Watching the Watchmen Nicely done. After so many years, it's finally here -- and turns out to be the first movie we've made a point of going out to see in 2009. (Unless you're completely clueless about the movie I consider this piece to be safe with respect to any significant spoilers.) Nick and I caught the 10 am showing today. I read the original 12-part Watchmen series as it came out in 1986 & '87, then in collected form multiple times over the years. Nick had never read it. Zack Snyder's film adaptation of it worked for both of us. A sweep of story that looks at an alternate universe where a costumed hero and villain fad - rather than simply being the launch of an enduring comics genre as it was in our universe - became a real world one. This had an impact on the 20th century, but not as much as one that occurred in the late 1950s, when a young physicist was accidentally taken apart in an experiment gone awry and ultimately reassembled himself as a immortal...