So, I finally got around to seeing Watchmen last night, and I certainly agree with many of the opinions blogged previously by my esteemed colleagues Scott Von Doviak and Paul Clark, i.e.: “There are a million reasons a Watchmen movie should never have been made,” and also, “That said, the movie is far from a disaster.”

True, there’s way too much voice-over, the faux-Nixon proboscis is like a bad Saturday Night Live sight gag and the audience at the screening I attended actually burst into derisive laughter in response to the instant cliché usage of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” during what would otherwise have been a perfectly lovely sex scene between Patrick Wilson’s Nite Owl II and the va-voomy Malin Akerman’s Silk Spectre II.

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Michael Mann's Public Enemies doesn't open until July, but the appearance last week of the movie's trailer was enough to get chat rooms buzzing and fan boys clapping and speaking in strange tongues. Based on Bryan Burroughs's book Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34, the movie features an all-star Depression-era rogue's gallery that includes Channing Tatum as Pretty Boy Floyd, Giovanni Ribisi as Alvin "Creepy" Karpis, Stephen Dorff as Homer Van Meter, David Wenham as Harry Pierpont, Stephen Graham as Baby Face Nelson, and John Ortiz as Frank Nitti, along with such enforcers of the law as Christian Bale as Melvin Purvis, the G-man who brought John Dillinger to heel and Billy Crudup as J. Edgar Hoover, who was able to turn the headlines about rampaging criminals into a call for a national police force, the FBI. The real attraction, of course, is Johnny Depp as Dillinger, the most charismatic and legendary of the celebrity crooks and a figure who personified the image of the 1930s bank robber as dashing desperado.

Bonnie and Clyde had their doomed-love thing; Baby Face Nelson, who played super-villain team-up with Dillinger for a while, was a genuinely scary thug; Machine Gun Kelly was a hype. But Dillinger, conscious of the good it did him to keep world opinion on his side, actively courted the public with his dimples and courtly manners, so that even his hostages came out talking to reporters about what splendid company he'd been. He tried to avoid the use of violence, pulled off dazzling escapes, and stuck to robbing banks, at a time when nobody had a good word for those financial institutions. It was partly in response to Dillinger's popularity that Hollywood created the movie image of the endearing gangster, and Dillinger himself was not immune to the charms of that image: the movie he was exiting when he was shot down by Purvis's men was Manhattan Melodrama, a juicy ear of corn in which Clark Gable played a lovable rapscallion named Blackie whose best boyhood pal (William Powell) grew up to be District Attorney.

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Well, it’s finally here, folks. After more than two decades in development, Watchmen is finally hitting screens nationwide this weekend. In a way, it’s sort of miraculous that it actually panned out. Of course, the road hasn’t been easy, with a seemingly endless parade of directors, screenwriters, producers and stars attached to the project at some point. But to me, it’s even more interesting to observe how comic book culture has progressed to this point. Just over a decade ago, it seems like Batman was the only comic getting the blockbuster treatment, and just about everything else was played for campy nostalgia, e.g. The Phantom. Hell, back in 2000 studios were worried whether the X-Men could sell tickets. So the fact that there’s not only a massively budgeted adaptation of Watchmen out there but also one that’s surprisingly faithful to its dense, ambitious source material just shows how far comics- and comic-book movies- have come in the last ten years. If only the movie was better, this saga would have the happy ending that all Watchmen fans crave.

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There are a million reasons a Watchmen movie should never have been made and no good reason it should have, aside from the obvious one: superheroes are big box office, and Watchmen was one of the most tantalizing untouched superhero properties available. It’s also an incredibly dense, multi-layered work, deriving much of its power from its subversion of five decades worth of comic book conventions. Having read the script Sam Hamm penned for Terry Gilliam’s aborted attempt at mounting Watchmen for the screen back in the early ‘90s, I know the new adaptation of the acclaimed graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons from “visionary director” Zack Snyder isn’t the worst case scenario. Nor does it exceed expectations. It’s just sort of pointless, which is what most fans of the classic comic have probably been expecting all along.

So can we separate the movie from its source material and judge it on its own merits?

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This Watchmen obsession of ours!  When will it ever end?  Well, March 6th of next years, at which we'll hitch our irrationally high hopes to some other wagon.  But in the meantime, that still leaves us six more months to slavishly pore over every detail that comes down the pike!  (By the way, we won't say this is a Screengrab exclusive or anything, but has anyone noticed the Full Cast and Crew notes for the movie?  Apparently, John McLaughlin, Eleanor Clift, Andy Warhol and Annie Liebowitz are in the movie as characters (thankfully not playing themselves).  Will Rorschach party at the Factory?  Will the Comedian be grilled on his foreign policy expertise on The McLaughlin Group?  We certainly hope so... 

Meanwhile, in the wake of the San Diego ComicCon, almost everyone involved in the movie has been doing publicity interviews.  Collider managed to speak to actors Billy Crudup (who's playing Dr. Manhattan) and Matthew Goode (who's appearing as Ozymandias), and Good is -- surprisingly and pleasingly -- very circumspect about the whole thing.  "We haven't seen the scenes yet," he cautions fans who are going buggy about the trailer; "We haven't seen how people interact, we haven't seen the full flesh of their characters.  And obviously we saw them on set, because of the interations that we had, but I want to see that world; I want to see if it all totally makes sense.  Because sometimes things can get left a little flat.  So let's not start sucking each other off just yet."  Wise words, and the interview also drops hints that the film will remain very true to the book's original ending -- but in the bad news department, Goode also claims his character's outfit has nipples on the suit as part of Zack Snyder's 'homage' to Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin movie.  This, combined with the use in the trailer for Watchmen of a song from the same film, makes us very nervous; if you want to make the best superhero movie ever made, you want to do as little as possible to remind viewers of the worst.

Collider likewise gets a chance to sit down with Carla Gugino (Silk Spectre), Malin Akerman (Silk Spectre II) and Patrick Wilson (Night Owl), all of whom mention how closely the script adheres to the comic (a situation which is certainly a double-edged sword; stray too far from the original, and fans will eat you alive, but stick to it too closely and many will wonder why you bothered to make a movie).  Akerman notes that when the movie comes out, it will take fans a long time to come to terms with its complexity and density, just as is the case with the book.  "Someone else who's read the novel for 10 years straight now has so many different views and insights.  It'll take me another 10 years to figure out because you have to read it about 20 times to get every single piece, and every single moment because it's so dense.  But I think we can all come out of it and just give you our opinion about how it feels for us and how we can relate to it."

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Mike D'Angelo reports from the Sundance Film Festival:

Has Billy Crudup ever successfully portrayed an ordinary human being? There's something vaguely otherworldly about the guy — a guileless quality that makes him best suited for playing befuddled innocents, like the childlike heroin addict Fuckhead in Jesus' Son.

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