Should We Have Been Rooting For ‘Watchmen’ All Along?

With “Watchmen” drawing lukewarm to hostile reviews, and with its box office take finishing well below the $150 million production budget (and a not-much-rosier picture overseas), it’s safe to say that, ignoring the meager profit the film will eventually show somewhere down the line, the film is a disappointment. We’re now going to be living in a film world where executives will say things like “We don’t want another ‘Watchmen’ on our hands.” The comparisons to “Blade Runner” by the film’s fans are more than appropriate, in that you won’t get a green light by comparing your film’s appeal to a Warner Bros. catalog tile that took years of re-releases to show a return on a hefty investment.

But what if “Watchmen” was a success? Here are five positive factors that would’ve resulted from Zack Snyder’s adaptation scoring big at the box office…

1) As argued excellently by Devin of CHUD.com, “Watchmen” was the movie Zack Snyder wanted to make: While it was a success or a failure on other’s terms, it’s the perfect representation of what he wanted to accomplish onscreen. Given Snyder’s seriously slack acumen, he was a puzzling choice for the material in the first place, but it’s telling that WB had a property they had valued for over twenty years and decided to give so much freedom to Snyder anyway. Filmmakers notice this fidelity, and in a world where some openly shit-talk their former employers, WB has to be looking mighty appetizing for, if not low budget auteurist, at least big name studio guns who have the an appropriate vision and ideas behind the camera.

2) The star system takes another hit: Out of all the fan-dreamed casts for “Watchmen” compiled over the years, the one Warner Bros. hired has to have the lowest wattage. It’s not that these were cheap, fresh up-and-comers, Channing Tatum’s or Megan Fox’s- these were people who were playing the fourth or fifth lead in terrible romantic comedies and television shows no one was watching. As much of a fan someone would be of, say, Matthew Goode’s role, they’d have to acknowledge he wasn’t a guy whose phone was ringing off the hook. If “Watchmen” hit big, and it would have to be one of the top grossers of the last few years to do so, it would be a further blow to the already-dying notion that you need a name to score a hit movie. Not to mention it would have increased exposure for one of the cast’s shining lights, Billy Crudup- there’s a guy who has long deserved his big break.

3) Embrace the R-rating: “Watchmen” certainly earned its R-rating, featuring many of the more gruesome details of the source while also grossly embellishing others. However, the R-rating also suggested that, for once, this kiddie genre of superheroes-on-film was being taken seriously, a genre playground where sometimes monstrously flawed characters were given a chance to explore their humanity. In the increasingly safe world of superhero filmmaking, where the top subgenre of the post-9/11 world has helped render modern audiences docile and complicit in the moral absolutes that would allow a slovenly cowboy infant to be re-elected to a second term, a little bit of color, even if it was mostly gratuitous red, was appreciated. Perhaps the WB dropped the ball on marketing this to adults instead of comic book manchildren- an approach with more integrity but also more commercial uncertainty. But if “Watchmen” was the zeitgeist film it needed to be, we’d have serious filmgoers beginning to look at these kiddie heroics in a different way.

4) For The Love Of Alan Moore: Many of the more undemanding audience members who had never previously read “Watchmen” had to have their interest piqued by the film. If there’s one achievement of the film, it’s that it rewards the curiosity of those wondering just exactly what this comic was. WB planned a massive Internet campaign geared towards those compelled to pick up “Watchmen” the graphic novel for the first time, and the hope is that the film spurred people to stop acknowledging comics as the realm of the kiddie superheroics. For one, it might also give them a chance to embrace the idiosyncratic work of Alan Moore, and increased exposure for such a maligned art form is warranted. Read a comic, people- you might learn somethin’.

5) Big Blue Dick: “Watchmen” might be the biggest studio production to ever prominently feature a male character nude for an extended period of time. While penis exposure of Billy Crudup’s Dr Manhattan was conservative within the film, there’s no doubt it was definitely on the minds of plenty of filmgoers, some of whom reacted with typically juvenile distaste. But male nudity, and shame over male sexuality, remains an MPAA lightning rod, and since we all know ratings are driven by cash (who else can explain torture porn pictures skirting X but getting away with an R almost every week?), “Watchmen”‘s big blue dick success would likely pave the way for a bit more lax standards over full frontal male nudity. While there’s no active campaign to get more male genitalia onscreen, it’s a bigger picture issue, an attempt to deflate America’s ratings board puritanism that causes apoplexy when someone grabs a breast, not when they stab a breast.