Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy: Chris Pine's Big Dick Barely Plays on the Small Screen in 'Outlaw King'

<< Blog | Editorial Features Thursday, December 31, 4:00 PMThu, 31 Dec 2020 @ 4:00 PM by Jake Jizzenhall

Throughout cinema history, there have been some iconic nude scenes that have transcended the bounds of the films in which they appeared. Our weekly column Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy will take an in-depth look at these scenes, their history, their deeper meanings, and their legacy. This week, everyone makes a big stink over Chris Pine's barely visible penis in Outlaw King.

While you may not remember it now, two years after it happened, but there was once a huge stink over the fact that Chris Pine showed his dick in the 2018 movie Outlaw King. The film had relatively little buzz surrounding it heading into its world premiere at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, but following that first screening, there was only one thing audiences members wanted to discuss... Pine's penis. As a matter of fact, a quick google search will reveal that Pine's penis was pretty much the only thing Outlaw King had going for it...

In the two month interim between the film's Toronto premiere on September 6 and its debut on Netflix on November 9, director David Mackenzie cut 20 minutes from the film, hoping to improve the overall pacing. Rumors, of course, began to fly fast and furious that Pine's full frontal scene was one of the things on the chopping block. It made sense as this one scene that lasts only a few seconds had dominated all of the conversation around the film. If he had cut the frontal shot, it might have caused a minor outrage given all the buzz, but the film would not be any better or worse without the scene.

In an interview with David Ehrlich of IndieWire at the time of the film's release, Mackenzie admitted that the film's chilly reception at Toronto led him to make 23 minutes worth of cuts that helped streamline the story and improve the pacing. Ehrlich himself did a touch of editorializing at the end of this quote in order to assure Pine-penis-hungry audience members still tuned in...

“More often than not, my director’s cuts are shorter than how they started,” he said. “People have encouraged me to put stuff back into the movies, so I’m quite capable of being tough on the material. Sitting through the premiere of ‘Outlaw King’ and having a strong sense that it was playing long and all over the place kind of gave me the carte blanche I needed to be more ruthless in the editorial process” (relax, all 12 frames of Chris Pine’s penis are still in the movie).

Pine, of course, had to answer the most questions about the scene as it was all seemingly any reporter wanted to talk to him about regarding the film. In a roundtable with The Hollywood Reporter, Pine dropped this rather salacious soundbite...

“What I find very funny is that there’s so much beheading in this. And yet, people want to talk about my penis,” said Pine. “And I think that says something about our society where people can get disemboweled but it’s the man’s junk that is of interest.”

One might be forgiven for heading into Outlaw King expecting a full frontal shot on a par with Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant. The scene more or less opens the film's third act, as Pine's Robert the Bruce comes out of hiding to face down the new king of England, Edward II. The rejuvenated Scottish ruler takes a quick bath in the river to ready himself for the battle ahead, giving us the briefest of glimpses of his dick as water rushes down his body...

There is perhaps no greater demonstration of the disparity between watching a film in a movie theater and watching one at home than this scene. At the film's premiere in Toronto, 2000 assembled industry people saw this scene on an enormous screen with insane resolution no home theater can replicate. Pine's dick likely seemed larger than life itself as he popped up out of the water, a full twenty minutes later than he did in the final version. His member likely seemed like a breath of fresh air in the overlong film, thus becoming the hot topic of the film's discussion.

However, at home, audiences with varying degrees of technologically advanced televisions and internet connections were dumbfounded as to why anyone made a big deal about the scene in the first place. It's a throwaway moment most folks likely wouldn't have noticed had everyone not been primed for it for months.

So who's to blame for the hubbub over Pine's penis? Obviously the entertainment media made it a much bigger deal than the director or star would have on their own, but there's no denying that they leaned into the issue as a way to promote the film. Gratuitous though the scene may be, the director chose to leave the scene intact while cutting other stuff. Had he wanted the film to be judged on its own merits, he might have cut the scene and just left it to lore. The scene remains, however, meaning that there's plenty of culpability to go around for the hype around this scene, which still hasn't died down.

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Catch up with ALL of our other editions of Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy...

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