As the weekend draws to a close the disappointing finical figures from Scott Pilgrim vs. the world’s box office debut begin to roll in, and diehard fans across the North American continent collectively weep. The indie comic book turned big budget film, with a price tag of $60 million, limped across the tattered remnants of a finish line, which had already been broken by its rivals The Expendables and Eat Pray Love, to stumble into fifth place. Seeing as how it’s only Saturday these numbers are still tentative…but embarrassing none the less. Universal studio’s promotional machine was running on optimum efficiency hoping to secure a blockbuster opening weekend. With appearances on Adult Swim, Comedy Central, local news, and the talk show circuit it’s safe to say that anyone with functioning eyes was bombarded with a plethora of Scott Pilgrim marketing. Leaving one to wonder; with a slew of positive reviews and a star studded cast why did the film flop so epically? Here are a few reasons…
People fear genre mixing
Let’s face facts. People like simplicity. No matter what happens to (insert television character here) by the end of the episode, whether through convenient Deus Ex Machina or a predictable cliché, everything goes right back to normal. This craving for passivity in plot also applies to whatever genre the show falls under. Don’t believe me? Look at Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Despite inventing the frame work for the modern television drama Buffy is still regarded, by the public at large, as an innocuous piece of Sci-fi tripe. Why? Buffy suffered from acute genre complexity. It had elements of horror, action, romance, mystery, and, most importantly, comedy. When those powers combined they created a potent mix of entertainment that couldn’t really reside in one genre. The result was a show that required people to think, and quite often in fact. And if we’ve learned anything from Soulja Boy’s success people hate to think.
Michael Cera
You really can’t fault Universal for making a tremendous casting mistake. Michael Cera has proven himself to be a bankable box office presence with a penchant for awkward humor. Unfortunately the character of Scott Pilgrim is extremely divergent from the roles Cera has become accustomed to. Instead of giving the movie a fair shake by casting an unknown to more accurately portray Scott’s lethargy the casting director made the tremendous error of designating the task to Michael Cera in an attempt to put asses in seats. Conversely people assumed the movie was tonally synonymous with the rest of Cera’s Cellioud résumé, causing it to lose millions of potential fans.
It wasn’t brooding enough
Imagine, as John Lennon did all those years ago, that Scott Pilgrim had the same exact plot, the same assortment of actors, and the same creators behind the scenes; with just one small twist in execution. Instead of being based on the cutesy 8-bit video games of yesteryear it was derived from the ultra gory games of today. The visual optimism of film coupled with the undercurrent of a love story led the target audience of teenage boys to disregard the film as either childish or girly.
So, yeah. Indie comics took a major hit this weekend. Hopefully this won’t put Hollywood off adapting independent comics in the future.
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