[More at Atticus Finch, via Reddit]

Sam Neill as Dr Grant, in Jurassic Park
Sean Bean and Viggo Mortensen in Lord of the Rings

Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho

Gerard Butler as Leonides in 300

Lawrence Fishburne as Morpheus in The Matrix

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in Shaun of the Dead

The Harry Potter trio

Arnie in T2.

For each drinking game, we're just listing the absolute best rule of the bunch. For the whole set, click through on each link. (Unfortunately, there was no way I could test-drive all of these; I kind of wanted to keep my liver.)

General:

Drinking Game with the Sci-Fi Channels Original Movies (by Joanna Lopez, associatedcontent.com)
Best Rule: four sips if the movie looks like a poor person's version of the latest popular movie playing in theaters.
Likelihood of Intoxication: Relatively High

The Scifi/Action/Disaster Movie Drinking Game (posted by oblivion)
Best Rule: Evil clown/mime/street performer (Because, really, I had no idea that happened with any sort of regularity in sci-fi and action films.)
Second-Best Rule: Leading man named after verb or mineral (Because now I'm trying to think of an example and can't . . . You know, this game has some odd rules.)
Likelihood of Intoxication: Moderately High, especially if the plot involves a guy named Hunt Quartz preventing a syndicate of mimes from setting off their hurricane-causing doomsday machine

Spot the Scifi Cliché! A Drinking Game(by Charlie Jane Anders, here at io9)
Best Rule: The hero has a miraculous gadget (which may rhyme with ironic brew diver) allowing him to get out of literally any difficult situation with no hassle.
Score: Minus 10 points.
Drinking game: Make yourself a sonic screwdriver out of orange juice, vodka and ultrasonic vibrations. Drink the whole thing in one go.
Likelihood of Intoxication: Probably highest if you're watching a show that may rhyme with Proctor Glue (Speaking of which . . .)

Specific:

Doctor Who - The Drinking Game! (by Simon Oxwell)
Best Rule: If you see something of which 1970s anti-violence crusader Mary Whitehouse would disapprove (This is a drinking game designed for the classic series, by the way.)
Likelihood of Intoxication: Moderate, depending on which Doctor it is and how many Daleks are present.

The Batman Movie (1966) Drinking Game (Sky of Blue's Hoosier Journal of Inanity)
(Can I just say how pleased I am that someone's made a drinking game for this movie, considering how much it pretty much cries out for one?)
Best Rule: Now, here's the REAL kicker. At one point in the movie, Robin asks Batman, "You risked your life to save that riffraff in the bar?" Chug ONE ENTIRE BEVERAGE upon Batman's reply of, "They may be drinkers, Robin, but they're also human beings ..."
Second-Best Rule: "Under this garb we're perfectly ordinary Americans."
Likelihood of Intoxication: I'm going to say "Pretty High," because according to the creator of the game: "With what we were drinking, no one remained upright much past Rule 5." (Although now I just want to know what they were drinking . . .)

Drunkgate: Stargate Drinking Game (for Stargate: SG-1)
Best Rule: The team has to impersonate deities. (This includes if they are recognized as such but choose not to carry out the impersonation.)
Second-Best Rule: There are trees. (Basically, I think this rule should be added to any and all drinking games.)
Likelihood of Intoxication: Extremely High, from what I can tell (But only if you follow all the rules, of which there are about a million)

The (Original Series) Tomorrow People Drinking Game (by Beth Epstein, with submissions by Heidi Howard, Amy Houghton, and Maria Sloughter)
Best Rule: A trend in fashion or pop culture turns out to be an insidious alien plot.
Likelihood of Intoxication: Extremely Low if you follow the rule at the start of the game: "Tomorrow People don't ingest anything that will affect the functioning of their minds. Alcohol affects the mind. Therefore, Tomorrow People don't drink alcohol. This game is meant for root beer, juice, or other soft drinks, or you could use M&M's (1=sip, 2=gulp, use snack size/halloween size bags for whole drink— or two really big handfuls)." (I figure this is one of those instances in which rules were made to be broken, though.)

300 Drinking Game (SuperHeroHype Boards)
Best Rules (Aka, the only rules): Every time the word Sparta or Spartan is mentioned, you drink. Or if you want to get really plastered, you have to keep chugging during all the slow-mo.
Likelihood of Intoxication: For a game with only two rules, I feel the odds are pretty darned high.

The Battlestar Galactica Drinking Game (by Denise Martin, Los Angeles Times)
Best Rule: Sneak a swig... Every time you wonder why more people watch "Lost."
Likelihood of Intoxication: Moderate.

Supernatural Drinking Game (by Lsketch42, via YouTube)

Best Rule: I don't know that there's a best rule here, as I couldn't really get past the polka music and The Chicken Dance. That being said, I admire anyone who condenses an entire show down to the moments when you ought to be drinking.
Likelihood of Intoxication: If you watch the drinking game video, you're probably just going to have to chug for a couple minutes straight, so I figure your odds of being buzzed by the end are up there. (You will have also endured a few minutes of the aforementioned Chicken Dance music, so I think you've earned the buzz.) If actually watching the show, with all the extraneous plot and stuff, your chances of intoxication plummet pretty severely, I think.

KryptonSite's Smallville Drinking Game! (via KryptonSite)
Best Rule: You count more than a five second awkward silence between Clark and Lana.
Likelihood of Intoxication: Pretty Darned High
(Then again, here is another, which gives you new rules every time you refresh the page.)

The Star Trek Drinking Game
Best Rule: A newly discovered planet is "Much like Earth"
Second Best Rule: Kirk violates the prime directive (Mostly because I thought it said "detective" for a minute. Now that's an episode that should have happened.)
Likelihood of Intoxication: Pretty High (I'm interested to see how well it holds up in the movie coming out next week.)

Heroes: The Drinking Game (Miss Geeky)
(But you can find others here and here. As well as about a hundred other places.)
Best Rule: Mohinder saying "evolution", "mankind", or "cure". (I think you could pass out on this rule alone.)
Likelihood of Intoxication: Pick any one of the games and you can get really wasted. Combine all of them, and you're dead.

Firstly, to placate the nervous: Yes, $55.7 million is a lot of money; Watchmen's first weekend is the third-largest March opening of all time (even including adjustments for inflation), second largest IMAX opening (behind The Dark Knight), 12th largest superhero movie opening (20th when adjusted for inflation) and 6th largest R-rated opening (14th when adjusted for inflation), none of which is to be laughed at. Furthermore, Warners domestic distribution president Dan Fellman has said that the studio is "pleased" with the opening weekend. The New York Daily News is even predicting that the movie's success will usher in even more superhero movies - although, admittedly, the examples it cites were all greenlit before the movie opened.

However.

(And you knew there was a "however," didn't you?)

Even ignoring the fact that all the talk of Watchmen beating Zack Snyder's previous movie, 300 to take the March crown was optimistic at best (Although I'm unconvinced by the "The length of the movie meant that it never had a chance" arguments, I have to admit; Watchmen is only 13 minutes longer than The Dark Knight, after all, and the latter outperformed the former by more than 100% per theatre in its opening weekend), there are still signs that Watchmen's performance may cause headaches for its producers after all. The worrying drops of the three days from the movie's weekend - $25 million to $19 million to $11 million - is noteworthy, although whether it's because of negative word of mouth or simply what happens when all the fans see the movie on opening night and then you're left with an somewhat-disinterested general public is open to question. We'll get to see in following days, and especially this coming weekend, whether non-fans are taking to the movie (as well as, perhaps, how much repeat business the movie gets from its most eager supporters).

More worrying to those involved now, however, is whether Watchmen will make any money for Warners at all in its initial run; the Hollywood Reporter isn't sure that it will:

Judging by a NYU's professor's regression model on how opening weekend box office numbers predict total movie grosses, and adjusting downward due to expected higher-than-normal opening weekend geek fandom, we'd expect this film to eventually gross about, or just above, $130 million domestically when all is said and done (Paramount holds overseas rights). Funny enough, that happens to be the same figure as the reported budget of the film.

That's not factoring in the money spent on promotion or the payout that Warners owes to Fox as a result of the lawsuit, of course (which may go as high as 8.5% of Warner's take). While Devin Chud is right that pretty much all movies make money at some point of their existence - especially considering the inevitability of numerous "Director's Cut" versions on DVD in the future selling to the hardcore fanbase - there's no escaping the fact that, if the Reporter's projections are right and this movie doesn't turn a profit for Warners in theaters, Watchmen's performance can definitely be viewed as a disappointment.

All of this may be beside the point for some; there is definitely an argument to be made that like it or not, the fact that the movie was made at all could be considered an achievement, and a more important one than box office could ever be (Man, where were those people when Speed Racer tanked?), but it'd be shortsighted at best to think that Watchmen's performance is entirely unimportant or won't affect other unknown comic properties. For now, we're all watching Watchmen... if only to see whether the movie will, accidentally, have as big an effect on superhero movies as the comic did on superhero comics.

I'm not arguing that there shouldn't be an adaptation of the book at all - Let's face it, writer Alan Moore has made that case quite well all on his own, thanks very much - but that the sheer bizarre weight of excitement and expectation about the movie is overwhelming and offputting. The sheer fangasm that followed the release of the first trailer, with website after website putting up panel-to-frame comparisons to show just how faithful the movie is to the comic was insane; I don't care how faithful the movie looks to the comic, it'll still be unable to be replicate the level of depth of writing and experience of the comic, even with the already-announced spin-off DVD of Tales Of The Black Freighter filling in the gaps that they're creating by only focusing on the shiny shiny superhero stories.

Obviously, the hardcore fanbase wants the movie to be a success in every way, for probably the wrong reasons. I can't shake the feeling that there's this uncomfortable undercurrent to the excitement that goes something like "Watchmen the comic made everyone else realize that superheroes aren't kids stuff, so now the movie can make everyone realize that superhero movies aren't kids stuff either," missing out that... well, we already have The Dark Knight, thanks very much. There's a level of worship that surrounds Watchmen (the comic), some kind of lack of critical perspective brought on by its historical importance, that tends to make people realize that, for all of its successes (On a technical level, it's almost perfect, and still unmatched in its ambition to use the medium, for example), it's not actually as perfect as many people think it is. If Snyder really stays as faithful to the source material as he claims, how will modern audiences react to the suspect gender-politics, heavy-handed party-politics or ridiculous ending that seemed so daring two decades ago, but now seem clunky and awkward next to Chris Nolan's more complex (if ultimately as unsatisfying) Batmovie?

Not that any of that seems to worry Warner Bros., who seem less concerned with the content of the movie as much as the fact of its very existence. Comic-Con was owned by the hype for the movie this year, from the banner above the entrance to the line of fans waiting since 2am to get into Friday's panel just in case there was any extra footage like they'd heard rumors of. The trailer shows just how Warners are trying to make this seem like a massive movie "event" instead of just another comic book movie: "From the visionary director of 300, the most celebrated graphic novel of all time," it says in between explosions and punches and people yelling in outfits that give no-one unfamiliar with the book any reason to understand why they should be bothered. Yes, it's only the first trailer, but it seems to sum up the entire, insular, advertising campaign so far: "It's just like the comic! Look at the way the posters recreate the advertisements for the comic! You've not read the comic? Well, it's awesome, just trust us! Don't ask any more questions!"

Don't get me wrong; I would love for the Watchmen movie to be great, and to be proven completely wrong with all this cynicism. But so far, instead of seeing anything to get us genuinely excited, we've been shown slavish devotion instead of creativity and been told that we should want to see the movie because it's very important, and that's really not enough. Who watches the Watchmen? All of us, right now; but here's hoping that there's something worth watching when it finally arrives. Watchmen images from Empire Magazine via SpoilerTV-Movies.

Quark is mostly a Star Trek spoof, even down to the original series' sound effects, and the Vulcan-esque first officer, a plant who debates logic vs. emotion endlessly with Captain Quark. Somehow, even though Quark is the galaxy's greatest hero, he ends up commanding a garbage ship and getting into hilarious mishaps in each of the eight episodes. His crew also includes a cowardly android, an androgyne who alternates between extreme manliness and extreme girliness, and two incredibly hot blonde female clones in hotpants. There are still no DVDs, but you can watch the whole thing online here.

It makes sense that the Sci Fi Channel would want to pick up Sanctuary, since Tapping is one of its biggest stars, and producer Damian Kindler also worked on Stargate SG-1. The network ordered 13 episodes of the series, which will incorporate most of the eight 15-minute webisodes Kindler has already shot, but with improved CGI effects. Some characters, including Tapping's assistant Will Zimmerman (Robin Dunne), will have an expanded role.

The show's move to cable is a victory for direct-to-web programming, as well as a sign that all-CGI sets, in the style of Sin City or 300, can work on TV as well. This time next year, you can expect to see hundreds of online shows featuring cult TV actors emoting in front of pretty CGI pictures. [Hollywood Reporter]

In the 12-issue series, occasional panels are devoted to a young boy sitting next to a newstand, reading a comic book about pirates called "Tales of the Black Freighter." Over the course of the series, it becomes clear that the book is meant to serve as a metaphor for the events occurring in the main Watchmen storyline, but it's also beautifully written as a standalone story that holds its own, even after repeated readings.

Director Zack Snyder told audiences at this year's Comic-Con International that he'd be including that story in the feature film. However, Warners has threatened to make it the first thing on the chopping block in the vein of keeping the film short. Although after they'd seen what he'd already filmed, he was given the go-ahead to film it as a special feature for the DVD.

Now it looks like Snyder will be doing it as an animated film, and the studio will be sending it out to store shelves just as Watchmen starts hitting the big screen. How will Snyder be able to keep his focus on making a good movie while working on this direct-to-DVD project? We're already concerned that Watchmen is getting short shrift because of Snyder's high on visuals, low on writing style (see his 300 as evidence of this).

Plus you'll have to buy a movie ticket and a DVD to get the whole story. Darn double-dipping. Still, we're gonna do it.

The Watchmen Universe Expands [CHUD]