I'm not even going to try to justify considering Watchmen a cult film. Not on that kind of budget and mainstream-saturation advertising. But the comic book (let's avoid the artificial marketing term “graphic novel,” shall we) is another story, a work whose brilliance is equaled only by the fanatical reverence in which it is held by its fans. Now that's cult. I won't be seeing the film for another couple of days, so whether it does a good job or not I will leave as an open question (what is beyond question, however, is that, whatever flaws it may have, it has to be better than the what the original stab at adaptation, back around 1987 would have been – I read a summary of the screenplay, and “desecration” is too weak a word). What I want to consider today is the rather strange set of conflicting emotions anticipated adaptations such as this provoke.