Everyone expected Watchmen but no, I didn’t see Watchmen, the one film everyone thought would play BNAT X. Two years ago, director Zak Snyder came to town and showed off an unfinished version of 300 to the crowd at Octo-BNAT, so everyone assumed that he’d be back to dazzle us with an unfinished version of his Watchmen adaptation. It didn’t happen. For some attendees, this was a massive let-down. For me, it was just another BNAT surprise.

See, the trick to Butt-Numb-A-Thon is that you have to love movies. I mean really, really love movies. I mean love them so much you’re prepared to commit to a two-day marathon screening without knowing a single thing you’re about to see. It’s how Aint-It-Cool-News.com “Headgeek” Harry Knowles celebrates his birthday every year–by filling an Alamo Drafthouse auditorium with film buffs and subjecting his willing prisoners to a full twenty-four hours of movies. Some are unreleased studio blockbusters, some are vintage gems, some are trashy exploitation exercises, but all of them are films Harry hand-picks to appeal to a diverse group of critics, fanboys, celebrities, and geeks. As far as the unreleased stuff goes, I was hoping for The Wolf Man (which keeps getting moved around the release calendar) and Friday the 13th (which I was 99% sure would play, due to how soon it’s being released, the fact that director Marcus Nispel gave Harry a cameo in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and its connection with Austin, since it was filmed on the outskirts of town). Instead, we got The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Valkyrie, My Bloody Valentine 3D, I Love You, Man, and a sprawling, exhaustive four and a half hour version of Che.

That’s not to say I didn’t see any of Watchmen. I actually got to see the first twenty-five minutes of the film, introduced by Rorschach himself, actor Jackie Earle Haley, but it was just one of eight presentations from various studios peddling their wares. These extended trailers and raw footage almost gave the event the feel of an exhibitor’s expo. Would I have preferred to see a whole film in the time used to show out-of-context scenes and exclusive trailers? Of course, but, on the other hand, I wouldn’t have gotten to see any of Pixar’s Up footage–footage that proved to be the highlight of the whole event.

Monsters Inc. director Pete Docter was nervous to show the rough 45-minute opening of Up to an audience this size, apologizing for its temp score and many unfinished scenes. What we saw was about one-third finished animation, one-third unfinished animation with no lighting or texture rendering, and one-third storyboard drawings, and what we saw was amazing. Every beat of it worked–every gag, every emotional moment–even in this raw state. It was a great way to see the true power of Pixar’s storytelling. These guys aren’t just modern masters because of their technical animation prowess; these guys know how to tell an imaginative, entertaining story. The trailer for Up (in theatres now with Bolt) barely begins to hint at the scope of this adventure, and May 29th can’t get here fast enough. Docter looked like a proud papa afterward, with all the crowd cheering, and most of us on our feet. Up looks to be another home run for Pixar.

Pity the directors of Dreamworks’ Monster Vs. Aliens then, who had to follow Pixar’s awe-inspiring presentation with their new animated, star-studded 3-D action-comedy. The 3-D effects were good enough to offer us a few minutes of distraction, but this was a little like serving a Big Mac after a steak dinner. We saw two extended sequences. In the first one, the President (played by Stephen Colbert) greets a giant alien spacecraft unsuccessfully, and has to rely on a contingency plan that introduces the monsters of the film’s title. The 3-D here was decent, but the gags fell mostly flat, and Colbert seemed wasted. The second sequence was much stronger, picking up during an extended chase sequence where the monsters try to prevent the spacecraft from destroying the Golden Gate Bridge. The personalities of the monster characters seemed well-developed, and the action was as well-orchestrated as any superhero blockbuster film. Even the 3-D in the second segment was stronger, playing into the action, and making all the shots of mass destruction even more exciting.

Coraline, a stop-motion fantasy from Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick, didn’t seem like a film that needed 3-D to enhance any of its unusual story. Most of what we saw consisted of the blue-haired title character discovering an alternate, dreamlike version of her regular, everyday life through a mysterious portal. I’m not the biggest Neil Gaiman fan, but Coraline looks interesting–alternately whimsical and nightmarish. I’m much more interested in seeing it now than I was a week ago. The 3-D effects were nice, but this appears to be a film you could still enjoy it to its fullest in regular 2-D, based on the weird imagination on display.

No amount of gimmicks are going to get me interested in Push at this point. Star Chris Evans, in a prerecorded introduction, showed off two clips from director Paul McGuigan’s upcoming “telekinetics vs. psychics” action film Push. Both clips were extrapolations of scenes from the trailer–a fish market showdown and a psychic gunfight where the guns float beside the shooters instead of in their hands. To me, Push looks pretty dopey, but this might play well to those that love leave-your-brain-at-the-door action movies like Wanted. In the few minutes we saw, there was a lot of screaming, a lot of stuff blowing up, and a lot of unquestionably silly-looking special effects.

The special effects were better in the footage we saw of Alex Proyas’s Knowing. This Nicolas Cage thriller looked a little bit like Mercury Rising in its trailers, but the scene we saw showed a much more somber tone than that middling Bruce Willis vehicle. Cage plays a guy that deciphers a code that predicts when major tragedies will occur, and seems unable to stop any of them from happening, or at least the tragedy we saw, which included the derailing of a subway train. The amount of death and destruction in this short clip was staggering. The effects, particularly the animation of the throngs of people as they are mowed down by the train, had a strange, somewhat rubbery look, but it didn’t affect the overall impact of seeing that type of carnage. I can’t judge the movie based on the one clip we saw, and Cage has been more miss than hit lately, but I’d like to see him make something worthwhile, even if it might prove to be too dark for a wide audience.

Speaking of an actor taking a dark turn, Observe and Report looks like Paul Blart, Mall Cop meets Falling Down or maybe Mallrats meets Taxi Driver. Seth Rogen plays a mall security guard who takes it upon himself to wage a one-man war on a flasher who traumatized a female mall employee (Anna Faris). The trailer we saw was more intriguing than it was ha-ha funny, with Rogen playing against type as someone a little mentally unbalanced and rougher around the edges than usual. The trailer’s tone was reminiscent of Pineapple Express, but it was missing any memorable comedy gags. It almost had a 1970’s style action-comedy vibe, like this is the kind of project that Alan Arkin or James Caan might’ve starred in back in 1974.

McG took the stage to show off a ten-minute unfinsihed “trailer” from Terminator: Salvation. The film, even in this extended clip, still looks like the current trailers–very effects-driven, lots of ’splosions. Christian Bale alone is not a selling point for me, and McG really emphasized Bale’s involvement on every level of the production. To that, I say “so what?” Bale is not a filmmaker. He’s an actor. Just because he was in a massively successful comic book movie, doesn’t mean he’s Jesus (who was also not a filmmaker). The stuff they showed looked good, but I don’t hate Terminator 3 (actually, I downright like it), so maybe my opinion on this is semi-worthless. McG was alternately pleading, apologetic, hostile, defensive, and sheepish with the crowd, and sometimes all of those things at the same time, without provocation. The man takes internet criticism extremely personal, which is hardly ever a good idea, and his desire to win geek street cred feels incredibly misguided. McG should relax, make good movies, then let the geeks come to him.

The most intriguing bit of info in the clip was some gobbeldy-gook about John Connor being part of a prophecy, the chosen one to save humanity. I can only assume this means Connor travels to the future at some point in the film. I don’t see how there can be a prophecy about him otherwise, especially since nothing like this has ever been mentioned before. On another level, this prophecy stuff rings some internal alarms about the direction they’re taking the film, and I have no desire to see Connor spelled out as some kind of literal post-apocalyptic Messiah. I really hope they keep mysticism out of the Terminator series.

And what about Watchmen? Well, I seem to be the one of the few dissenting voices amongst the small herd that have seen the opening of the film. It was more cartoony-looking than I expected. One of the first things you see in the film is a close-up of a lousy excuse for Richard Nixon. The prosthetic make-up and the performance are just plain bad, and it makes for a jarring first impression. I wasn’t a fan of Nat King Cole’s “Unforgettable” playing over the lengthy slow-motion fight between The Comedian and his assailant. It didn’t add any subtext to the scene, if that’s what Snyder was attempting, and it really didn’t strike me as something The Comedian would put on to relax.

However, Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changing” is a perfect choice for the opening credits sequence. The song plays in full over a three-dimensional photo montage of great moments from the alternate historical timeline of the film, familiarizing the audience with the universe they’re about to be immersed in. After the credits, Hollis Mason reminisces with Dan (Patrick Wilson looks EXACTLY like the Dave Gibbons drawing), then Dan heads home to find Rorschach has broken into his place. Rorschach tells Dan about The Comedian’s death and exits through the tunnel where Dan keeps all of his old Night Owl equipment.

The footage follows the comics to a fault, and I’m curious if the actors ever adjust to the dialogue as the film progresses, because they didn’t here. I love Alan Moore, but comics are not film. Reading words is different than hearing words. My worst fear is that the film will be large and hollow, with stilted dialogue, phony sets, and obtuse characters–that it will look like Watchmen, but it won’t come alive like Watchmen. I hope that’s not the case; I really and truly do.