We were invited to a Warner Bros. event tonight to see 26 minutes worth of footage from the Watchmen film that’s due out on 03.06.09 next year, and it was pretty impressive stuff. Even the ice cold comic book fan inside of me enjoyed it, and I didn’t think The Dark Knight was worth all the hype everyone was laying on it. As far as a graphic novel turned into a film goes, Watchmen looks like it’ll set the bar for future adaptations.

Director Zack Snyder was on-hand to setup the footage and talk about what’s been done so far, and he was joined by costume designer Michael Wilkinson and production designer Alex McDowell. Interestingly enough, it took place in the same place where they held a similar event for 300. Head after the break to get a full rundown on the footage we saw, and what Snyder and company had to say about the film that’s still six months away. Forgive me if I slip into a bit of fanboyism, because this is one of my favorite comic book properties.

One of the longest clips we were shown turned out to be the opening 12 minutes of footage from the movie, which includes an opening fight scene with the Comedian, and the entire opening credit sequence. Both pieces are framed by songs: the fight by “Unforgettable” and the credit sequence by Bob Dylan’s “Times They Are A Changing.”

As the footage opens, the Comedian is sitting back watching Richard Nixon give a speech on television about aggression from the Soviet Union. He’s having a cup of tea and enjoying a cigar, just a quiet evening at home. He starts flipping channels and settles on a commercial for Nostalgia Perfume from Veidt Industries, with music provided by the idyllic velvet tones of Nat King Cole. Just a quiet evening at home for a former costumed vigilante. That is, until a figure dressed in black busts his door down and proceeds to kick his ass all over the place before hurling him out the window. As he hurtles to the ground, his iconic smiley face pin, now with a dollop of blood on it, lands beside him, providing the iconic cover for the graphic novel, and the most identifiable image from the Watchmen universe.

What’s important to note is that this fight scene is entirely created for the film, all you see of it in the graphic novel are a few frames. Snyder provides a real set-destroying piece that might seem a bit over the top, until you realize the guy is fighting for his life.

The clip then segues into the opening credits, which are full of iconic photographed moments (in slow-moving live action) that show the history of the Watchmen through the ages. It’s a quick succession of images, set to Bob Dylan’s “TImes They Are A Changing,” and we see moments like the first publicity photos of the first team of Watchmen, the Comedian as the triggerman in the Kennedy assassination, Andy Warhol with Watchmen pop art, Dr. Manhattan filming the moon landing, a young Adrian Veidt outside of Studio 54 with the Village People in attendance, and so forth. It’s a very quick primer about the world of the Watchmen, and the fact that the film is set squarely in 1985. It’s an alternate 1985 with an older Nixon serving as President after term limits have been repealed, and shows the nation’s growing unrest with costumed heroes.

The next sequence we got to see was a long piece showing Dr. Manhattan’s origin, which is told in flashback from the surface of Mars. Crudup is perfect as physicist John Osterman who later becomes the blue-skinned, all-powerful Dr. Manhattan, and in this brief but telling clip you see why he’s decided to alienate himself from the human race, and the events that led him to seek solace on Mars. After all, when you can do anything, what’s the purpose with a normal day to day relationship? Most of the Dr. Manhattan effects aren’t final yet, but the ones we saw were impressive, particularly when he disassembles an entire Army tank with a wave of his hand, and later obliterates gangland thugs in a similar fashion, leaving the bloody, skeletal arm of one dangling from the ceiling in a bar.

The final scene begins with post-coital bliss between Dan Dreiberg, the Nite Owl, and Laurie Juspeczyk, the Silk Spectre. They’re lying naked inside Dan’s Owl Ship, when Dan says they should spring Rorschach from prison. Another knock-down, drag-out fight ensues inside the corridors of the prison, with Laurie and Dan both in costume. It’s a bit more punching and kicking than you’d expect from Nite Owl, who even Snyder described as more of a “gadget guy” than someone who’d use fisticuffs to “exact justice.” They spring Rorschach, who exacts revenge upon one of his prison tormentors in the men’s room, and then they flee the scene. It’s a bit incongruous because in the graphic novel, the scenes of Rorschach in prison, sans his costume and mask, are chilling, and show how cold and calculating he can be. Moreso than most of the criminals he hunts.

So what did we think? It looks impressive. There’s an enormous amount of attention to the source material, without it trying to be a shot for shot remake. It’s also not chock full of 10 minute car chase scenes, or overdone CGI fight scenes. Based on what we saw, it looks like Watchmen won’t have the frenetic pace of a Spider-Man movie, but will take time with the storytelling. Snyder told us that the running time is currently two hours and 43 minutes, and he hopes it doesn’t get any shorter. That’s nearly a three hour movie, which you  really need in order to contain the whole 12 issue storyline from the comics. Especially if they leave in the “comic book story within a comic book story” that is the Tales of the Black Freighter that exists in the book.

Warners is releasing Tales of the Black Freighter as a stand-alone DVD along with a documentary (”mockumentary,” says Snyder) of Hollis Mason’s Under the Hood novel from inside the graphic novel before the movie comes out, and Snyder hopes the theatrical film runs with that storyline incorporated into it. So consider this a fair warning that you’ll need to get yourself fitted for a catheter before the movie comes out next year.

According to Snyder one of the biggest problems with the film is that “comic book movies have been machine-gunned into our pop culture in a crazy way,” so audiences now have an expectation of what a comic book movie is supposed to be. While he hopes that’ll lure the audiences in so he can clobber them on the head with the decidedly anti-hero message of Watchmen, he also had to consider that and make changes to things in the movie like the superhero costumes, in order to give the audience some of what they’ll expect.

Which is why they changed the Nite Owl costume so much. However, that’s just the comic book fan in me grousing. Snyder said there’s no way he’d work on a Watchmen sequel or a Watchmen prequel… which doesn’t mean that tongues won’t wag about the possibility of one if this movie does well at the box office.

We now return you to our (normally) fanboy-free Spout coverage.