Keep in mind: Zach Snyder made "Watchmen the Movie" as a companion piece to "Watchmen the Book" because there was no way "Watchmen the movie" would ever be anything but a footnote to "Watchmen the Book."

And, in fact, made it because it was going to get made anyway, and if it was going to be screwed up, it needed to be screwed up by a fan:

He said that when he was in film school, he wanted to make movies out of everything, whether it was a pair of shoes, or a cup of coffee. When he read comics back then, he thought that it would be great to make some of them into movies. He singled out Dark Knight Returns and Sin City, but when he got to Watchmen, he said there was no way he would even attempt it.

Then the studio came to him after 300 and asked him to make the movie. He didn't want to do it at first, partially because he was so afraid he'd screw it up, but also because the script was just horrible. It was set in the current day, it was about Doctor Manhattan going to Iraq, something about "The War on Terror" and was a PG-13 monstrosity that would be left open to a sequel. It was, in other words, exactly the kind of thing we're so afraid the studios will do to things we love when they adapt them for film.

He said that the more he thought about it, though, the more he felt a responsibility to make it. He said something like, "If I made it, I had a chance to not screw it up. If I did screw it up, at least it was me who screwed it up. But if I let them take the script they showed me to someone else to screw up, it would have been my fault. So I had to make it."

As a movie, it's okay. As the obligatory movie necessary in a Hollywood that refuses to not make Watchmen into a summer blockbuster, it's just about as good as it could possibly be.