The Big Picture: The Numbers

[krellen]

Also, you probably noticed that the entire movie led up to ending with a Scott+Knives relationship - This was how the movie was originally shot, but was changed when the graphic novel's artist ended the comic differently.

They changed it because test screenings had audiences wondering why the hell Scott went through all the crap he went through to end up not with Ramona (he could have ended up with Knives all along, without any movie). Don't blame Brian Lee O'Malley; he was on-board with the Scott+Knives ending too, but test audiences didn't like it (and I don't blame them; Scott+Knives is not a good ending. If you have the DVD, you can watch it and see for yourself.)

 

[baconsarnie]

I totally agree with this apart from:
1. The expendables was actually a pretty good film.
2. Scott pilgrim was an incredibly poor film.

Defend your points immediately, or be forever branded a troll.

The expendables, being a generic action film needed three things:
1. Guns and explosions
2. Some form of plot to facilitate the need for guns and explosions
3. Big tough guys to carry/set off the aforementioned guns and explosions

It delivered on all counts.

Scott Pilgrim on the other hand just seemed to be trying too hard. The story was slow and predictable, the characters were bland and uninteresting.
I just felt dissapointed when watching it.

 

[Korak the Mad]

God Dammit, i want my Lovecraftian Horror!

I want this movie to come out, and one other of Lovecraft stories: "The Shadow Out of Time" This story and "At the Mountains of Madness" are my favorite stories that Lovecraft wrote.

I thought that Del Toro was also just about to start filming later this summer.

 

[camazotz]

I guess the flipside (glass half empty) to that, unfortunately, is that the other 80% are all those pop culture fans, jocks, sports guys and people who watch Fast and Furious films. Aghhh!

Geek culture is not the antithesis to the pop-culture. Geek culture is a sub-genre of pop culture.
It was correctly stated that in essence Scott Pilgrim is Twilight for nerdy boys.

The antithesis to the pop-culture would be art-house productions and contemporary art. Stuff that hipsters watch.

Like that movie "Beyond silence" (Jenseits der Stille)
But then again... *puts on hipster glasses*
you probably never heard of it.
YEAHH!!!

Yeah yeah yeah, but I wasn't trying to suggest that my lame little joke sample was implying that geeks are the antithesis of pop culture: I was trying to say that geeks are, and always have been, the opposite of the jocks and cheerleaders, the mundanes, if you will...the moogles, to use the Harry Potter word. There's a lot of subcultures within society that are not in the least bit mainstream, sure....and art-house productions cater to some of them. So yeah, I've never seen "Beyond Silence," (last art-house film I saw was Titus, and it pained me to sit through that garbage) but I betcha you have no idea who R.C. Gorman is, to pull a name from another decidedly non-pop subset of our culture of art....REAL art, unlike absolutely everything we talk about here =)

 

[Deathlisk]

Ah, scott pilgrim was a good movie.....
It is truly sad that the companies with integrity fails while those that makes 90 min distrations flourish.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

Typical, isn't it? More people prefer action-backed thrillers to genuinelly good movies

Like, Scott Pilgrim, for instance. I admit I didn't get a chance to see it in theaters, but I did the books to see what the fuss was all about. Well, I fell head over heels in love with this quirky little universe that Bryan Lee O'Malley created.

But of course, The Expendables did better because, well, it's a big-money action flick. And granted, people who read Scott Pilgrim might have been the minority, but that doesn't mean good films have to suffer for the sake of the majority.

*SIGH*

 

[Splitfire3]

has anyone Really doubted this, though? Money is the fuel for all machineries out there, especially visual stuff like television and movies...

 

[Jyggalag]

Thanks for the education, Bob. Not only did I have no clue this movie was being made, but now I actually want to see it just so I had a clue what the hell my older friends are talking about when it comes to H.P. Lovecraft books.

 

[Khada]

Good show bob... Makes me sad though. I can't help but regret not seeing Scott Pilgram at the movies!... I will endeavor to purchase the dvd! If success wasn't rated by money and rather by 'views' I suspect Scott Pilgram would have done fine.

 

[DearFilm]

This is the kind of falacious argument that makes me absolutely insane. Bob is saying here that we as a movie going public should go out and see "risky" and "high road" movies in order to facillitate better movies in the future.
The problem then is that Scott Pilgrim was, simply put, not a good movie. It had ever reason to succeed, and it failed because it deserved to do so. It had big name stars, a cult director of no small acclaim, massive marketing, and a choice release spot. The only thing that could hold it back was bad word of mouth, which it got in spades because it failed to deliver.
Mountains of Madness, then, was killed because of Universal's poor business choices. It lost money on movies it shouldn't have made for so much money, and it suffered for it. If it had been serious about Moutains of Madness, it would have made other guaranteed money makers in order to support it. Warner Brothers is a pretty good show at this: they make big money schlock but can then prop up Inception. And because Inception was good, it made money.
Saying that Scott Pilgrim succeeding would have enabled Mountains of Madness is ridiculous for another reason: one is a PG-13 love film to indie kids, and the other is an R-rated cerebral horror film. There is no pressumed crossover in audience appeal here. Scott Pilgrim only could have served as a money-injection for this film, which was always going to fail.
Universal, if they want to make risky movies, has to strike a balance of sure-fire profitable projects and high brow entertainment. And we have to stop blaming the failure of all good things on Scott Pilgrim.

Dear sir, I would just like to say I agreewith the above sentiment 100%. Well said

Thank you for your support. It's good to know my little rant is not falling on completely deaf ears.

 

[Arfreid]

It's really a shame, I loved the Scott Pilgrim movie... and now it's possible that we won't be seeing more stuff like that.

Tragic D:

 

[angel85]

Hellboy 2 is one of my favorite Comic book movies of all time, The wolfman, aside from relying too much on cheap jump scares, felt like a modern classic, and Scott Pilgrim...is FUCKING SCOTT PILGRIM! It's the only Movie I went to see in theaters TWICE in over ten years.

This feels exactly like all the hot selling games on the PS3 and 360 being military FPS games.

 

[maninahat]

Whilst everything Bob says is sadly true, I can't help feeling that if tons of people went to the cookie cutter "shitty" movies and barely anyone went to the niche, indy, "cerebral" stuff, then why is it a bad thing that we get more of the big blockbuster action movies? That is clearly what the majority want! Why should we be prioritizing the tastes of the snooty few over the blood lust of the millions?

For the record. I went to see The Expendables twice and had a great time, like millions of others. I had to practically force myself to watch Scott Pilgrim (or rather, my girlfriend did), and I ultimately found it only okay. So I'm not too bothered by this current arrangement of dumb action being favoured by Hollywood over goofy niche stuff.

Because if the people who want crappy blockbusters are getting in the way of the people who take value into their movies. As he explained, if the Niche movies don't make money, than no more niche movies will be made, and all movies will be The Expendables or reboots with no effort. And that day is coming so close that it feels like the movies will no longer be art, but just another form of pointless entertainment, which is one step closer to people being made with a cookie cutter as with the films and media they watch. And I bet you have no arguments with such a future, don't you. Want everyone to be uncultured and all think the same way as everyone else. And you know what will happen then. Fahrenheit 451(the book), if you don't know what that is then go look it up.

Ironic that you should mention 451, which was written as a criticism of people who only watched TV and movies, and stopped reading books. That, the author felt, was what was really killing books. Despite his grumbling though,people still read books to this day. And even though the most popular popular books tend to be trash like Twilight or The Da Vinci Code, that doesn't prevent people from being able to read better literature. Books like the A Day in The Life Of Ivan Denisovich may never be as popular as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but they will still always be written for the few that do like it. And at the end if the day, it is all about enjoyment. If most people find entertainment in the "low brow", all the better for them. As I said, why should the few take that away from the many? I'm not snobbish enough to deny the majority of something they enjoy.

 

[theevilsanta]

The widespread wealth of first world nations let such amazing things such as multi-hundred-million dollar films and games be made. That also comes with the responsibility of the studios that create such things to appeal to the largest audience. There are a lot of housewives (or whomever) that would kill for a Danielle Steel movie adaptation, but it isn't going to happen. There aren't enough of those housewives (or whomever) to make it possible.

So remember gamers: You are just a lonely housewife that is interested in something else.

 

[Jennacide]

As many have likely already pointed out, this exact same thing is ruining the games industry too. Activision and Ubisoft rely on cash-in titles constantly, while games like Mirror's Edge flopped for trying to do something new and different. EA has tried real hard to bring us new content, and that blew up in their face. Now people are up in arms wondering why games like DA2 are happening.

 

[Nomanslander]

More Scott Pilgrim bullshit? Also The expendepals was not that bad. There are worse movie out there like Twilight

Expendables was garbage, pure and simple. Take it from a hardcore 80s action hero fan I know, and the sad part was a movie that was a 1000x better and a more truer update to that genre also went hardly recognized in the box office. The movie I speak of was Rambo 4.

-_-

 

[DearFilm]

Also, I'm not going to be so bold as to call Movie Bob a journalist, but it would still be nice if he would source some of his claims.

He states that "it is widely believed" that Scott Pilgrim's poor BO numbers are to blame for killing At the Mountains of Madness, but makes no attempt to give any examples of industry analysts or even other pundits who make this claim. Who is saying this then, outside of him?

This is tantamount to those news reports where they use the phrase "people are saying" in order to mask their own opinion as a widely regarded and accepted idea in order to push their own feelings.

It is all fine and dandy if Bob wants to conjecture until the end of time about what leads to what in the movie world - he is, after all, a commentator and critic - but he should shy away from making broad claims of popular conscent without properly attributing those remarks.

 

[Calibanbutcher]

Well, "Bob" if you hate what the majority loves so much, then why don't you go and cry a little.
The succes of popular movies made "indie" movies possible, since, well, to make movies you need money.
Without The Fast and the Furious 4, there would not have been Scott Pilgrim ( a shitty movie BTW).
If you don't like it, fine but don't forget that the majority of all Scott Pilgrim viewers probably pirated the movie.
Talk about PIRACY killing movies next, why don't you?

 

[giantgemclips]

hmmm...

Well, I saw Scot Pilgrim and The remake of the Wolfman.

I really enjoyed Scott Pilgrim and even bought it on DVD. however,all of my friends were NOT interested in it as it was just too over the top and to their tastes "silly". That's probably why a lot of people didn't see it. Looking at the coming attractions one had to realize that it was just going to be too over the top for mainstream audiences.

As far as The Wolfman?

It didn't fail because they went for period class. I failed because it wasn't very good. Oh sure, it was fun to see it but in the end I would never buy it. It just wasn't good enough. Even though it had some great scenes. And my friends who wouldn't see Scott Pilgrim actually went to see Wolfman. And they agreed, fun but not a great movie.

Universal might have taken the high road but you have to know who your audience is and think whether or not there is enough of that audience to recoup your money AND your movie also has to be good.

 

[Lordpils]

Also applies to the gaming world, Troika went under despite making three excellent games and Activision has yet to be punished for it's sins against the consumer. Ask me how that makes me feel.

Bad?
I also was really pissed of because closing of Troika. I only played Arcanum but it was one of the best crpgs
that i played.

They also made The Temple of Elemental Evil and Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines both of which are also awesome games. Hell when they closed down some of the employees made the last official patch for VtMB pro-bono that's dedication to your work.