Stephen Mayer: This week Gregg and I are going to join forces for an epic review of epic epicness. And what garners such epic devotion? Scott Pilgrim vs. The World!
I promise, this will be the last I talk about it...at least until the video game comes out next week...and the DVD release.
So, Gregg, you saw it opening night. Off the cuff, what did you think?
Gregg Schigiel: Well, this is less off the cuff in that I did see it opening night and it's past that, but, as I recall, my immediate feelings after seeing the movie were: A+ for visual style and storytelling to Edgar Wright; he made a really great looking, fun to watch movie. I thought the story content, particularly the relationship between Scott and Ramona seemed a bit thin or shallow. And I thought things got a slight bit slow in the middle as it sort of became repetitive in the action.
But upon further thought and reflection I've come to not just accept, but appreciate those things such that I appreciate the movie more. But we'll build to that.
You, as I've heard you mention, saw it multiple times...and you love the books...and you're all about Scott Pilgrim and the gang. So as opposed to me, who's an old man non-gamer whose read only books one and two, how'd it strike you (you know, in case we couldn't already tell)?
Stephen: The first time I watched it I loved the first half without question and kind of convinced myself to love the second half. I accredit the drop-off to the divergence from the source material.
The second and third time I was able to hang back and appreciate the smaller nuances of the thing, less caught up in whether or not it would live up to my expectations and more about the movie as a movie.
The skimpiness of Scott and Ramona's relationship was just the product of Hollywood adaptation. When you have a 1,000 page series being broken down into an hour and fifty minute movie, you've gotta lose something, and in this case Edgar Wright and Michael Bacall seemed to fee that the easiest way to pare things down was to get rid of anything extraneous to the story. That meant details of Scott's relationship with Envy, Todd Ingram's with the drummer of Sex Bob-Omb, Todd and Envy, Scott and Kim, the entire character of Lisa, Tim and Knives, Stephen Stills and the absent Joseph, etc., etc., etc. If they hadn't done it, with the calculation we worked out a year ago of one or 2 pages of comic equaling one minute, you'd have an eight hour and twenty minute movie on your hands.
One of the most startling things to me was how much I accepted the actors interpretations of the characters despite them flying in the face of my own readings of the comics. Did you experience any of that?
Gregg: I read book one a long while back, and book two a few months ago, but I don't think I imagine Kim's delivery being so droll and deadpan. Then again, it made for a great dichotomy when she'd count off to start a song. Other than that, I'm still not 100% sure Michael Cera's what I imagined reading it, but he sold it and held his own (or at least his stunt double did) in the action scenes.
In general I sensed a lot of “detachment” from the characters...something that's definitely there in those early-20s years...especially with irony and snark being the way of things...but as I alluded to earlier, that's something that, upon reflection, is just another thing they got right, regardless of its ties to the source material.
And I think that attitude on the part of the characters – whether its Ramona being sort of aloof to the point where you wonder “Why's he want her when Knives seems so much more interested and attentive and caring?”, or Scott SAYING she's the girl of his dreams but being sort of a whiner about having to actually DO anything to make those dreams become real – that creates a bit of distance in terms of relating/connecting on a love story level.
And while some of that can be attributed to adaptation, I had a different perspective.
After talking about it a bit with others the following idea struck me (and I'm not saying this is a revolutionary idea, it's just what occurred to me): The movie is its most obvious and striking way, a play on video games and the culture of video games and gamers. In as much as there's an indy rock thing happening and a love story happening and a comic book/action thing happening, at it's heart it's a gamer thing. With that in mind, the more sparse/shallow relationship element plays to that perfectly. Mario rescues the Princess, be it from Bowser or Donkey Kong, dealing with the likes of barrels (flaming or otherwise), Koopa Troopas, warp pipes and all, because that's the object of the game. Yes, some games are more far reaching and story-intense, but the movie's clearly playing to the 8 to 32 bit spectrum, where that wasn't as often the case.
So the object of the game of Scott Pilgrim v. The World is to get the girl. To do that he needs to defeat the seven evil exes.
In that way, looking at it in the simplest, most black-and-white way, it's spot on.
Using that same logic, I say the drop off in the second act isn't source material related, but consider how often you play a game start to finish? Rarely, if ever. You save the game or pause it and come back...or, to refer to Mario again, you use warp zone pipes to move ahead to Level 8. There's an inherent tedium to seeing fight after fight...hard to avoid that. In comics and TV we get a theoretical break between issues/episodes. But 7 fights...and not rinky-dink fights or even pulling an Indiana Jones shoots the dude quick fight move...
The decision could have been made to truncate the fights into a montage type approach to make room for the relationship/story/background stuff, but if my theory is correct (and there's really no way to know unless you can get Edgar Wright on the line), that would have taken away the “game” emphasis.
Interestingly, I've given more thought and attention to this movie than I did Inception, whose [spoiler alert] ending I thought was a cheat and made me less interested in examining and “deciphering” it.
And corollary to that, over the past few days, in 20 minute chunks or so, I've been watching Twilight, where VERY little seems to actually happen and this “intense” relationship is very weakly constructed or justified.
But both Twilight and Inception were massive hits. Scott Pilgrim, by Hollywood reporting standards, bombed.
Where'd Scott Pilgrim go wrong, if it did? Or does the fault lie elsewhere?
Stephen: I don't think the movie did anything wrong. The studio might have. When I originally heard about the project, I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be on a much lower budget with a February or March release date. Then when some buzz started to build, the expenses when up and it got pushed to a late summer release. It's kind of crazy that it opened opposite the Expendables and Eat Pray Love, two movies with really built in audiences.
I wouldn't say that the marketing on Scott Pilgrim went wrong either, but maybe a little overboard. I loved every minute of it, but when you look at all the ads they were running, the Comic Con set-up, the Punchout style video game app, the Comixology app, they should have been hitting their target demo from every direction. But with the way the box office numbers ended up going, they kind of just dug themselves and even deeper hole.
The other angle to take, and Jermaine really nailed this on our test podcast, is that the fault lies on us. Well, not you and me, us, but us, the comic fans. We heard a whole lot of I'll wait for it on DVD or on Netflix around the shop and online. Carly accused the target demographic of being a group of people that want everything produced for them, but want to pay for nothing. That's all well and good until the next thing that you're really looking forward to doesn't get green lit because Scott Pilgrim lost 50 million dollars. Long ago I kind of chastised you for trade waiting. Same kind of thing. Comic companies and studios need to see returns on their investments at the box office like comic companies need to see that people are buying single issues or they might cancel a series before the first trade hits the shelf (ATLAS!!!).
On a lighter note, what was your favorite line from movie?
Gregg: I'm terrible at remembering movie lines, especially after one single viewing, so my honest answer to that is “I don't know”. But there were a lot of great bits and moments and sequences that was all very, very entertaining.
Lighter note aside, I want to talk more about the audience as a thing as well as the theoretical failures on their part.
Maybe these are my old advertising major days percolating, but I ask who is the audience for it? Who was it being sold/targeted to? How was it perceived by both groups, etc. And in classic style, we'll surely address all of these points with nary a shred of viable data beyond some seemingly educated assumptions and maybe a snippet of a comment from people we know, AKA heresy.
If we're to parse things out as a Venn diagram, say, you've got people who read or know of the books...gamers with a nostalgic bent who've heard about this thing via whatever media they've heard about it...movie buffs who know about Edgar Wright...
So those are your “gimmes”, right? But all the promotional blitz you're talking about...it's to those people...and I submit those people are not large circles in that diagram, if the overall set is, and I won't even say everyone, but say, 16-35 year old men. Comics, Video, and Edgar Wright fans are a small piece of that pie. And that's the theoretical “guaranteed” viewers.
Outside of that pie there's EVERYONE else...and all those people didn't see or have exposure to the stuff at Comic-Con, the various apps, etc. The point being, and this might be obvious or it might be a reality check/wake-up call: the target demo, us included, are a minority.
Consider that the top selling comics get to what, 100,000 copies? Even the massive success of the Barack Obama appearance in Spider-Man got to what, around 600,000 copies after multiple printings? When you consider TV ratings are counted in millions of viewers and movie receipts are counted in multiple millions of dollars...100,000 is...we're sadly, small potatoes.
In the same way that Michael Cera gets hit with claims that he can't carry a movie (even if he does a great job with the material), neither can the aforementioned target demo. There aren't enough of us.
There's a lot of attention and hype on Comic-Con...but it's sort of like if you've ever found yourself attracted to someone, you sort of notice the things that make you think they might also be attracted to you...you put meaning into things that might not have meaning.
So, “the nerds have inherited the Earth” paradigm that we're being sold...might be a bit of fool's gold.
The Dark Knight or Iron Man were hits because they appealed beyond the target demo.
Add to that that yeah, in selling to the masses there might've been some missteps. I thought it might've done well to play up the cast, particularly the evil exes, guys with some greater mass appeal, like Chris Evans and Brandon Routh...or generally sell the premise more clearly. The movie, like the books, is unconventional not just in its genre bending/mash-up-ness, but in the genres it's bending and mashing.
My cousin is not any of the target demos I've assigned, but he is part of the 18-35 male demo. He saw the movie based on positive reviews and my giving it a thumbs up, and him being a fan of movies. And he liked it quite a bit. But he told me that before the reviews and feedback, he had no idea what the movie was based on the commercials and trailers and it didn't strike him as anything of real note.
And not to pile on, but you mentioned it first, there's not just the “I'll catch it later/movies are too expensive” reaction, there are also a number of people I know who don't like seeing movies opening night...don't like the crowds, etc. Or people with kids who can't get to the movies so easily...people who are the target demo...who, as we've discussed when we talk about kids, comics, etc., are OLDER. 8 Bit nostalgia, while maybe hitting in that “80s retro is cool” zone, I'd say is, again, a small percentage of the greater pool.
A lot off people say it's a movie that'll find its audience on DVD/In Demand, etc, which would be great. But that brings up the last bit: this notion that opening weekend box office makes or breaks a movie. That's a really unfortunate aspect of how the mechanics of movie releases work. I don't know if there's anything anyone, from fan to filmmaker, can really do about that.
I just blathered on a LOT. Did that make any sense at all?
Hindsight being what it is, maybe they should have sold the movie with more “Cute girls! Cute boys! Fight scenes! Funny scenes! Love scenes! It's fun! It's a movie!!
Stephen: It DID make sense. And just to hit on some of my favorite lines, mostly based on delivery:
SCOTT: You know what sucks?
WALLACE: What?
SCOTT: Everything. Moving magnetic S-U-X letters together with a sideways 8 for "infinity".
KIM: Scott and I actually dated in high school. Smiling.
RAMONA: Any embarrassing stories?
KIM: Yeah. Smiling. He's an idiot. Deadpan.
LUCAS LEE: Sometimes I even let him do the wide shots when I wanna get blazed in my Winny.
What do you think will be the next comic indie gem to get the big screen treatment? Red by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner is on the way for later in the year. We've finally seen footage for Eric Powell's the Goon. Personally, I'm pulling for Matt Kindt and 3 Story: Secret History of the Giant Man.
Gregg: Yeah, I still can't think of a line from the movie that wasn't in the trailer. I did like the bit with the vegan powers and the vegan patrol and such; that was quite good. And I feel like Roxy had some good lines, particularly in her first appearance, but I can't remember a single one. And the “Seinfeld” sequence was quite winning. Again, no lines to speak of, but...yeah.
I saw and liked the footage I saw of The Goon. I finally saw the trailer for Red and thought it looked like it could be a cool movie, if only for the shot of Bruce Willis getting out of that car as it was moving and it just peels out away from him as he gets out like it's nothing.
As for what's next, hmm...once again I turn to my bookshelves to see what's what.
While I think audiences wouldn't know what to do with it, a movie of Kyle Baker's SPECIAL FORCES would be something, well, special.
After reading just the first issue I thought FOUR EYES could be a cool movie.
And the CGI animals in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and The Golden Compass were SO good, I can only imagine how incredible it would be to see TELLOS as a GCI/Live Action movie. That could really be something along the lines of a modern day Neverending Story, which I'm sure someone's thinking of remaking (is that too cynical?).
And based on those three picks you can see why I'm not a movie executive, because in as much as I think they'd make great movies in a lot of ways, I can also think of handfuls of reasons why they'd all “bomb”.
But at this point I'm well accustomed to being into things that most other people aren't so into. Most shows I like get cancelled. Many movies I like aren't popular favorites. And as anyone who's been reading this stuff probably knows, a lot of current “top” superhero comics aren't to my taste. So I guess I'm not too surprised Scott Pilgrim didn't do big box office business.
I'll say this for Red though, it's taking a back seat to Jackass 3D as far as I'm concerned.
Stephen: I'm the same way. Pushing Daises, dead. Arrested Development, dead. Freaks and Geeks, dead. Dollhouse, dead. etc. etc.
Man, such a fun movie deserves a much more fun send-off!
SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD: THE GAME! Available on Xbox Live tomorrow! 800 Microsoft Points!
Next week I'll be traveling to Baltimore Comic Con, but I'll do my darn'dest to find time between the all you can eat buffets and comic shops far and wide to talk sidekicks with Gregg! See you then!
Gregg Schigiel is a cartoonist, illustrator, and writer. He's worked as a penciller, writer and editor for Marvel Comics and an illustrator and cartoonist at Nickelodeon. In addition, he's in various stages of cooking up new comics-related works, unless he's too preoccupied actually cooking. Check out his website at Hatter Entertainment.com.
Stephen Mayer by saving all of his receipts and doing everything in moderation on Mondays. Check out his blog at MayerMaeNot.com.
