There's always going to be a sizeable divide in the fan-base when a popular work is turned into a big budget movie, but with Watchmen it's something else. Those unfamiliar with the original source were mostly favourable in their appraisals of the film, finding the alternate history setting engaging despite the Cold War's lack of relevance, but to those who've experienced the seminal graphic novel it was a different matter. Even though Zack Snyder essentially used the thirteen-issue comic run as a storyboard for the movie, it still split opinion; was this a shallow interpretation of a medium-defining work or a living embodiment of Alan Moore's genius? It all boils down to one question - did you miss the big squid? In the graphic novel Ozymandias' plan to unite the stale-mated America and Russia is to trick them into working together against an alien invasion, done by crafting a squid beast with the help of comic book artists. This was switched in the film to a more narratively sensible, but subtextually weaker explanation - an attack faked to look like the work of the near-god Dr. Manhattan. At its core Watchmen the film didn't do for superhero movies what Watchmen the graphic novel did for superhero comics. Partly because much of its subversion had been used by The Incredibles four years before and partly due to the film's qualities, whether it's a worthy adaptation is still undecided.
