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Some early reactions:
Watchmen Premieres In London
24 February 2009 1:33 AM, PST
After a hectic history of rewrites, studio rejections, budget heedlessness, and legal wrangling, the $120-million Watchmen had its premiere in London Monday. Based on the graphic novels by British writer Alan Moore and illustrator Dave Gibbons, the movie is regarded as a superhero flick like none before it. In his review in the London Times, Kevin Maher wrote: "It's not for the faint-hearted -- and, despite the preponderance of Spandex outfits, capes and costumes, not for kids either. Limbs are broken, bones are smashed and skulls split." Or as Britain's Guardian newspaper put it: "This is an [R-rated] superhero movie which makes last year's famously brooding Batman sequel The Dark Knight look like Alvin and the Chipmunks." Steve Anglesey remarked similarly in the London Daily Mirror: "Watchmen is unlikely to steal Slumdog Millionaire's tagline of 'the feel-Good Movie of the year!' but it's searing, spectacular and simply unmissable." On Time magazine's website, columnist Matt Selman commented, "It's a serious freak-out. ... Watching the visual world of the Watchmen movie unfold was one of the most powerful experiences I've ever had. Not film experiences. Just Experiences." On the Huffington Post blog, entertainment writer Mike Ragogna concludes: "It will demand your attention and intelligence as it entertains; it's sophisticated and sensationally sophomoric; and for those ... without any expectations or knowledge of the comic's storyline or historical importance, this really will be a blast." But Robbie Collin wrote on the News of the World website: "This two-and-a-half-hour wannabe pop culture epic isn't the worst superhero movie ever made, mind. But it Is one of the most spirit-crushingly disappointing. Because this time round, it was supposed to be all so different. We were promised darkness. We were promised maturity. But what we've got, is 163 minutes of tin-ear dialogue and absurd violence."
This is a snakeskin jacket. And for me it's a symbol of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom.

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That last blurb is concerning as I've never thought of Snyder as being much of a substance guy in the first place (although I still maintain he nailed the DOTD remake)...guess we'll see.
"I'm like a dog chasing cars, I wouldn't know what to do if I caught one. . . . I'm not a schemer. I just do things."

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EW cover story....
EW wrote:'Watchmen': Inside Zack Snyder's Outrageous New Movie
Sure, all superhero movies are violent. But this one revels in blood, sex, and politics. It took 23 years to get to the big screen. Now, we're going to find out who can handle it. Are you ready to watch ''Watchmen''?

They have come to glimpse the miracle. They have come to witness the revolution. They have come for Watchmen — the allegedly unfilmable superhero movie, the long-awaited adaptation of the comic book that changed the face of comic books forever. On this warm July morning, over 5,000 fans attending the annual geek pop summit known as Comic-Con have assembled inside the San Diego Convention Center for a first look. Many spent the night on the sidewalk. Some have come in costumes — most modeled after Rorschach, a vigilante with an inkblot mask and a pitiless brand of justice that makes Batman look like Bambi. Behind the stage, indie-movie icon Kevin Smith, a.k.a. the Most Famous Fanboy in the World, parks himself in front of a closed-circuit TV, a happy grin on his bearded mug. ''You have to understand, I've been waiting for this moment for years,'' says Smith. ''This is it, man. This is the pinnacle. You have no idea how f---ing pumped I am.''

All this, for a violent, ironic superhero epic that doesn't like superheroes in the first place. Directed by 300's Zack Snyder, Watchmen presents a set of familiar superhero archetypes — and then subverts them completely, turning them into criminals, jerks, narcissists, megalomaniacs, and plain ol' whiny wusses. Rorschach (Jackie Earl Haley) is like the Spirit...except he's a joyless, hard-line misanthrope. The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is like Captain America...but loyal only to sadistic thrills and a corrupt worldview. Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson) is part Batman, part Iron Man...except he's also a schlubby, impotent coward. Ozymandias (Matthew Goode) is the resident genius...who's built an empire on superhero toys. (You see what we mean by irony.) Says Billy Crudup, whose blue, naked Dr. Manhattan is an almighty Superman dangerously detached from his own humanity: ''Watchmen is a kind of thrilling thought experiment. What would people who dress up in costumes to fight crime actually be like? Well, they'd probably be fetishists who lived on the fringes of society. They'd all be a bunch of freaking lunatics.''

Yet for all its self-awareness and cynicism, Watchmen isn't some cheap-and-silly Scary Movie parody. Adapted faithfully, if not completely, from the celebrated 1986 comic-book series, Snyder's film is visually and intellectually ambitious, filled with heady ruminations about savior figures, pop culture, and the politics of fear. At a time when superhero stories are commonplace and our shaken country is pinning its recovery on an idealistic new president, Watchmen's director believes his movie can serve as a bracing blast of healthy skepticism. ''Someone asked me if I thought that because Barack Obama had been elected president, the movie was no longer relevant. I said, 'Wow, that's a very optimistic view of the future!''' says Snyder. ''The movie, like the comic, says, 'These superhero stories you've been feasting on? What if we took them seriously? What if we thought through the consequences? Where do they get us?' That's the fun.''

But fun for whom? When Watchmen hits theaters on March 6, the comic-book cognoscenti will be there in droves — although some are already sweating the heresy of dramatic changes. Still, for mainstream moviegoers, such talk of ''subverting superhero archetypes'' is liable to elicit a great big ''Huh?'' Watchmen's financial backers are clearly hoping the success of The Dark Knight has primed the market for sophisticated superhero films. Especially one that's two hours and 41 minutes long. But where The Dark Knight transcended genre conventions, Watchmen wallows in them. Violently. In Snyder's film, the good guys don't let the bad guys talk crazy talk for umpteen minutes before turning them over to the cops — they hatchet their heads or obliterate them into bloody chunks. Has the world gone geeky enough that it can embrace a tough-sit superhero satire? ''Well,'' says producer Larry Gordon, who has spent more than two decades trying to bring Watchmen to the screen, ''I guess we're about to find out, aren't we?''

Created by writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons and first published as a 12-issue serial in 1986, Watchmen is most often praised as the comic book that brought respect and maturity to a medium long dismissed as juvenile. It was the fanboys' Catcher in the Rye — and maybe their first Playboy, too. ''I was 13 when I read Watchmen, and it came to represent my coming of age,'' says Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof, who cites the comic's use of origin-story flashbacks and hidden clues as a major influence on his show. ''I would devour each issue over and over again, knowing that I was missing things because I was too young to grasp them. But at the same time, I was so excited by the violence and, yeah, the sex. I felt like Watchmen was this very, very bad thing that I shouldn't be reading, and if my mom caught me with it I'd be f---ing doomed.''

Hollywood was similarly struck by Watchmen, but has been much less successful at avoiding the doom. In 1986, Twentieth Century Fox acquired the comic's rights for producer Larry Gordon, but could never get an adaptation rolling. Over the next decade, Watchmen bounced among many studios and between many directors (including Brazil's Terry Gilliam and The Wrestler's Darren Aronofsky) before finding what appeared to be a happy ending at Paramount. But in 2005, with helmer Paul Greengrass deep into preproduction, a Paramount regime change killed the project. As Gordon's producing partner Lloyd Levin explains, ''It was very difficult for every studio exec to appreciate all its aspects.''

Admittedly, some of those aspects are truly odd. Watchmen is set in the year 1985. The U.S. and the Soviet Union are on the brink of nuclear war, and the president is Richard Nixon, whose success at ending the Vietnam War (he asked Dr. Manhattan to blow up the Vietcong) has earned him five terms of office from a grateful nation. Conservative politics are popular, as are Indian fast food and pirate comics. But costumed heroes, once all the rage, are now outlawed. When the Comedian gets murdered, Rorschach tries to round up his old allies to investigate. They eventually uncover an insidious conspiracy hatched by an unlikely villain, one whose grand ambition isn't world domination but something else altogether.

And that's only half the comic. Hence, Watchmen's rep as the Unfilmable Graphic Novel. But tides changed in late 2005 when Warner Bros. acquired the property from Paramount (or at least they thought they did; more in a minute) with the hope of rolling on Watchmen ASAP. ''I had been a big fan of the graphic novel and had been looking for ways to make it into a movie,'' says Jeff Robinov, Warner Bros. Picture Group president. ''It felt different and left-of-center from anything else out there, and we felt that in the hands of a director with a strong vision, it could be provocative in a way that could appeal to a broad audience.'' The studio turned to Snyder. At that point, the director had only done stylish TV commercials and the 2003 zombie remake Dawn of the Dead. But he was also deep in the middle of shooting the studio's action epic 300, another adaptation of a brilliantly brutal comic, and the execs liked what they were seeing. Snyder was interested. Wary, but interested. ''My first reaction was 'This can't be done. It probably shouldn't be done,''' says Snyder, who had joined the Watchmen cult during his art-school days in London. ''But then I said, 'If you really are going to do this, here's how I think you should do it...'''

Snyder's approach was simple: He would remain religiously faithful to the comic. ''We treated that thing like a freakin' illuminated text,'' says the director, who embraced all the peculiar idiosyncrasies, from the Nixonian alternative America to the deep-dive digressions into character origin stories. Snyder's take ran counter to nearly every single version of Watchmen Gordon and Levin had developed in the past. The Greengrass iteration, for example, updated everything and swapped out the Cold War context for the war on terror. ''We wanted the movie to speak to its time, just as the comic book spoke to its time,'' says Levin. ''But Zack's approach was 100 percent correct. He showed that the book as it was created in 1985 worked as an allegory for what was happening right now.'' Plus, as Gordon puts it, ''I think if we had made this thing any other way, we'd be hiding in the hills, because the fans would want our heads.'' (None of this faithfulness can please Moore, who feels that no adaptation can do his work justice and has taken his name off the film.)

The director also believed that an ''adult'' superhero epic needed to be explicit about its ''adult'' content. He wanted to hear the characters' philosophical musings. He wanted to see the blood spurt. And instead of the chaste kisses of most superhero movie romances, he wanted to see some naked getting-it-on. ''I wanted to make sure everyone understood: This is not a kid movie,'' says Snyder. ''Violence has consequences. And doing that with a PG-13 just dilutes that message.'' Bringing Watchmen's R-rated mayhem to life took a psychic toll on the cast during the course of a five-month shoot in 2007. ''He's the most unsettling character I've ever played,'' says Jackie Earl Haley of Rorschach, Watchmen's most tragic and defining character. Haley — who earned an Oscar nomination in 2007 for playing a sexual predator in Little Children — was particularly unnerved while shooting scenes of Rorschach's harrowing origin story, which culminates in a brutal encounter with a child killer. ''There were days where it was just so graphic. Hours later, I'd be lying in bed, getting little flashes of what I had to do, and just go, 'Whoa.'''

And then there was the worry that all that effort was all for naught. Last February, Twentieth Century Fox sought to stop Warner Bros. from moving forward with Watchmen's release, claiming via lawsuit that Warner Bros. had not properly acquired the distribution rights. The dispute exploded in the media last August when a judge declared that Fox's lawsuit had merit. ''How do you not know whether or not you have the right to make a movie?'' says Crudup. ''Hilarious.'' But after months of intense press coverage that put Watchmen in the mainstream eye, the two studios reached a settlement. ''It was scary, dude,'' says Jeffrey Dean Morgan. ''I thought for a while there that the movie would wind up on a shelf somewhere. But that sure as hell made for some great publicity, though.'' (Warner Bros. and Fox both declined to comment. As for producer Gordon: ''It was unfortunate,'' he says simply.)

Now Team Watchmen waits to see if any of that notoriety can help make them some money. With a $100 million-plus budget and a running time of 161 minutes, Watchmen will need to launch with a big opening weekend and strong reviews. ''The movie is impactful, tough, and true to the book that we all loved, and I'm very proud of it,'' says Robinov, who believes the film — every minute of it — has broad appeal. Snyder hopes the female fans he gained from 300 (and Gerard Butler's abs) will watch Watchmen, too, though it's hard to imagine that they'll be buzzing about this film in the same way. ''I think its human themes appeal to all,'' says Malin Akerman, whose character Silk Spectre is a knowing commentary on the obligatory superteam-sexpot heroine. ''But I do think men will have a much easier time swallowing all the violence.'' So, will geek love — and geek dollars — be enough? Snyder hopes so. He says he made the film for that crowd. ''I don't think there ever has been a movie more custom-made for them. Not at this scale,'' he says. ''And now they have an opportunity to really influence pop culture in a serious way, just as the comic influenced comics. They can say: 'These stories can be used to say something about the world. Give us more of them.'''
man, i really hope he has done it....

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THR wrote:Film Review: Watchmen
Bottom Line: Ouch.


It's not easy being a comic-book hero these days. The poor boys have taken their lumps in "Hancock," "The Dark Knight" and even "Iron Man." Self-doubts, angst and inadequacies plague them. And now comes "Watchmen." Its costumed superheroes, operating in an alternative 1985, are seriously screwed up -- and so is their movie. If anyone were able to make a nine-figure movie, something like "Watchmen" would have been the opening-night film at the Sundance Film Festival.

As stimulating as it was to see the superhero movie enter the realm of crime fiction in "The Dark Knight," "Watchmen" enters into a realm that is both nihilistic and campy. The two make odd companions. The film, directed by Zack Snyder ("300"), will test the limits of superhero movie fans. If you're not already invested in these characters because of the original graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, nothing this movie does is likely to change that predicament.

That's bad news for Warner Bros. and Paramount, which hold domestic and international rights, respectively. Opening weekends everywhere will reflect the huge anticipation of this much-touted, news-making movie. After that, the boxoffice slide could be drastic.

Snyder and writers David Hayter and Alex Tse never find a reason for those unfamiliar with the graphic novel to care about any of this nonsense. And it is nonsense. When one superhero has to take a Zen break, he does so on Mars. Of course he does.

The film opens with a brutal killing, then moves on to a credit-roll newsreel of sorts that takes us though the Cold War years, landing us in 1985 when Nixon is in his third term, tipping us that we're in an alternate 1985 America, where our superheroes have taken care of Woodward and Bernstein and other forces have evidently taken care of the U.S. Constitution.

The opening murder happens to a character called the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who was once a member of a now banished team of superheroes called the Masks. Fellow ex-Mask Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) -- his mask one of perpetually shifting inkblots -- takes exception to his old colleague's death. He believes the entire society of ex-crime-fighters is being targeted even as the Doomsday Clock -- which charts tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that could lead to nuclear war -- nears midnight.

His investigation and renewed contacts with former buddies fills us in on the complicated histories and problematic psychiatric makeups of these colleagues.

It's all very complicated but not impenetrable. We pick up the relationships quickly enough, but soon realize these backstories owe more to soap operas than to superhero comics.

The thing is, these aren't so much superheroes as ordinary human beings with, let us say, comic-book martial arts prowess. The one exception is Billy Crudup's Jon Osterman, aka Dr. Manhattan, who in true comic-book fashion was caught in a laboratory accident that turned him into a scientific freak -- a naked, glowing giant, looking a little bit like the Oscar statuette only with actual genitals -- who has amazing God-like powers.

These powers are being harnessed by an ex-Mask, Matthew Goode's menacing though slightly effeminate industrialist Adrian Veidt.

When Dr. Manhattan's frustrated girlfriend, yet another former Mask, Carla Gugino's Sally Jupiter, can't get any satisfaction from Dr. M, she turns to the former Nite Owl II, Dan Dreiberg, who seems too much of a good guy to be an actual superhero, but he does miss those midnight prowls.

The point is that these superheroes, before Nixon banned them, were more vigilantes than real heroes, so the question the movie poses is, ah-hah, who is watching these Watchmen? They don't seem too much different from the villains.

Which also means we don't empathize with any of these creatures. And what's with the silly Halloween getups? Did anyone ever buy those Hollywood Boulevard costumes?

The violence is not as bad as early rumors would have one believe. It's still comic-book stuff, only with lots of bloody effects and makeup. The real disappointment is that the film does not transport an audience to another world, as "300" did. Nor does the third-rate Chandleresque narration by Rorschach help.

There is something a little lackadaisical here. The set pieces are surprisingly flat and the characters have little resonance. Fight scenes don't hold a candle to Asian action. Even the digital effects are ho-hum. Armageddon never looked so cheesy.

The film seems to take pride in its darkness, but this is just another failed special effect. Cinematographer Larry Fong and production designer Alex McDowell blend real and digital sets with earthen tones and secondary colors that give a sense of the past. But the stories are too absurd and acting too uneven to convince anyone. The appearances of a waxworks Nixon, Kissinger and other 1980s personalities will only bring hoots from less charitable audiences.

Looks like we have the first real flop of 2009.
i get it - he doesn't like it. but, reading this, nothing he cites as a negative is something that isn't already in the story. i think he just doesn't like the story. we'll see...

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Based on the material alone, I'm looking forward to this thing like crazy. But when you blend Snyder into the mix, it's a whole different story. Snyder is nothing more than a all flash, no soul-type of filmmaker that doesn't deserve to be thrown all this great material to begin with.

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_Marcus_ wrote:Based on the material alone, I'm looking forward to this thing like crazy. But when you blend Snyder into the mix, it's a whole different story. Snyder is nothing more than a all flash, no soul-type of filmmaker that doesn't deserve to be thrown all this great material to begin with.
ok, i get that complaint about him, but when you're talking about a comic book movie where the entire thing is already written and story-boarded, does it matter? he'd have to try to screw it up, know what i mean?

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That's a dangerous thing, saying a comic book film is a done deal just because the director knows his visuals. Isn't that the exact reason why so many of them fail miserably? The good comic book movies out there are the ones where the director managed to look beyond the comic book factor and treat it like any other movie. See The Dark Knight, X-men, Hellboy etc.

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_Marcus_ wrote:That's a dangerous thing, saying a comic book film is a done deal just because the director knows his visuals. Isn't that the exact reason why so many of them fail miserably? The good comic book movies out there are the ones where the director managed to look beyond the comic book factor and treat it like any other movie. See The Dark Knight, X-men, Hellboy etc.
your examples only prove my point - you cited movies where the director actually used the source material, as opposed to those where they only used a concept and bastardized it (see: non-burton original batman films). burton bastardized, but his style compensated. but dark knight, first two xmen films both treated the material exactly as it should read - seriously.

if this was filmed as it read, there should be no problem. i understand that's a big 'if'.

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_Marcus_ wrote:With Snyder, there's ALWAYS a big if. Unfortunately.
i didn't read 300, so i can't really comment on that.

but i think this all begs the question - where would this film be if greengrass had done it? would we be better off? would he have been a faithful fanboy, filming the comic as much as-is as possible, or would he have tried to make a good movie first, source material notwithstanding?

and what's the over/under on moore showing up at the premier and gunning people down?

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Well obviously we have no idea since we haven't seen the damn thing yet. I retain a healthy dose of scepticism though, based on Zack Snyders previous work wich I think ranges from mediocre (DOTD) to outright vomit-inducing (300).

As for the fanboy-ism, I'm still not sure wether or not that's a good thing in making comic book movies. In a way I think it puts restraints on the director, since he always am aware of the other fanboys out there and maybe in a way try to make a movie he think's will please them, instead of making a good film.

On the other hand, a fanboy can maybe understand the source material in a way no one else can. Snyder being a self-proclaimed Watchmen-fan might be the films biggest positive, or it's biggest flaw.

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agreed on all counts.

as for fanboy-ism, jackson eschewed fanboys and purists as much as possible during the making of the LOTR trilogy and focused on making good movies, iirc. i'd say that turned out damn fine. :)

but in this case, i'm hoping for pure fanboy love and faithfulness. we shall see shortly.

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Here's a review that likes it from the UK.
Londonist wrote:Review: Watchmen @ BFI IMAX

Look. Stop standing around and go kill some bad guys.
With 13,000 tickets sold at the South Bank IMAX more than a week before release, and additional shows scheduled for 3.45am on Sunday mornings, the words 'hotly anticipated' hardly do it justice. Such is the hype surrounding Watchmen, the latest movie adaptation from an Alan Moore graphic novel.

Transforming the intricacies and subtlety of any decent comic book into the movie format would take superhero powers, one of the reasons Moore never sanctions the screen incarnations of his masterpieces. The turgid, trades-description-defying League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie, or the hollowed-out body cavity that is From Hell are just two examples of this butterfly to caterpillar transformation. Filming a Moore novel is like trying to compress a hike in the Sierra Nevada into a single camera-phone image.

So that's our straw man built up like a seemingly unassailable supervillain. But can we knock him down?

Yes. Because Watchmen somehow succeeds where the others have failed. It takes the best of the two mediums, chews them together, and spits out a bolus of phlegm whose complex elements stick together surprisingly well en route from the giant IMAX screen to your receptive, jaw-dropped face.

It's also preposterous. Just like the novel. Very briefly, the story concerns two generations of superheroes (though only one individual is actually 'super' and most are not 'heroes') known as Minutemen and Watchmen. Multiple storylines flick back and forth through time, charting the rise and fall of the masked avengers, their soap opera entanglements and ignominious ends. The various threads settle down on an alternative 1985 where Nixon is still president, masked heroes are banned and an omnipotent blue man called Dr Manhatten maintains the balance of power against an ever-more beligerent Soviet Union. As the film progresses, the clock of mutually assured destruction approacheth midnight, while the remaining Watchmen are sucked into the confused powerplay of corporations, nations and the god-like Manhatten. Down to Earth it ain't.

Yet somehow it all works. While no 2.5 hour film could match the subtleties of the novel, the baroque world of the Watchmen is artfully conceived by 300 director Zack Snyder. The largely unfamiliar cast are solid; an initially hammy Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) appears to let the side down until his unmasking transforms the portrayal into a deeply menacing performance. You'll cover your eyes as limbs are snapped, chewed and sawed, and check out the most horrific deep-fat-fryer scene since Spooks Series 1. But the violence never overpowers the production, much as the special effects are perfectly judged to assist the storytelling rather than supplant it. Watchmen is a compelling, draining and gutting movie, and won't be reviewed anywhere without at least one of the words 'bleak', 'nihilistic' or 'dystopian'. But it also contains many subtle touches and background details reminiscent of the novel (keep an eye on the Martian craters and the posters and adverts of New York). The final result is an impressive feat of cinematography that can be appreciated on its own terms without reference to the Moore original.

Still, it's not as good as the graphic novel though, is it?
Just cut them up like regular chickens

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VH1 wrote:What Makes 'Watchmen' Such A Gutsy Movie?

Here are 10 things that set Zack Snyder's graphic-novel adaptation apart from the pack.

BEVERLY HILLS, California — Setting aside the end result, reviews and box-office performance, what is the gutsiest film ever made? Was it Gus Van Sant's shot-by-shot remake of "Psycho"? George Lucas' decision to risk the legacy of his "Star Wars" movies by making prequels? Mel Gibson courting religious controversy to film an incredibly graphic, subtitled film about Jesus Christ?

Or is it Zack Snyder's "Watchmen"?

"As far as cojones go, it ranks right up there," Matthew Goode said of his director.

"I'm thoroughly impressed by the ba--s that he had to take this project on," Billy Crudup agreed. "It's a pretty substantial undertaking, even if it weren't the most revered graphic novel of all time."

On Friday, you can finally go see "Watchmen" and decide for yourself whether Snyder's blockbuster bet paid off. But before you do, here are the top 10 reasons why it might just be the riskiest mainstream movie ever made by a filmmaker:

10. It Remakes a Sacred Text
On the holy mountain of graphic novels, few would disagree that "Watchmen" sits at the very top. In 2005, Time listed it among the greatest English-language novels of all time, alongside such other unfilmable classics as "The Catcher in the Rye" and "On the Road." Since its publication in 1986, "Watchmen" has been ripped off countless times, most recently by "Heroes" — and, inevitably, younger audiences will assume that "Watchmen" is the derivative work.

9. It Kills a Living Person
Chew on this for a moment: Soon, a very-alive person will be able to buy a ticket, get a bucket of popcorn and watch himself being murdered 24 years ago — in IMAX, no less. In the entire history of film, it is simply unprecedented.

8. It Has No Stars
In the years leading up to the "Watchmen" movie, names like Keanu Reeves, Jude Law, Tom Cruise, Kate Winslet and even Jonah Hill were tossed around. Instead, Snyder went for the likes of Goode, Crudup, Malin Akerman and Patrick Wilson — not exactly newcomers, but hardly household names. In a town driven by star power, credit the director for casting appropriate names instead of marquee ones.

7. It Repeatedly Shows Crudup's Li'l Billy
In Hollywood, full-frontal male nudity is few and far between: "Bad Lieutenant," "The Color of Night," "Teeth," etc. As Jon Osterman becomes more God-like, he is less concerned with mortal matters like covering himself up — and, thankfully, the film stays true to Dr. Manhattan's free-wheeling ways, MPAA be damned.

6. It Boldly Goes Where Geniuses Have Failed
Terry Gilliam, Darren Aronofsky and Paul Greengrass are three of the best filmmakers of the past few decades. They also each took turns holding hands with "Watchmen," only to walk away confused and unloved. It is often said that those who don't learn from history are condemned to repeat it — yet, somehow, Snyder has succeeded where those three Oscar-worthy filmmakers failed.

5. It Is Super-Violent
In one scene, a man pleads for forgiveness as Rorschach plunges a meat clever into his -head — again and again and again. In another, a man's arms are sliced off his body with a buzzsaw, simply because he's in the way. During our recent "Spoilers" taping, Snyder was asked if he would ever make another horror movie — but in several key moments, "Watchmen" is horrific enough to make "Saw" look like "Bride Wars."

4. It Angers Alan Moore
Ever since the day he took the gig, Snyder knew he wouldn't have the one blessing he needed most: The writer of the "Watchmen" graphic novel. Moore has gone on record, on many occasions, saying the movie shouldn't be made and that he wants nothing to do with it. In a world where Hollywood films often give authors cute cameos to show their approval, Moore's disapproval has been a huge obstacle for Snyder to overcome.

3. It Is Such a Massive Story
Terry Gilliam once said that he'd need at least five hours to properly tell Moore's labyrinthine story. At various times, people have insisted that the only way to properly do "Watchmen" is with a miniseries or in multiple films. "Watchmen: The Complete Motion Picture Comic" was recently released on iTunes and DVD and clocks in at 325 minutes. Yet, Snyder chose to pack his film so tightly with Easter eggs and in-jokes that his 163-minute theatrical cut packs in an amazing amount of information — even without "Under the Hood" and "Tales of the Black Freighter," which will be somewhat restored for his upcoming director's cut.

2. It Was Made for Fans Who Want to Hate It
"If they don't do 'Watchmen' right, there would be riots in the street," Shane Coleman, one of the head geeks at Los Angeles' world famous Golden Apple Comics, warned in 2007. "There would seriously be fanboys throwing trash cans." Quite simply, "Watchmen" fans have spent decades arguing that there is nothing better than "Watchmen." Now, the hate has already begun to pour in for the movie, and the good reviews are being viewed skeptically. Can the fanbase keep an open mind and view the "Watchmen" movie on its own merits?

1. It's Smart
In a world where $30 million worth of people decided that "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" is worth seeing on opening weekend, "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" crosses the $100 million mark and the highest-paid thespian on television is the star of "Two and a Half Men," stupidity sells. "Watchmen" is a story that paints its characters not in black-and-white, but gray. It tackles mythology, philosophy and theology. It doesn't attempt to answer questions like "Is the death of some a worthy price for the saving of many?," but instead urges you to debate it. So, is the world ready for a smart, complicated, R-rated adaptation of "Watchmen"? Zack Snyder is making the gutsy bet that we are.