I've heard too many random reviews of Watchmen not to speak up about it a little bit. I think the major problem is I loved the film for what it was (having read the book before seeing it). The negative critisism I hear, though, doesn't usually find any consistant pattern. I've heard some people say it didn't include enough elements from the novel, while others say it included too many and was too long. Some say that the bone-snapping action was too over-the-top even for the story, while others complained that there was too much drama padding out the story.

Because I can't find any sort of consensus as to why it isn't so great, I can only conclude that expectations were just set way too high for this movie.

People are, either way, going to like or hate this movie for different reasons, as people do with any movie. But I think part of the problem was this movie was set up to be a massive epic, and the other part was moviegoers didn't know what they were getting into, or rather, what to expect from this film. Plenty haven't read the story, and those that did have very particular ideas about it. Something like the Dark Knight, on the other hand, was set up to be epic and people knew exactly what to expect, and they ended up getting it and then some.

So I think Watchmen's chief failing is it's lack of clarity, which is the fault of both the filmmakers and the filmgoers. It's still an excellent movie, I think you just need to know what kind of movie you're going to see... as most movies are quite clear about what they are; action, romance, drama. This movie is a strange hybrid of all of those, and has its own sort of style, and if you're not prepared for it then you'll leave confused.