Following last week's first-ever public screening of Zack Snyder's Watchmen movie — presumably after the Portlanders in attendance had changed their pants — reviews of the film immediately began to pop up online. How did the oft-maligned 300 director fare in adapting history's most geek-beloved graphic novel for the screen? Great, apparently! Oh, but he changed the ending.

Or did he? According to reports — spoilers ahead! — unlike the comic book's finale, in which New York City is destroyed by a giant exploding multidimensional squid (yes, it is ridiculous), Snyder's ending has villain Ozymandias blowing up various world cities with a machine designed to mimic the nuclear powers of Manhattan. According to Comic Book Resources, though, two endings were shot and completed (including the squid one) and the entire Portland test screening was a sinister Warner Bros. experiment to see how fans would respond to any deviations from Moore's original text. The near-unanimous reaction? Snyder's ending is better! Seriously, at this point they can put a pair of pants on Doctor Manhattan and cast Shia LaBeouf as Rorschach's greaser sidekick — THIS MOVIE LOOKS AWESOME.

Lying In The Gutters [Comic Book Resources]
Watchmen Ending May Be Closer to the Comic Than You Think [io9]
New 'Watchmen' Ending: A Zach Snyder Fakeout? [Playlist]

Earlier: Did Zack Snyder Change the Ending of ‘Watchmen’ to Make it More Like ‘The Dark Knight’?