But it makes me wonder: How should one go about judging a Mopologetic movie? How does Witnesses stack up against that last noteworthy anti-Mormon film? Folks might remember September Dawn, which came out in 2007 and was a re-telling of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, which has always been an especially tough pill for the apologists to swallow. You may have forgotten, though, just how much the MOpologists exulted in the movie's general awfulness. Dr. Peterson himself once said that he would judge the success of Witnesses primarily on whether or not they recouped their investment and were able to make a second film. That could still happen, thanks to streaming or other distribution deals, but the concept of the "box office bomb" is defined by whether or not a movie makes back its budge at the box office. In that sense, both September Dawn and (most likely) Witnesses will wind up being remembered as "box office flops." Viewed from that angle, the movies are tied.
There are other ways of thinking about this, though. The ratings aggregator site, Rotten Tomatoes has been mentioned a lot lately. Right now, Witnesses has an audience score of 86%, though as some have pointed out, this number is likely inflated by Mopologists and their supporters, who merely want the movie to have a high rating, and/or who have some stake in the movie "looking good." Hardcore bias, in other words, is inflating the numbers.
September Dawn, meanwhile, has an audience rating of 49%, but interestingly, it actually has a critical rating (normally the measure by which a movie is formally dubbed "Fresh" or "Rotten"). Witnesses does not have a single critic review. September Dawn is "rotten," with a 16% critical rating--it was widely panned by critics. So, this is a tough call. Witnesses has a completely bogus audience rating whereas September Dawn has more than 5,000 audience reviews, many of which are no doubt negative reviews from apologists. (I wouldn't be surprised if Allen Wyatt personally wrote 500+ of them.) Setting aside the audience rankings, then, we have the critical ratings, and I'm left wondering which is worse: a terrible 16% rating from critics, or no critic ratings whatsoever? I suppose it's a question of whether it's worse to be despised or ignored? In any case, I'm calling this one a draw.
That raises the question of visibility, and here, September Dawn clearly wins: it was reviewed by none other than Roger Ebert (who gave it zero stars), and the Washington Post, among other notable publications. So if we are measuring the movies' success by the amount of critical attention--positive or negative--that they got from full-time professional critics, then September Dawn wins.
And what about monetary figures? Here, again, September Dawn would appear to emerge victorious. It was shot on a budget of $11 million compared to Witnesses' $1 million. And September Dawn brought in a box office take of just slightly more than $1 million--so, around 10% of its budget. Witnesses has pulled in ~$200K at this point, so it's made back a higher percentage of its production and marketing budget, *but*, due to lack of transparency, we actually don't know what the real budget was. Still, I'm feeling generous, so I'll give this one to the Mopologists. Witnesses wins this one.
Reading the most recent "SeN" post, you would think that Witnesses is impressive based on its standing relative to other movies that are out. It's ranked 6th, after all! That's impressive, right? Maybe. You have to remember that it debuted at the tail-end of the pandemic. In its opening weekend, Witnesses failed to pull in $200K, whereas September Dawn made just shy of $900,000; it also debuted at the rank of 23, but there were a lot more movies in theaters at that time. Witnesses just isn't facing the same kind of competition. I'm inclined to give the edge to September Dawn here--it came out at the end of August, for crying out loud, which isn't exactly a stellar time for a new, "indy" movie to be released. Witnesses, meanwhile, came out in early June, which is right there around "tent pole" season. But due to the pandemic, all the "tent pole" movies--like Dune or the new James Bond film--have been delayed. So, this one really feels like something of a tie to me. Let's call it even in terms of box office rankings. (For the record, September Dawn lasted only two weeks in theaters. It also played in far more theaters, though. Witnesses would win if we were to focus on per-theater box office take. Then again, if Witnesses had been playing in 800+ theaters, would it really have earned much more money?)
What about star power? September Dawn featured a compelling performance from award-winning Hollywood luminary Jon Voight. Witnesses, meanwhile, did not have any major stars. This one clearly goes to September Dawn.
And then there are the more nuanced elements. What if we judge the two movies based on the amount of acrimony they managed to stir up? Dr. Peterson spoke of Witnesses being "strangled in the cradle[/i] due to reactions/attacks from critics and anti-Mormons. Again, though: September Dawn has more than 5,000 audience ratings, and slightly more than half of them are negative. Do you know what else it has? A whole entire FAIR Mormon page devoted to attacking it piece by piece. They even quote from a letter/email from the movie's co-writer:
Huh. That sounds familiar, doesn't it? FAIR Mormon responds:I am the co-writer of the Screenplay "September Dawn," and Author of the book by the same name. We have been heavily slammed in the press and perhaps I'm being paranoid but the apparent sameness of their opinions are too coincidental. I have heard floating rumours of Mormons being told to slam the movie in reviews and one blog reporting it on yahoo.com has been pulled. Would like to correspond with anyone who can give me any information on this.
[SNIP!]
Please help me try to learn the truth as to whether or not the church is directing their members to help destroy our movie and credibility. Thank you.
LOL! Sure: the institutional Church might not have "directed" people to go give the movie lousy ratings, but FAIR and the Mopologists very likely did! That said, FAIR does make a fair point about the reviews from professional critics. It's thus too bad that Witnesses didn't screen for more full-time movie critics, so that we could have that data for the sake of comparison. Going back to my original point, though: September Dawn clearly wins this one. If a film's quality is a measure of how much antipathy it stirs up amongst its critics, then it clearly smashes Witnesses to pieces. I admit I could be wrong: there might be an anti-Mormon website out there that is devoted to collecting every criticism of Witnesses in the hopes of "strangling the movie in its crib." Instead, there seem to have been a handful of people who gave the movie a low rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but is that it?The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has not "direct[ed its] members to help destroy" September Dawn, and has made no comment about the film itself. Virtually all of the critical reviews reprinted above were written by non-Mormons. Instead of taking the criticism of her film at face value, Schutter resorted to paranoid conspiracy theories.
Ultimately, assessing a film's qualities is a mug's game. It may be that it's easier to simply say that it's all subjective. But, as I think you can clearly see, there is a case to be made that September Dawn is a better movie than Witnesses.
And for the record: I could not get through September Dawn. It truly is a terrible, unwatchable film. That said, I think that you have to admit that the anti-Mormons scored a major coup just in terms of getting it made. And an $11 million budget! Wow. An "old cash nexus" indeed.