One thing you have to love about the fanboys, they’re always a glass-half-full kind of people. Whenever one of their beloved movies gets ripped apart by critics, they point to the box office results with pride. Critics are meaningless, they remind us, because Transformers and the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels and the Star Wars prequels made so much money. And now, with their Watchmen having received both mixed reviews and a relatively disappointing opening weekend, they’re still defending its success to the end. Drew McWeeny of HitFix said it best in a Tweet this morning: “Box-office talk is absolute death to me. I just don’t care. It got made. I liked it. I win.”

McWeeny may not exactly be the king of the geeks, but he does inadvertently represent them today. Because whether or not Watchmen has technically underperformed (or “failed” in any way) should not be their concern any more than the negative reviews (or our list of reasons claiming the comic adaptation is unnecessary). But if they are going to use the defense that the box office doesn’t matter, they aren’t allowed to celebrate grosses this summer when Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen receives bad reviews yet still has a strong opening.

More on the debate on the topic of Watchmen’s success or failure after the jump.

Glass Half-Full:

• Eugene Novikov of Cinematical lays out the good (and the bad, see below):
  

  I think comic book geeks and other well-read folks who revere the graphic novel — and rightfully so — forget that Watchmen is not a brand name in the world at large. And it’s 163 minutes long. And it’s rated R (and I’ve heard some anecdotal evidence that some theaters were going out of their way to exclude the underage and unaccompanied). So we’re not exactly talking about Spider-Man 3, here.

• “It did fare pretty well,” argues Alex Billington of FirstShowing.net, “and has caused quite a bit of commotion.”
• “A certified success — despite clocking in with lower-than-desired numbers,” claims Casey Seijas at Splash Page.
• Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere as usual claims no dog in the race, but he does seem more on the optimistic, half-good side: “I really do think $57 million isn’t half bad.”
• Radar’s headline: “Watchmen Wins Weekend By Landslide. In addition, they point to all the sold out IMAX shows.
• “For the die hard fans,” writes Rodney at The Movie Blog, “it isn’t about the numbers this movie rings in on the registers, but a momentous moment that the movie is finally released.”
• Scott Mendelson at The Huffington Post puts the gross into a positive perspective:
  

  Watchmen, based on a comic book that only the hardcore had even heard of, had a bigger three-day weekend than Superman Returns. It had a bigger three-day weekend than Batman Begins. Heck, Watchmen has the second biggest DC Comics three-day opening weekend of all time, behind (obviously) The Dark Knight.

• Mark Graham at Vulture thinks the leaked video of Watchmen’s opening credits sequence could be good for the film’s second weekend:
  

  We’re pretty sure that this visually striking sequence is the best marketing tool that’s available to Warner Bros. at this point; if they decided to officially release and heavily promote this video over the course of this week, you can bet that it would pique the interest of droves of non-fanboy types who avoided the film on its opening weekend.

• Brian Jacks at MTV Movies Blog points out that if the movie doesn’t get a sequel, it’s at least not because of how the movie opened.
• Gold Derby’s Tom O’Neil spins positively with mention of the tech achievements from the Watchmen crew that could get the film kudos from the Oscars, MTV Movie Awards, People’s Choice Awards, Teen Choice Awards, Saturn Awards and respective guild honors.

Glass Half-Empty:

• Cinematical’s Eugene Novikov with the other side of the coin:
  

  Watchmen did take a fairly massive Friday-to-Saturday-to-Sunday tumble, which is admittedly worrisome. And having seen the film I’m pretty confident that word of mouth will not carry it along. Not because it’s bad, necessarily, but because it’s not particularly “crowd-pleasing,” and rather inaccessible to the uninitiated.

• “The film certainly didn’t ‘bomb’ in the conventional sense, but given the hype, it did fall somewhat short,” writes G4’s Joseph Baxter, who gives his theory for why it underperformed.
• Vulture’s Lane Brown isn’t sure if it’s a hit or not, but he does wonder, “While Watchmen’s gross is pretty huge considering its bleak worldview, geeky source material, and three-hour running time, if a movie like The Dark Knight can do $160 million in a weekend, then why couldn’t this one have made a little bit more?”
• John Cairns at Film School Rejects has a perspective to combat Mendelson’s positive spin: “For all the hype and buzz, the opening weekend haul was really no better than what The Incredible Hulk pulled in last year.
• More negative perspective from Leremy Legel at RopeofSilicon.com:
  

  It opened below Twilight and Fantastic Four. No bueno. It’s going to have to scramble to hit $200m domestically and the darker fare doesn’t usually attract international audiences as well. Take Dark Knight for instance. It only made $15m in Japan, where Spider-Man cleared $50m.

• Steven Zeitchik at Risky Biz Blog weighs in on “the day after”:
  

  When is a solid opening still a disappointment? When it comes attached to “Watchmen.” After the legal battles, the fanboy hype and the boxoffice hopes, the pic came in with a $55 million opening — pretty decent for an R-rated March movie … but not that decent when you consider nothing opened against it and it was on 3,600 bloody screens.

• “It was supposed to be the biggest movie ever,” notes Richard at Gawker. “Surely Watchmen’s lower-than-hoped first dance is a big disappointment for Warner Brothers, which spent a hell of a lot of money and squawking time on the grim, turgid superhero alternate history.
• Mark at I Watch Stuff addresses the film’s marketing error:
  

  The non-stop barrage viral marketing wasn’t enough to push Zack Snyder’s latest past his previous March opener, 300, which had no viral marketing except the promise of some dudes fucking some other dudes up and someone getting foot-pushed into a hole. Now we know what brings in the crowds.

• David Poland at The Hot Blog speculates on whether or not the film will at least break even for Warner Bros.: “On the low end, the movie will still be looking to be about $20 million in the red in marketing costs, not close to putting money towards the production costs. And on the high end, marketing costs will be covered and about $0 will go towards the cost of production.”
• “If the thing can’t top next weekend’s ‘Race To Witch Mountain,’” worries Gabe Toro at The Playlist, “WB has a financial sinkhole on their hands and can only hope to score on its ‘Bigger Blue Dick Director’s Cut’.”