells him about Blake's real identity. And notably, Blake switches to the executioner's mask after he's been scarred in Viet Nam to continue preserving his identity.
And that's all just from memory! ;-)
I always assumed that the opening comments by Kovacs are there to grab us with his worldview right away and had no duplicitous meaning. You have to admit, you know what kind of guy Rorshach is very quickly with just a few lines of dialogue. Travis Bickle meets Mike Hammer!
I suppose you are focusing on comic book movies. But I can't help to mention my favorite opening shot in any movie. 'Close Encounters Of the Third Kind.' The jeep that emerges from the sand storm. Caused by the lost world war II planes that appear out of nowhere. I can't tell you exactly what it means. It speaks for itself. But I can say it suggests soemthing mysterious is about to happen.