This videogame-esque film about the popular superhero graphic novel "The Watchmen" started off with a shot of one of the stars "The Comedian/Edward Blake" (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) smoking a cigar.  It is followed by a series of differently angled shots of basically the same thing - The Comedian smoking his cigar.  Though he is a bit of a jerk, his charisma and blatant honesty made him one of the more entertaining and empathetic characters.  Matt Frewer plays the cancer-afflicted supervillain Moloch the Mystic, and in the scene where he's found dead in his house, there is a huge pile of smoked cigarettes in an ashtray by his hand (which suggests that he had smoked all of them).  The dwarf crime boss "Big Figure" is played by Danny Woodburn, who essentially has a cigar clamped in his mouth for all the scenes with him included.  Fidel Castro was played by John Kobylka, and I suppose they felt he had to portray in his 2 seconds with a cigar as well. The perceived messages were mostly pro-tobacco such as "Power/Wealth", "Fun", "Cool", etc.  Though some were "Bad guy" and "Tension", the pros certainly outweighed the cons; I doubt anyone would've seen tobacco portrayed as something negative, especially when the more interesting/intriguing (with the exception of Rorschach, who thankfully spent the majority of his time masked, therefore smoke-free as well) were the primary characters associated with tobacco.  Therefore, the black lung award is well-deserved in my opinion.