Watchmen: Not as Strong as Predicted at Box Office

Comics To Film News
Watchmen: Not as Strong as Predicted at Box Office
By Andy Frisk
March 7, 2009 - 12:21

Several sources around the internet are buzzing about the adjustment in the predicted grosses for Watchmen, the new Zack Snyder comic to film adaptation which opened Friday March 6^th. Steve Mason at bighollywood.com predicts the film to range in the $62.5 million range for opening weekend, which by some other standards appears to be a liberal estimate. Jeff Bock at E! Online is quoted stating that the midnight gross, coming in at approx. $4.6 million, “signals somewhere around $46 million to $50 million three day mark,” while many were predicting a $70 million gross. Casey Seijas at splashpage.mtv.com reports also that although Watchmen pulled $25 million on Friday, “many industry insiders-as well as numerous Warner Bros. execs- are in agreement that Watchmen stands to only pull in around $60 million for the weekend total, well short of the reigning March champ and former Zack Snyder vehicle 300…” Finally an exhibition industry insider consulted by yours truly who wished and has to remain anonymous felt that the original prediction of $75 million is more likely to be realistically realized to be “only” $58 million.

While a three day weekend gross of $58 million is nothing to sneeze at, it is definitely less than the industry wide projected $70 to $75 million. There are a number of reasons why this is the case, most simply and directly being that the film, which clocks in at 172 minutes (including trailer time) has an R rating, is not a sequel (like The Matrix Reloaded-still reigning box office champ for highest opening gross for a Rated R film of all time), and is opening when many colleges and universities across the country are beginning spring break causing their students, who might have checked in at the local multi-plex to watch Watchmen, to be at the beach buried in sand, the opposite sex, and empty beer bottles instead.

Perhaps though, there is a deeper reason to consider. Watchmen isn’t a representative of the usual type of comic book hero movie we recently have become accustomed to, with partial exception to The Dark Knight. Spider-Man, its sequels, and Iron Man, in particular were, for the most part “feel good” affairs. Yes, they had their dark moments and drama but left many viewers with an uplifting feeling as they walked out to their cars, chatting about “the cool scene where Spider-Man first learned to shoot his webs,” or the funny scene where “Tony Stark first fired up his Iron Man boots and crashed into the wall.” With The Dark Knight we still got the cool and humorous moments but also a subtle social commentary on the lengths a good man must go to in order to stop a bad man and what moral and ethical compromises he has to make, both related with balance in the film overall. With Watchmen, we don’t get many humorous moments, not counting those of the dark humor kind, and we get a plethora of social, political, ethical, and emotional conundrums and controversies conveyed with no serious or definite answers provided. Basically, with Watchmen, we get a serious movie with serious themes dressed up in spandex and long johns, and the message may be a bit to confusing to the casual moviegoer, not to mention lots of nudity and graphic violence, hitherto unheard of in a “superhero movie.”

John Milton-elitist with bad hair.

As John Milton felt that his masterwork of the English Language, Paradise Lost, would find “fit audience find, though few” ( Paradise Lost I, line 31), this is shaping up to be the case as well with Watchmen. Milton’s quote smacks of arrogant elitism and Alan Moore himself can be said to suffer from the same fault with all of his distain for Hollywood and their “ruining of his works,” etc. etc. and I detest elitism. While loving Paradise Lost and Watchmen, one cannot always fault the artists’ work for the artists’ views. Paradise Lost and Watchmen, the graphic novel and movie, can be read, understood and appreciated by all who put the work into them to grasp their various themes, meanings, ideas and lessons. I, by no means, am implying that Paradise Lost and Watchmen are on the same level, per se, but that each are representative of one of the highest achievements in their given genres. Watchmen’s “fit audience…though few” is more indicative of those who have read the graphic novel and are anxious to see Snyder’s film adaption, not those who feel they are esoterically more cool (in their minds) and smart (definitely, in their own arrogant minds) than the rest of the movie going public, but again, are simply those who were fans of the graphic novel first and foremost and want to see the film. While Watchmen is perhaps the most widely read graphic novel of all time it still doesn’t rank up against the most read novels or poems of all time, commercially or academically, mainly because of the sheer length of their existence, think any one of Shakespeare’s plays for example. The casual movie-goer, who has most likely only been exposed to a smattering of graphic novels and comic books or has only seen the recent aforementioned superhero movie adaptation, might not be ready for a superhero movie that takes on nothing but dark, foreboding themes and moral questions like Watchmen does and goes light on the humor and just plain, “feel-goodness,” of recent superhero movies. Readers of Watchmen the graphic novel are prepared for this type of experience and thusly are the “fit audience…though few” that filled the multi-plex and its multiple screen showings of the Watchmen 12:01 am show.

Alan Moore-also elitist, also bad (facial) hair.

Only time will tell, but its easy to imagine that as time progresses and more films that bring the darker side of life and storytelling to light, and have costumed heroes, vigilantes, and the like in them but pull back from the brink like The Dark Knight did, Watchmen will be looked back on as a film that was just slightly ahead of its time. It is also totally possible though that time will show Watchmen to be an ultimate failure and that we’ll get only more lighter fair like Spider-Man and Iron Man (both of which were great and definitely will not be a travesty to the art form to be continued to be made by any means) will reign supreme.

love it?/hate it?=tell it! afrisk@comicbookbin.com