Branded "unfilmable", Watchmen - the cult graphic novel about a group of retired, flawed superheroes - has finally made it to the big screen. From the second the opening credits roll, it is clear Watchmen is not your typical superhero movie.

An ageing vigilante, The Comedian, is attacked in his high-rise apartment before being hurled 10 storeys to his death... in graphic slow motion. What follows is a two-and-three-quarter hour epic that centres on an outlawed group of deeply flawed former heroes as a Cold War Doomsday clock inches ever closer to midnight and nuclear apocalypse.

First published in 12 parts by DC Comics in 1986, Watchmen was written by the British team of Alan Moore and illustrator Dave Gibbons.

Numerous attempts to film the book, included by Time magazine in its list of the Top 100 books of the 20th Century, failed to get off the ground. Respected directors like Terry Gilliam, Paul Greengrass and Darren Aronofsky were all involved at various stages. And legal wranglings between rival film studios over the adaptation rights threatened to wreck the project altogether. So it has fallen to Zack Snyder, the man who helmed 2007's surprise hit 300, to succeed where others have failed.

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