Watchmen

In a gritty and alternate 1985, the glory days of costumed vigilantes have been brought to a close by a government crackdown. But after one of the masked veterans is brutally murdered, an investigation into the killer is initiated. The reunited heroes set out to prevent their own destruction, but in doing so they uncover a sinister plot that puts all of humanity in grave danger.

Snyder's adaptation sits at the center of a genuine critical war, not a mild split — roughly half of reviewers found it a bold, visually arresting achievement in faithful adaptation, while the other half argued that faithfulness was precisely the problem, producing a film suffocated by its own reverence. The argument that defined reception was whether treating Alan Moore's source material as near-sacred scripture was an act of devotion or a creative abdication, and that question still divides audiences today.