The trailer is cool,bet it look great in the cinema.
LONDON - The $120 million comic book adaptation "Watchmen,"
one of 2009's most eagerly awaited films, has had its world
premiere in London, and reviews on Tuesday generally cast the movie
as classy but no classic.
The red carpet launch late on Monday of the special
effects-laden action thriller is the culmination of years of to-ing
and fro-ing over scripts, budgets and, finally, a legal dispute
between rival Hollywood studios.
Directed by Zack Snyder, whose "300" was a box office winner
in 2007, Watchmen is based on a 1986 comic book series of the same
name written by Briton Alan Moore and illustrated by compatriot
Dave Gibbons.
Critics gave it mixed reviews, with several predicting
approval from the hardcore comic book fan fraternity.
How it plays to a wider audience, however, will be more
important to its commercial prospects.
"For those just watching Watchmen for the Watchmen, without
any expectations or knowledge of the comic's storyline or
historical importance, this really will be a blast," wrote Mike
Ragogna in the internet newspaper The Huffington Post.
But Robbie Collin, of Britain's top-selling tabloid weekly
News of the World, disagreed:
"This two-and-a-half-hour wannabe pop culture epic isn't the
worst superhero movie ever made ... But it is one of the most
spirit-crushingly disappointing," he said.
MOORE-LESS
As with other movies based on his stories, Moore has
distanced himself from the film, which hits cinemas in Britain and
the United States on March 6.
Asked if Moore was likely to watch the movie, deemed
"unfilmable" by some in the business, Snyder told Reuters: "Look,
you know Alan has famously said 'I don't want anything to do with
it' and I just try and respect that as much as I can."
Watchmen is set in an alternate 1985 United States, where
the "Doomsday Clock" charting U.S. tensions with the Soviet Union,
is permanently set at five minutes to midnight.
When one of his former colleagues is found murdered, masked
vigilante Rorschach sets out to uncover a plot to kill and
discredit all superheroes, both past and present.
The film contains scenes of sex and violence, earning it an
R rating in the United States meaning under-17s can only see it
with a parent or adult guardian, limiting its commercial
potential.
The fate of the film was in doubt until last month, when
studios Warner Bros and News Corp's Twentieth Century Fox reached a
settlement in a copyright infringement dispute.
Warner Bros, a unit of Time Warner Inc, produced the film,
but Fox sued Warner last year to stop its release. Fox, which
acquired the rights to the "Watchmen" story in 1986, claimed it had
a continuing stake in the project.
Warner was also behind The Dark Knight, the Batman sequel
which was last year's biggest grossing film globally with ticket
sales of $1 billion. "Iron Man" was another superhero hit grossing
$582 million worldwide, according to ticket tracking site
www.boxofficemojo.com.
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20090225/ten-entertainment-us-watchmen-premiere-db3f2d5.html
