Splendid episode! I think it is quite aparent that subjectivily good stuff doesn't get rewarded with subjectivily good stuff.
The Big Picture: The Numbers
- Thread starter MovieBob
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The problem isn't the different content of the two movies (Cause it's kinda hard to get any more different) it's the fact that because Scott Pilgrim, a high risk project, got crushed at the box office by a bland, unoriginal waste of time, Universal didn't want to risk the kind of money on Mountains, even though it would've been a MASSIVE hit, hell even you don't even need to be a Lovecraft fan to see that. But since they were dealing with a director who isn't exactly a big ticket name, with source material unfamiliar to a lot of people, and an actor who isn't exactly popular at the moment, they saw it as a risk and didn't go for it (At least that's the way it looks to me).DearFilm said:
Movie lovers should root for the movies they love to make it big and celebrate when the ones they despise fail. Things aren't always going to go your way. Oh well.
ITMT: this guy also made Hellboy 2, which was a terrible let down. It had so much promise (tooth faries) but got dull and sappy. The Love Craft story was not a guaranteed success. Lovecraft movies have been made, and they've been fun, but they've also been low budget gross out movies as they should be.
ITMT: this guy also made Hellboy 2, which was a terrible let down. It had so much promise (tooth faries) but got dull and sappy. The Love Craft story was not a guaranteed success. Lovecraft movies have been made, and they've been fun, but they've also been low budget gross out movies as they should be.
Thanks for ripping the words directly out of my mouth.baconsarnie said:
Y'know, perhaps Scott Pilgrim would've made money at the box office if they hired an actor that didn't suck and it wasn't a totally shitty film to begin with. I mean, yeah, it's better than it's source material, but that isn't saying much.
Movie lovers should root for the movies they love to make it big and celebrate when the ones they despise fail. Things aren't always going to go your way. Oh well.
ITMT: this guy also made Hellboy 2, which was a terrible let down. It had so much promise (tooth faries) but got dull and sappy. The Love Craft story was not a guaranteed success. Lovecraft movies have been made, and they've been fun, but they've also been low budget gross out movies as they should be.
ITMT: this guy also made Hellboy 2, which was a terrible let down. It had so much promise (tooth faries) but got dull and sappy. The Love Craft story was not a guaranteed success. Lovecraft movies have been made, and they've been fun, but they've also been low budget gross out movies as they should be.
Well said good sir. I actually like SP a lot, I found it funny and the action good, it is nowhere enar as good as Bob made it out to be. Isn't this a lot like getting PO about Waterworld not making it's money, the project was fundamentally flawed from the outset.SpiderJerusalem said:
Also didn't Bob really like GI Joe? I don't think you can quite pull the king fo the nerd heap with liking thaat.
Your lack of ability to spell and use proper punctuation really hurts your argument.MacNille said:
Really, Bob had a great point there and it's completely true. Just as ratings determine whether or not a show will continue, the box office decides the fate of movies.
The last line struck me as especially venomous. See, Mr. Bob, you have a right to be angry if this was a perfect world, but as you have said numerous times, this isn't a perfect world. This has always been the way, artists and artisans were always dependent upon their patrons for their livelihood. Just as movie and game makers today are dependent on the stockholder, who don't want to deviate from the stable way to make money, artists throughout history have always bowed to the current fashion with a few notable exceptions, of course.
And because of that, it's always about the Lowest Common Denominator. I severely doubt Larry the Cable Guy could get behind Scott Pilgrim and Lovecraftian horror; however, fast cars, T&A, explosions, and gun fights, well, those are more Larry's style. I'm not saying that it's good nor bad, it's just the way it is (especially given the average education level in the US, but that's a topic for another day).shadowmagus said:
The problem with making niche movies is the niche audience, which won't pull in the big bucks. Scott Pilgrim was a great movie - if you're into Scott Pilgrim or just a broader sense of movie inspired by a graphic novel inspired by Japanese manga. I mean, that is pretty niche. Is anyone wondering why it didn't break even until it went to disc? I'm certainly not. It certainly doesn't have as broad of an appeal like something more mainstream, like Superman or Batman. It's not even the same level as TMNT, which had a cartoon show to push it to the mainstream before it had any movies.
That being said, terms like "good" and "Crap" are extremely relative. Apparently, lots of people thought Scott Pilgrim was crap. Some would call that blasphemy. But as Bob more than points out, the money talks.
I think we're both right for different reasons, if that doesn't sound like too much of a cop out. As we both said, Scott Pilgrim would have proven a broad-field hunger for 'original' content (they were both adaptations, after all). I think that if Universal did view the failure of Scott Pilgrim as a reason for ending Mountains, though, they made a massive tactical error.kickyourass said:
A Del Toro movie involving Lovecraftian horrors gets waylayed, while they make Fast and the Furious 6?! That's it, I'll be in the Angry dome!
DearFilm said:
I more or less agree with these sentiments. I didn't hate Scott Pilgrim, but I really didn't like it either. For me it was completely forgettable, but maybe because it just wasn't my thing.Crimson_Dragoon said:
But Universal should have known exactly what they were getting into. The amount of geeks that will run and see their favorite games or comics translated into films is far exceeded by the sheer amount of people in the casual movie going audience, i.e. the folks that just want to sit down and enjoy a movie when they can. On top of that, being careful with money is a two-way thing. The audience is also going to be careful, especially nowadays, with how they spend their money at the movies. Are they going to see a comic-based film with unfamiliar actors with a look that panders to a very small audience, or are they going to see an action film full or familiar faces? One of these will be more likely than the other to provide a guaranteed good time. It's sad, but it isn't totally black and white, either. It's not that the audience is too stupid to recognize the brilliance of Scott Pilgrim (though, there are times...), but it's more that the audience just doesn't see Scott Pilgrim as a film aimed at them.
Inception was a great and thought provoking film. That isn't what the general public saw when they went to see it. When I would talk to my friends about it, they thought the action was good and the whole dream sequences thing a bit confusing. So that's it, they liked the action. As what was said above, people just want to escape their dreary lives for an hour or two and action is the easiest way to do it. I get into the psychology of the movie with average movie goers, most will just nod their head pretending to understand what I am talking about and add nothing to the conversation. WHY DON'T PEOPLE LIKE THINKING!DearFilm said:
I am coming off as an elitist jerk it seems. Oh well...
Scott Pilgrim cost $85 million? US dollars? Where the hell did the money go? The effects were okay, the action sequences were okay, the level of star power was okay, and it was shot in Canada (probably cheaper). Outside of the seven fights and maybe one or two blue screened dream sequences, that was a predominantly dialog driven movie.
You know, I'm a gamer, but I don't think games make good movies. You can flame me all you want, but games are in their nature interactive media, and if you make a movie it suddenly becomes infinitely non-interactive. So, yeah, when Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World came out. I didn't go watch it. I didn't want to see a movie set up like a video game. To me it smacked of pandering to that image that gamers are nothing but nerds who salivate at the idea of a movie made just for them, but you know what I did go see in theaters? Iron Man. Go figure. All movies are pandering to one crowd or another, all movies are cash ins. All your quote, artistic, daring, new movies unquote, are typically saved for esoteric film festivals.
It just depends on what you want to be treated to when you go.
Also, I love Lovecraft and I think his work should stay out of film. His horror relies so heavily on the imagination that it would simply ruin it to have some kind of arbitrary alien set up by some director (no matter how awesome he might be) would simply spoil all things H.P. Lovecraft.
It just depends on what you want to be treated to when you go.
Also, I love Lovecraft and I think his work should stay out of film. His horror relies so heavily on the imagination that it would simply ruin it to have some kind of arbitrary alien set up by some director (no matter how awesome he might be) would simply spoil all things H.P. Lovecraft.
Scott Pilgrim was NOT risky, its audience was near-guaranteed to see it and like it. The problem was that it's target audience was too small.kickyourass said:
Scott Pilgrim was a geek-niche movie that, unsurprisingly, got owned by releasing at the same time as an action movie jam-packed with the biggest action stars of the last 3 decades.
Mountains would have been completely different, and I highly doubt that it got canned because of the risk associated with Scott Pilgrim rather than simply because Universal made bad decisions and lost the safety net needed to make innovative movies.
If anything, people should be complaining AGAINST making niche movies that do not have a real chance so that big movie studies can focus on innovative movies that a WIDE RANGE OF PEOPLE CAN ENJOY.
