"Scott Pilgrim" Defeats World, Can't Attract Audience

The amount of over-the-top hand-wringing that has resulted form the underperformance of "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" this past weekend would normally prompt feelings of schadenfreude for me, but my black little heart just isn't in it today. I really enjoyed "Scott Pilgrim," and I was rooting for its success. Sadly, this was not to be. The movie was trounced, not only by the premieres of "The Expendables" and "Eat, Pray, Love," but by "The Other Guys" in its second weekend and "Inception," which has been in theaters for over a month. Coming in fifth, with only a $10.6 million total, "Scott Pilgrim" is already being labeled a massive disappointment despite great reviews and positive responses from the audiences that did come out to see it. The trouble is, those audiences were a fraction of what the hype suggested they would be.

This is almost an exact replay of what happened to "Kick-Ass" earlier this year. A comic-book based property fronted by young stars with a lot of candy-colored, stylized violence had the fanboys frothing and left everyone else cold. I didn't like "Kick-Ass" much, but it had comparable reviews to "Scott Pilgrim" and connected strongly with a similar target audience. The situation is worse for "Scott Pilgrim," because "Kick-Ass" was independently produced with a small budget, so it made its money back. "Scott Pilgrim," on the other hand, cost twice as much and will only do half the business if it follows the same trajectory. The message this sends to Hollywood is pretty clear - the young, geeky crowd may make a lot of noise at Comic-Con, but they can't be counted on to bring bank, and the crossover appeal of movies made for them is severely limited.

I'm still struggling to understand why. I didn't find many similarities between "Kick-Ass" and "Scott Pilgrim." "Kick-Ass" was a superhero spoof about a wannabe crime-fighter which was loaded up with violence and foul language. "Scott Pilgrim" was a surprisingly kid-friendly romance with cartoonish fight scenes and maybe two fleeting expletives. What ties them together is similar tone and visuals. Both star lanky young actors, Michael Cera and Aaron Johnson, and rely on the juxtaposition of youthful angst with a lot of over-the-top graphics and fight scenes that are modeled on comics and video games. This may be signaling that both films are meant for younger viewers, though "Kick-Ass" is emphatically not a kids' film. Yet CGI-heavy spectacles and animated movies targeted squarely at children have been doing record business this year, and attracting adults in droves. What's the distinction here?

I think it really has to do with attitudes toward this particular segment of youth culture, which projects a vibe that is very different from mainstream tastes. One of the things I liked about "Scott Pilgrim" was how adept it was at using the whiplash visual shorthand of recent video games and comic-books. There were certain scenes, like Wallace ratting out Scott to his sister while apparently fast asleep, that could have come straight from any number of current anime comedies. I'm never seen a Western director nail that type of humor so perfectly. But if I hadn't spent the better part of the last decade up to my ears in anime and manga, I'm not sure I would have been entirely comfortable with the wild stylization, the deadpan humor, and the nonexistent line between reality (Scott lives in Toronto) and allegorical fantasy (Scott's duels with the evil exes involve demon summonings and flaming swords).

"Scott Pilgrim" is a reflection of the geeky youth culture as it is now. Though much has been made of the successes of comic-book superheroes in Hollywood, that's the geek culture of an older generation. The heyday of "Iron Man" and "Batman" as truly nerd-driven comic properties was thirty or forty years ago, and they have a completely different sensibility than the comics and video games making waves today. I've seen the disconnect happen in other situations, where otherwise genre-friendly individuals will be utterly baffled in the face of gamers, hipsters, anti-hipsters, otaku, and the anarchic Internet-based subcultures of fandom that have blossomed in the last few years. Understandably, the common reaction by the baffled is to dismiss or retreat. I don't think it's an age divide so much as a cultural one, because there are plenty of younger viewers who are as confused by all of this as anyone else, and quite a few over thirty-five who do get it.

So it's no wonder that "Scott Pilgrim" scared off most moviegoers. It caters to a very specific niche, one that's still hasn't quite meshed with the popular consciousness, and the mainstream simply wasn't ready for it. Hopefully good word of mouth will keep the film from being a complete disaster at the box office in the weeks to come, and the creative types involved won't be dissuaded from taking similar risks in the future. I think it's just a matter of time before one of these hyperkinetic video-game style films connects - "TRON" or "Sucker Punch" could have a shot - and then more people might be willing to give "Scott Pilgrim" a second look.