Was their objective to make us feel really, really awful?

Rating: 4/10 (7 March 2009)

Few movies have made me feel emotionally and mentally assaulted. "The Exorcist" and "Silence of the Lambs," in spite of their great success, made me feel victimized due to their graphic, senseless violence.
"Watchmen" made me literally hang my head in shame midway through. Shame for the filmmakers who reveled in the gratuitous violence which served no purpose other than to make the protagonists seem like psychopaths. Shame for the marketers of this movie who had my third grade students eager to see it, when it clearly is NOT FOR KIDS.
I felt shame for a culture so desensitized to violence to the point where this stuff almost seems normal.
I hope this dumb movie doesn't kill off the superhero genre. Few of the characters were super, and none of them were heroic. They were just annoying, meandering, and sociopathic.
The ultimate effect of seeing this movie is to feel demoralized, depressed, and exhausted after its too-long length. I was hoping to see a Bryan Singer movie, but instead got Quentin "Crazy" Tarantino. Body parts flying like confetti. Please send Paramount a message by avoiding this bitter piece of nihilism.