‘Watchmen’ is a spectacular piece of genre film that only fails at the unreasonable task we set before it.

This weekend we nerds all flocked to pay homage, many of us pale shapes disrupting sleep for the hallowed midnight screening of the biggest comic book movie of all time. Not necessarily the biggest in budget, nor likely in box office success. However, the amount of expectation among the geek classes for the movie release of Watchmen surpassed even Batman or Spider-Man levels. After all, those properties have received treatment in other media. We’d seen their cartoons and worn their Underoos. Watchmen is a wholly different beast. One who has been lurking in the shadows for years, awaiting its chance to come out into the light and show the world its awesome power. It’s a story that belongs fully to the graphic novel evangelists, and their chance to show everyone else what they’ve been raving about. At least that’s what we’ve made it out to be.

Unlike The Dark Knight — the sequel to a very satisfying movie based on a comic book series, adding in the popular and complex Joker character which no one doubted would result in a thoroughly enjoyable film — Watchmen’s transformation to the screen is under much more pressure. Widely held up as one of the masterpieces of an entire medium, a fun action flick, with grown-up characters and themes in the vein of Nolan’s Batman reboot, just isn’t good enough. The inner circle of comic fans needs it to be a masterwork that legitimizes the concept of adult graphic novels to all the outsiders who doubt them. It has to prove that their illustrated stories can be deep and thought-provoking, not just fodder for popcorn blockbusters. Non-fans expect all the hype around ‘the most beloved graphic novel of all time’ to mean the film version will be some earth-shattering new level of super-human fiction that makes all that come before look frivolous in comparison. If it doesn’t, they get a free pass on reverting to calling the nerds out on their silly, immature passion for funny books.

A perfect storm of assumptions combined to doom Watchmen to disappointing both audiences, unfortunately. Instead of allowing it to be simply a high quality genre film — Zack Snyder’s strong suit, looking at his other high-caliber niche movies like Dawn of the Dead and 300; and what Watchmen really delivered — professional critics are free to call bullshit on the whole enterprise. Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt gets to dub it “The first real flop of 2009″. The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane can claim that, “It grinds and squelches on for two and a half hours, like a major operation,” without regard for those of us who aren’t as squeamish about comic book violence and able to see through to the story, brutality included. The New York Times‘ A.O. Scott gets to take it furthest, commenting that, “Perhaps there is some pleasure to be found in regressing into this belligerent, adolescent state of mind. But maybe it’s better to grow up.” Meanwhile, all the comic book fans hoping this was their moment to shine collectively throw up their hands and moan that the rest of the world still just doesn’t get it.

Sidestepping the not-so-soft bigotry of inflated expectations, Watchmen is still a major accomplishment. It faithfully translates the spirit of the original, posing that the real-world impact of costumed justice fighters would be less rosy than a reduction in street muggings and bank robberies. It examines the psyche of the individuals who would enter the field, willingly or unwillingly, and questions our need for hero figures to love in good times and blame in bad. It illustrates that a genuine super-being might not feel any need to help a world that’s clearly beneath him. On a technical side, the movie is slick, gorgeous, and intense, bringing the book’s characters and action sequences to screen in all their dark detail. Certainly, another pass at editing it down to a tighter running time, or a soundtrack less burdened by cliched, obvious song choices wouldn’t have hurt. But the film doesn’t fail because of its violence or over-the-top premise, nor does it suffer greatly by all the things that were left out from the full text of the original. It’s a spectacular piece of genre film that only fails at the unreasonable task we set before it.

Perhaps we’re all better off for having got Watchmen out of our systems (at least until Dreamworks animation tries to adapt Maus into a heartwarming CGI family story, featuring the voice talents of Jason Alexander and Mel Brooks, and over the dead bodies of Art Spiegelman and Scott McCloud). Like a teenage geek trying to win over his beautiful crush, we tried to lure them in with a twee indie-pop mix cd, convinced that if we could just introduce the world to the right obscure gems, they’d realize they were wrong all along and we have a whole new world to offer them. But if you’ve seen that episode of The O.C., you know it doesn’t work that way. In the same way, we might want one wonderful video game to convert our friends and family to the joys of gaming (like, say, PS3’s Flower), when what really ends up doing it is something watered down that the true believers aren’t that interested in anymore (like, say, Wii Sports). Yes, Watchmen could have done a better job coming to the screen in a form the wider film community approved of. But if it had, the very people who wanted so badly to see it happen might not have liked what they ended up with.

The bloody, hard-boiled, fantastical commentary on superhero tropes of Watchmen, in bound or big-screen form, is ultimately a success for those of us blissfully steeped in geek culture, and possibly a little too much to digest for some of those who aren’t. At the very least, the endless billboards and stacks of graphic novels in bookstore entryways for the last few months have probably put the original work in more peoples’ hands, which is a better way to win them over anyway. But if we let go of our needy nerd syndrome, the desire for ‘everyone else’ to be won over by the things we love so dearly and thereby validate our pet genres, we’d all be much happier. My girlfriend may never want to listen to Slayer, sit down for an anime marathon, or strap on a headset to play Left 4 Dead. The New Yorker may not appreciate V for Vendetta, or Sin City, or even Watchmen the same way I do, and A.O. Scott may think I should just grow up. But part of growing up is realizing you don’t need the approval of others to do what you enjoy. Zack Snyder obviously doesn’t, and neither do I. This was a Watchmen for us, not them, and that’s not a bad thing. There are a lot of us out there. At the end of the day, we got the Watchmen movie we deserved.