Watchmen: “Looks like we have the first real flop of 2009”

The Hollywood Reporter puts the wood to Watchmen in this review by Kirk Honeycutt:

As stimulating as it was to see the superhero movie enter the realm of crime fiction in “The Dark Knight,” “Watchmen” enters into a realm that is both nihilistic and campy. The two make odd companions. The film, directed by Zack Snyder (“300”), will test the limits of superhero movie fans. If you’re not already invested in these characters because of the original graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, nothing this movie does is likely to change that predicament.

That’s bad news for Warner Bros. and Paramount, which hold domestic and international rights, respectively. Opening weekends everywhere will reflect the huge anticipation of this much-touted, news-making movie. After that, the boxoffice slide could be drastic.

You can read the rest of the review yourself, but it ends with this observation:

“Looks like we have the first real flop of 2009.”

If Honeycutt is right, there will be a lot of disappointed fans. At MRQE.com, there are 121 articles listed in reference to this movie. An enormous amount of interest in this adaptation of the original graphic novel, arguably the most celebrated work in the genre.

More background here. And the trailer with the Smashing Pumpkins song “The Beginning is the End is the Beginning.”

Any Watchmen fans out there? What are your thoughts?

UPDATE: Don’t slit your wrists just yet, ye olde Watchmen fans! The Daily Variety’s review (by Justin Chang) is much better than the Hollywood Reporter:

Finally unleashed from a much-publicized rights dispute between Fox and Warner Bros., “Watchmen” is less a fully realized comicbook epic than a sturdy feat of dramatic compression. Fans of Alan Moore’s landmark graphic novel, concerning a ring of Gotham superheroes brought out of retirement by an impending nuclear threat, will thrill to every pulpy line of dialogue and bloody act of retribution retained in director Zack Snyder’s slavishly faithful adaptation. But auds unfamiliar with Moore’s brilliantly bleak, psychologically subversive fiction may get lost amid all the sinewy exposition and multiple flashbacks. After a victorious opening weekend, the pic’s B.O. future looks promising but uncertain.

“Promising but uncertain” is immeasurably better than “first real flop of 2009.”

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