After 23 years of production, with several directors and screenwriters passing through the project, and surviving a legal battle between two movie studios, a movie adaptation of Watchmen finally premiered last night. The cast and crew of Watchmen, and some non-cast and crew like Brandon Routh and Jon Voight, walked down a bright, "yellow carpet" for the premiere last night, which confused one journalist clearly unfamiliar with the material. "Yellow is clearly a theme for Watchmen," said the journalist, "Perhaps when we see the movie we'll learn why." Obviously, he didn't get see one of the hundreds of smiley face buttons or the life-size poster of Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the Comedian wearing the exact same pin.

Yet to say that the button alone is the cause for the yellow theme would be to simplify one of the densest graphic novels ever written. Screenwriter Alex Tse, who admitted that he brought a "fan's perspective" to the script, being a relative newcomer didn't win him a lot of confidence with fans. "People on the Internet [were] saying 'This guy's adapting Watchmen?'" Still, Tse was pleased with results, even if he found working on the project a bit surreal and hard to describe. "It was weird because it's one of those things that, when you grow up being a fan of, it's...I don't know, what was it like for Katie Holmes to marry Tom Cruise, you know?" I don't know, like adapting Watchmen?

Watchmen illustrator Dave Gibbons was less concerned about the long adaptation process. "It hasn't been like for twenty years I've been saying 'Please make a movie!' I mean, we've been really happy that we did a graphic novel that was well received." However, unlike Watchmen author Alan Moore, Gibbons stands behind the movie. "I can't believe how faithful it is, how well done it is, and how much respect it shows for the source material."

Rorschach actor Jackie Earle Haley concurred. "I saw it three weeks ago and I was blown away by it. There's so much going on in there. It's like the comic book. I've read that thing... I can't even tell you how many times and you always find new stuff in it."

Director Zack Snyder the man who made this improbable premiere occur, called the process of making Watchmen "hard," especially when it came to keeping the movie faithful to Alan Moore's graphic novel. "Originally when I got the script, [the studio said] 'Oh, let's update it, let's make it the war on terror," but I felt like, look, the graphic novel works for a reason, and it's much cooler to make a film that's a metaphor that makes an audience go 'Hey, you know what that reminds me of?' than it is for me to tell you what to think."

Get it now, journalist guy? Yellow is a metaphor.