Qui custodiet ipsos custodes?

Each text is simultaneously discrete and porous. By "discrete" I mean that an intelligible text can seen in isolation, as a stand-alone. For example, I assume for "The Watchmen" to reach a mass market the filmmakers will not rely on the viewer's knowledge of the comic book, but will hopefully reward, not frustrate such cultural capital. Any text that is an adaptation must by definition be "porous", it has referents to others, is an intertext, "meaning" flows like a current between versions so that we can fomulate ideas like "the book was better than the movie", "the movie revealed a homoerotic chargebetween Frodo and Sam that was only latent in the book". Other intertexts with Lord Of The Rings are the parodies that followed in its wake, Peter Jackson's other films, Tolkiens' other books, etc.
We gain pleasure from the connections and comparisions and can tease it out for as long as our particular cultural competence will allow, or we can just enjoy the film on it's own merits (or lack thereof, demerits?). As rewarding as it is to chase back links, see the original etc. everyone can gain cultural capital in a matter that they see fit.