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Everyone on the Internet seems to have some sort of opinion on Watchmen, and I'm no different (it sucked). Aside from certain atrocious aesthetic choices (Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" will ring a bell with anyone who has seen it), the film's major flaw is in its failure to approximate the book's visual style. Sure, certain shots look just like panels, but Snyder casually ignores Gibbons's greatest contribution to comic book art, which was an astonishing (and not equaled until over a decade later with the publishing of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Boy On Earth) sense of rhythm. In his complete failure to build any sort of momentum over the course of the film, they couldn't have gone further to avoid recreating the experience of reading Moore's original text.

Internet-dwelling creature that you are, you've probably already read that a number of other talented directors were at point attached to direct the film (Terry Gilliam, Paul Greengrass, Darren Aronofsky), but when it gets right down to it, I don't think that any of them really had it in them. Here's why.

Gilliam could get some of the wackier bits down, but we haven't seen anything to suggest that he could direct action. Greengrass might be able to get the political aspects, but his camera-style is so unique (and so antithetical to the book) that it's hard to imagine him satisfying fans. And Aronofsky? Maybe. I doubt he'd get the humor. For a while I thought that only a post-Apocalypse Now Coppola could have done it, but this week, right after I saw it, the absolute perfect choice to direct the film occurred to me.

Robert Altman.

Granted, the man is dead, which would preclude him from working in a way that it has not encumbered most musical artists. But think about it. I almost didn't believe it at first myself, but it makes more sense the more I think about it.

First of all, the complaint about the film that I seem to be hearing most frequently is that some of the performances were weak, with Malin Akerman being singled out (to be fair, I thought she deserved an Oscar in comparison to Matthew Goode's sluggish, boring Ozymandias). I can think of no one who can direct an ensemble film better than Altman (try as hard as Paul Thomas Anderson did in the late 90s), and, contrary to what my friends have insisted, I don't think that he would have been too high-brow for the material at all. For God's sake, the man made Popeye, which was goofier and more comic booky than even this past weekend's explosion of inanity.

Secondly, I feel that he would be able to approximate Alan Moore's visual style better than any other director working in the modern era. For those of you who have read more than one book by him (if you haven't, you should; the man easily defends his title as greatest author working in comic books), you should be able to recognize his work when you see it. Most importantly, the man always has a whole bunch of things going on in a single page. Consider the famous opening page of Watchmen.

Do you know anyone else who jams that much in there? Now consider the ending of Nashville, considered by many (including myself) to be Altman's greatest work. Be warned, it does basically give away the ending of the movie.

It's not the perfect representation of his style (I couldn't find the opening traffic jam sequence), but I think that it does a serviceable job of introducing Altman to those unfamiliar with his work.

There's probably no real telling of what would constitute the best possible film version, as there are so many fans from so many different spectrums that they could never all be satisfied. The most important thing, though, is that the film (and there will be more of them, I'm convinced) forge something of its own identity, or at least try to foster some sense of mystery in those who had already read the book. I think that Altman was probably the only person capable of doing that, as well as the only person who would have bought into ‘adult superhero' conceit enough to make it fly. Suffice it to say, I don't think this version did, and I'd be curious to see what would be changed by letting someone else up at bat.