Our friends over at CHUD got to see the opening footage, and this is their report...
The police stare out the broken window of the Comedian's apartment, discussing the crime. 30 stories below a figure holding a sign that reads "The End is Nigh" walks through the puddle of blood that is being sprayed off the sidewalk. The camera zooms away from the building, showing the alternate New York City of the story, filled with zeppelins and a huge Gunga Diner balloon.
Rorschach's narration begins, very faithful to the book. He rappels up the side of the building into the Comedian's apartment. Poking around, he discovers the Comedian's weapons cache and costume. The camera focuses in on a photo of The Minutemen, and then pulls out again, but this time the picture is hanging in Hollis Mason's apartment. We see other photos and newspaper headlines hanging on the wall, and a copy of Beneath the Hood, Mason's memoirs, on the table.
Mason is spinning stories of his days as the Nite Owl to Dan Dreiberg, the second Nite Owl. It's after midnight and Dan gets up to leave; they stop on the porch for a moment as rain falls outside and Hollis asks Dan if he ever misses the good old days. Dan says no, but it seems like he's lying. He leaves Hollis behind, and the camera lingers a moment on the sign for Hollis' auto body shop: Obsolete Models a Speciality. Much of the dialogue in this scene comes straight from the comic.
Dan walks home in the rain, and discovers that his front door has been kicked in. He walks into his brownstone cautiously, only to find Rorschach, mask up, eating cold canned beans at his kitchen table. When Rorschach tells him that the Comedian has been killed (the 'It's human bean juice' joke remains intact), they go down to the basement to talk more.
Again, this scene plays out pretty much the way it does in the book, with Dan and Rorschach discussing who might have killed the Comedian. Dan dismisses Rorschach's claim that it's a mask killer, and here was one of the deviations that might leave fans up in arms: Dan says to Rorschach 'Watchmen are over.'
You may remember there was some controversy when that line, and a Rorschach line about one of the Watchmen being killed turned up in the trailer. The Rorschach line is not delivered in the film the way it is in the trailer - ie, there's no mention of 'Watchmen' - but Dan's line is. Later in the Q&A Haley called the second, brief superhero team The Crimebusters, which leads me to believe means that 'Watchmen' is a phrase used in the film in place of superheroes or alternatively with vigilantes.
As Rorschach walks down the subway tunnel beneath Dan's house, Dan asks him whatever happened to the old days. "You quit," Rorschach responds. Dan sits before the display case of costumes and looks at the Comedian's blood-stained smiley face pin.
Check out the whole article at the source link below.
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