Dr. Manhattan:
More Man Than America Can Handle?
I’ve yet to write down any of my thoughts about the Watchmen movie, but one thing that I couldn’t help but thinking that night in the theater is “that’s a lot of penis.” I was first surprised that there was any dick at all, but then I was surprised by how much they put in there.
Don’t get me wrong, they needed to see Doc Manhattan’s junk at some point in the story. It’s an important character point that Manhattan sheds more and more clothing as he becomes more closed off from human society. But once you show it the first time, you don’t need to keep showing it. There are ways to convey that a character is completely naked without showing their bits and pieces all the time. A strategically placed arm or changing the framing of the shot slightly is all you need. Take a look at Dave Gibbons’ art that I’ve included here. Showing Manhattan’s meat and potatoes all the time is just lazy filmmaking. Or maybe director Zack Snyder just has a thing for Doc Manhattan’s blue-helmeted soldier of love.
Why do I bring this up? Well apparently, Watchmen is tanking at the box office. It’s estimated that this weekend’s ticket sales will have dropped 70% from last weekend, and the movie is now on track to make less at the box office than it cost to produce and market the thing. And the radioactive one-eyed monster is being blamed.
But was there really any marketing other than “this is the best comic ever” and “you see a blue guy’s wiener a lot?” Billy Crudup was on the Daily Show last week and all he and Jon Stewart talked about was Manhattan’s schlong. For like five minutes. In the context of the comic it’s crucial, but without that context, seeing an enormous blue wang is just funny. Unless you understand why you’re seeing someone’s crotch rocket, there are only two possible reactions: laughter or disgust. And it doesn’t help that it’s a realistically-rendered CGI trouser snake instead of the harmlessly phallic phallus that Dave Gibbons drew.
And so in a roundabout way I’ve gotten around to addressing my major problem with the Watchmen movie. It seems to me like the filmmakers understood what they need to put into the movie, but they didn’t understand why they needed to put it in there. In the comic, Manhattan puts his main vein on display because he gives up on humanity and the social niceties that come with it. In the movie, Manhattan shows his dingle-dangle when he gives up on humanity. But there’s no expressed cause-and-effect there.
Likewise, the revelation that the Comedian is Laurie’s father lacks any emotional depth in the movie. In the comic, we get to feel Laurie’s emptiness over never knowing her real father and her complete contempt for the man that tried to rape her mother. The moment that she realizes the man she hates more than anyone in the world is responsible for her coming into it is quite possibly the most powerful moment in the comic, and the power behind that moment is what convinces Manhattan to return to Earth. So when the revelation falls flat in the movie, the entire reason that Manhattan decides to return to Earth is shot. If you’re not going to build up to that moment, then what’s the point? You might as well just change the entire ending of the comic while you’re at it (oh wait…).
Just to clarify, I didn’t hate the Watchmen movie. I tried to go in with the mindset that it couldn’t possibly be as good as the comic, so don’t expect it to be as good as the comic. But the thing was so damn close to the comic in so many respects (enough lines were taken from the comic that Alan Moore should have gotten a co-writing credit for the movie…not that he’d take it) that I just couldn’t get past the comparison. The movie was good, because if you take an amazing story and half-ass it, you’re still probably going to end up with something watchable. Kind of like the Dawn of the Dead remake or 300.
I agree with pretty much everything you wrote.
It is sad that this movie is being catergoriezed as the having more schlong than Boogie Nights! That much penis puts in behind the eightball from the git-go.
I really don’t see what the big deal with a penis is. Half the world has one. The other half has had one inside them. If they had gone with the clever-cover-up angle over being natural about it, I would have been more distracted by wondering “are they going to show it this time?” and “what trick will they use?” than just watching the movie. (See: Beowulf.)
In fact, I applaud the movie for having the balls to show balls in a context other than “ROFL BALLS ON FILM!”
I really don’t understand the complaints about the penis. It seems that you did see it a lot in the comic books, themselves, and besides which, I can only really recall maybe two scenes where I particularly noticed it. I didn’t think it was obtrusive at all. It was just there. Sure, if it were a regular guy walking around with him jimmy dangling, it might have been distracting, but Manhattan is such an impressive visual on his own that the baloney pony is pretty much the last thing you notice about him.
Just don’t see this at all having any baring upon the box office performance of this film, which is, by the way, fine for the sort of story it is. “Tanking” at the box office is one of these crazy hyperboles that run rampant on the Internet when any big budget movie doesn’t make Spider-Man money.
I’d say “tanking” is a pretty apt description of a movie that drops over 60% in its second week and looks like it won’t make enough money to cover its budget.
It will easily cover its budget, especially once you factor in eventual DVD sales.
Listen, Watchmen is not a crowd pleaser and was never meant to be–it’s a downer, plain and simple, with an R rating and a whole bunch of high concepts being constantly tossed at an audience that expects “super-hero” films to be straight-forward morality plays.
On top of that, there are reviewers like you who can’t avoid carping about real trivialities like Dr. Manhattan’s blue penis flopping about, as though it’s representative of some imagined larger problem in the film. Zack Snyder gets 90% of it right, but by all means, the fact that there’s just a little too much penis in the film must mean that he fundamentally doesn’t understand Watchmen. Puh-lease.
This is all the result of the fact that you’re attempting to explain “poor box office performance” that isn’t at all difficult to explain.
My point is that you can’t judge box office performance for a film like this based upon expectations created by films like Spider-Man and Ironman. They may have similar trappings, but they’re intrinsically opposed in so many ways, that you’re comparing apples and oranges. Watchmen will, in the end, prove itself a solid, if not spectacular, performer. Only on the Internet does that qualify it as a disaster. The only real surprise here is that some people, apparently, expected this story to make major bank.