Watchmen is set in an alternate 1985 America in which costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday society, and the "Doomsday Clock" - which charts the USA's tension with the Soviet Union - is permanently set at five minutes to midnight. When one of his former colleagues is murdered, the washed-up but no less determined masked vigilante Rorschach sets out to uncover a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes. As he reconnects with his former crime-fighting legion - a ragtag group of retired superheroes, only one of whom has true powers - Rorschach glimpses a wide-ranging and disturbing conspiracy with links to their shared past and catastrophic consequences for the future. Their mission is to watch over humanity...but who is watching the Watchmen?I loved this movie. The action and look of it were awesome. The characters were very well done and even though the movie was 3 hours long - I didn't feel it as much as I thought I would. That being said . . . . . I could totally see people not liking this movie at all. This is so not a mainstream movie. This is also about as far as you can get from a "family" comic book movie. The violence is beyond extreme. There is a lot of completely unnecessary sex and nudity in it (including numerous shots of a blue floppy dong, people!). This is a thinking man's, made for adults comic book movie. Its also not made for the generation that they are targeting with the ads. The best part of the movie is its lineage in time. If you aren't familiar with the 70s/early 80s history - you will not be able to appreciate the best parts of the story. As far as the legitimacy of the adaptation, I never read the graphic novel so I have no idea. The only real problems I had with the movie were that the lead actress was horrendous and there was a whole bunch of overdone scenes that took place on Mars. I found myself getting very annoyed during the scenes because they could have just been normal conversations in a living room as far as I was concerned. Besides that, this movie is bonafide, thinking man's eye candy.
I very strongly recommend that people check out this movie . . . . . as long as they have the warnings I've written about above. To go in to this wanting a mainstream Iron Man/Dark Knight type movie going experience could easily lead to you thinking this is one of the worst things you've ever seen.
