why scott pilgrim failed

Scott pilgrim only got $10 million in earnings and made almost half of its total on opening night, whilst its $60 million budget is extremely out of grasp.
Here are 5 reasons for why it was such a box office flop.


People Over 30 Don't Get It
The movie's marketing was such an accurate representation of the film I think it's fair to say that most of the people who saw ads for it had a good idea of what they were going to see, And they didn't want to see it. In particular people over the age of 30 didn't want to see it. It's a movie about the kinds of individuals anyone over 30 with a job would like to see introduced to a cattle prod, watching a kid whine about how he has to be in bands and stuff and hang out a lot is a very accurate representation of this whole film. It looked like a movie about kids, for kids. However, the target audience wasn’t as good as it seems as you will see in my next point.


People Under 30 Don't Get It
While Scott Pilgrim is about teens and recent teens, the way it goes about telling its story isn't exactly teen friendly. The film is full of video game culture references. However, it’s evident right from the movie's first frame where the Universal Pictures logo is redone using 8-bit graphics, which look like they were created for the original NES, which is when the target audience wasn’t even born, which is a pretty major mistake. The movie's steeped not just in video games, but in classic video game references which kids probably aren't interested in and even if they were, almost certainly wouldn't get. However, even more references that only an older generation would get are included in the film, such as a Seinfeld scene and the desert sequence is a reference to Wayne's World 2. For most kids, the Atari 2600 is just something you get on a t-shirt, and if you reference Super Mario Bros. 2 in a movie, there's a pretty good chance they won't know what it is.



Geeks Don't Get It
Scott Pilgrim is not exactly a geek film. This is a movie about a slacker musician who's biggest problem is choosing which of the two ‘hot’ girls he's dating he most wants to sleep with. He spends his nights hanging out at cool clubs where he rocks out on stage and his days planning another balls to the wall brawl with an enemy. This is a movie about guys who are in bands, not geeks sitting around in their parents' basements playing World of Warcraft. It doesn't have any geeks in it and, apparently, none of them showed up to see it either. Odds are most geeks simply didn't get the appeal of a movie about cool guys with guitars pretending to like video games and stayed home with an actual video game called Starcraft II.

People Hate Michael Cera
There's a reason this viral video containing a collection of shots in which Michael Cera gets punched in the face was insanely popular, and no it isn't because people were excited about Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. While he has his fans, people hate Michael Cera. In particular they hate that he always plays the same character and he did it again in Scott Pilgrim. Which is another reason it flopped, too many people hate the leading man.

Scott Pilgrim Is A Musical Without Songs
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a musical. Not because of the indie-rock soundtrack, there aren't really many songs in the film and there's definitely no dancing. Instead what Edgar Wright has done is take the musical format and apply it to, fighting. In a musical characters break into song and dance whenever there's something too big to be expressed by words. Scott Pilgrim uses its fights in the same way. Scott Pilgrim fights whenever there's something too big to express with dialogue, something too important to simply say. It's through these elaborate, colorful, fights that Scott's personality changes and grows. It's because of his fights that he eventually realizes he lacks self-respect, and when he gets some, that's part of a fight too. Except musicals aren't for everyone. the same things which people hate about musicals are present in the trailers and, whether they knew it or not, probably had a hand in keeping them away. Some people simply don't get musicals. Normally that's ok since there's a dedicated crowd of moviegoers who do get it, and show up for a musical anyway, but the musical moviegoer isn't showing up for a fight movie and neither did anyone else.

There were big expectations for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, but only from the handful of people who'd already seen it. But it was always a movie without a specific audience. It's a broad movie built on a lot of different niche elements, and as much as we'd like to believe moviegoers are open-minded enough to step outside their comfort zone, most of the time they won't. The mistake was in thinking that all the different audiences Scott Pilgrim speaks to were the same audience, when they're not.

People say it's become cool to be a geek. That's not true. People have just started applying the word geek to cool people. Hipsters aren't geeks and geeks aren't rock musicians and rock musicians aren't old school gamers and aging gamers don't like musicals. In a perfect world none of that would matter and people would simply show up to the theater and be blown away by the innovative level of creativity on display in Scott Pilgrim, but you have to get them there first.

Maybe Universal could have lied more in the marketing, but it's hard to fault them for being honest about the movie they had to offer. They were proud of Edgar Wright's work, and advertised it accordingly. Deadline says Universal knew it would flop, but they also knew it was good, and simply didn't care. Perhaps they're banking on it finding new life as a massive cult hit on DVD, and that's exactly what it deserves to be. Scott Pilgrim's a flop and it'll take a minor miracle to turn that around before theater owners give up and stop showing it. But maybe, if it's lucky, Pilgrim will find new life somewhere down the road as a must-see Netflix rental. Whether they're potheads or nerds, ravers or comic book readers, they'll thank you for it. It's Scott Pilgrim fans vs. the World.

Kick-Ass Soundtrack

1."Stand Up" - The Prodigy

2."Kick Ass (Radio Edit)" - Mika vs. RedOne

3."Can't Go Back" - Primal Scream

4."There's a Pot Brewin'" - The Little Ones

5."Omen" - The Prodigy

6."Make Me Wanna Die" - The Pretty Reckless

7."Banana Splits (Kick-Ass Film Version)" - The Dickies

8."Starry Eyed" - Ellie Goulding

9."This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us" - Sparks

10."We're All In Love" -The New York Dolls

The New York Dolls - We're All in Love Vidéo banana_split sélectionnée dans Musique

11."Bongo Song" - Zongamin

12."Per Qualche Dollaro in Più (For a Few Dollars More)"- Ennio Morricone

13."Bad Reputation" - The Hit Girls

14."An American Trilogy"-Elvis Presley

Pluralism and relativism

Pluralism is a belief that there is no one answer to anything, which is much like postmodernism. There are two types of pluralism:

Firstly there is Normative pluralism/relativism (or nihilism) is the acceptance of all narratives, expressions and norms, claiming that no one is better than all the others, which is a very bleak view.

Secondly, (the view we have looked at) there is a kind of postmodernism which is pluralist in the sense that it accepts different views, without denying that something is better than other things. For example accepting someone’s view, but not agreeing with it. It is this second kind, which allows some form of rebuttal to criticisms of Postmodernism (like those put forward by Jameson) and perhaps stops it being so annoyingly smug a theory.

Hollywood Grand Narratives

Remember Marshall McLuhan view that 'the medium is the message', this is certainly the case with Hollywood cinema. In terms of medium, film genre serves as the medium


There is a view that only 7 narratives exist




Overcoming the Monster A terrifying, all-powerful, life-threatening monster whom the hero must confront in a fight to the death. An example of this plot is seen in Beowulf, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Dracula.
Rags to Riches Someone who has seemed to the world quite commonplace is shown to have been hiding a second, more exceptional self within. Think the ugly duckling, Jane Eyre and Clark Kent.
The Quest From the moment the hero learns of the priceless goal, he sets out on a hazardous journey to reach it. Examples are seen in The Odyssey, The Aeneid, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Voyage and Return The hero or heroine and a few companions travel out of the familiar surroundings into another world completely cut off from the first. While it is at first marvellous, there is a sense of increasing peril. After a dramatic escape, they return to the familiar world where they began. Alice in Wonderland and The Time Machine are obvious examples; but Brideshead Revisited and Gone with the Wind also embody this basic plotline.
Comedy Following a general chaos of misunderstanding, the characters tie themselves and each other into a knot that seems almost unbearable; however, to universal relief, everyone and everything gets sorted out, bringing about the happy ending. Shakespeare’s comedies come to mind, as do Jane Austen’s perfect novels.
Tragedy A character through some flaw or lack of self-understanding is increasingly drawn into a fatal course of action which leads inexorably to disaster. King Lear, Madame Bovary, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Bonnie and Clyde—all flagrantly tragic.
Rebirth There is a mounting sense of threat as a dark force approaches the hero until it emerges completely, holding the hero in its deadly grip. Only after a time, when it seems that the dark force has triumphed, does the reversal take place. The hero is redeemed, usually through the life-giving power of love. Many fairy tales take this shape; also, works like Silas Marner and It’s a Wonderful Life.
Jean-François Lyotard
Lyotard rejected what he called the “grand narratives” or universal “meta-narratives.”

Basically, the grand narratives (big stories) refer to the great theories of history, science, religion, politics. For example, Lyotard rejects the ideas that everything is knowable by science or that as history moves forward in time, humanity makes progress, and therefore he also rejects that everyone follows one of three grand narratives, and introduced the idea of micronarratives.
Lyotard favours ‘micronarratives’ (little stories) that can go in any direction, that reflect diversity, that are unpredictable, which show that everyone is different and everyone has their own stories.

Yet More Criticism Of Postmodernism

Schematic Differences between
Modernism and Postmodernism
Modernism
Postmodernism
romanticism/symbolism
paraphysics/Dadaism
purpose
play
design
chance
hierarchy
anarchy
matery, logos
exhaustion, silence
art object, finished word
process, performance
distance
participation
creation, totalization
deconstruction
synthesis
antithesis
presence
absence
centering
dispersal
genre, boundary
text, intertext
semantics
rhetoric
paradigm
syntagm
hypotaxis
parataxis
metaphor
metonymy
selection
combination
depth
surface
interpretation
against interpretation
reading
misreading
signified
signifier
lisible (readerly)
scriptible
narrative
anti-narrative
grande histoire
petite histoire
master code
idiolect
symptom
desire
type
mutant
genital, phallic
polymorphous
paranoia
schizophrenia
origin, cause
difference-difference
God the Father
The Holy Ghost
Metaphysics
irony
determinacy
indeterminacy
transcendence
immanence

(SOURCE: Hassan "The Culture of Postmodernism" Theory, Culture, and Society, V 2 1985, 123-4.)

Further Criticisms Of Postmodernism

Rosenau (1993) Rosenau identifies seven contradictions in Postmodernism:
1. Its anti-theoretical position is essentially a theoretical stand.
2. While Postmodernism stresses the irrational, instruments of reason are freely employed to advance its perspective.
3. The Postmodern prescription to focus on the marginal is itself an evaluative emphasis of precisely the sort that it otherwise attacks.
4. Postmodernism stress intertextuality but often treats text in isolation.
5. By adamently rejecting modern criteria for assessing theory, Postmodernists cannot argue that there are no valid criteria for judgment.
6. Postmodernism criticizes the inconsistency of modernism, but refuses to be held to norms of consistency itself.
7. Postmodernists contradict themselves by relinquishing truth claims in their own writings.

Jean-François Lyotard

Lyotard rejected what he called the “grand narratives” or universal “meta-narratives.”

Basically, the grand narratives (big stories) refer to the great theories of history, science, religion, politics. For example, Lyotard rejects the ideas that everything is knowable by science or that as history moves forward in time, humanity makes progress, and therefore he also rejects that everyone follows one of three grand narratives, and introduced the idea of micronarratives.
Lyotard favours ‘micronarratives’ (little stories) that can go in any direction, that reflect diversity, that are unpredictable, which show that everyone is different and everyone has their own stories.

Homage

Not to be confused with a pastiche, the homage is a kinder and more respectful way of making use of an existing style. Homage is in a simple way a sort of tribute to the thing they are copying. Tarantino makes use of homage in all of his films. For example, Tarantiono’s soundtrack to Inglorious Basterds is a tribute to Ennio Morricone as his music is used throughout the whole film and owns the majority of music on the soundtrack to the movie.

Frederic Jameson Criticism Of Postmodernism

Sees postmodernism as empty and trapped in circular references (never-ending arguments).

Nothing more than a series of self-referential 'jokes' which have no deeper meaning or purpose. (Ironically Postmodernists don't disagree but use his criticism as their purpose, by not having a purpose, that in itself is the purpose creating the paradoxical nature of Postmodernism)

For Jameson, literary and cultural output has more purpose than postmodernism and therefore remains a modernist in a world increasingly dominated by postmodern culture.

Contrasting this however, Jameson sees reason for the present generations to express themselves through postmodernity due to them being the product of such a heavily globalised, multinational dominated economy, which carries the multinational media industry as one of its main branches. By the media being everywhere, all the time bombarding the generation, explains why postmodernists’ merging of all discourse into an undifferentiated whole "there no longer does seem to be any organic relationship between the American history we learn from schoolbooks and the lived experience of the current, multinational, high-rise, stagflated city of the newspapers and of our own everyday life” (p.22 Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 1991.)

Pastiche

Pastiche in its simplest form is an imitation of an existing style. Normally it is used in a lighthearted way but more often it is very satirical.
A satire attempts to mock topical issues, which means that its humour and purpose is fleeting as it relies on the audiences knowledge of the issue that is being sent up.
Pastiche is now seen as part of Postmodernism and is used in both support and criticism of postmodernism.

Jacques Derrida - The Centre Is Not The Centre

“The centre is not the centre. The concept of a centered structure…is contradictorily coherent. And, as always, coherence in contradiction expresses the force of desire.”

The centre actually doesn’t exist, but because we have a need for it to make sense of the world around us, we perceive it to be there – however, according to Derrida, the need for and perception of a centre doesn’t necessarily mean that centre exists.

Talcott Parsons

Talcott Parsons was a sociologist in the 1950s who made observations of society leading to the structural functionalist view. This view suggests that society (like literature and film) has necessary structures that keep it together.

Post-Modernism is fundamentally the diverse mixture of any tradition with its immediate past: it is the continuation of Modernism and its transcendence (Charles Jencks, What is Post-Modernism? 1986).

Baudrillard Hyperreality

One easy to understand example of hyperreality is the McDonald's "M" arches create in the eyes of the viewer, the huge foodchain that it is known as today, when in "reality" the "M" represents nothing, and the food produced is neither identical nor infinite. (Shown in simulacra and simulation)
Marshall McLuhan who created the phrase ‘the medium is the message’ heavily influenced Baudrillard’s idea of hyperreality. Marshall’s phrase basically means that the way the message is presented becomes more important than the meaning of the message itself.

Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation

From the 9/11 example of 'it was like a Movie', Baudrillard gives this Derrida’s point a name, Simulacra Simulation. Baudrillard claims that our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience of things is of a simulation of reality. He believes that we cannot separate the image from the 'reality', for example, when we eat a Big Mac, we eat the marketing and lifestyle associated with it, giving the impression that the Big Mac we are eating is the great thing advertised on the television, rather than just one of millions mass produced, we believe the one we see on the television is the one that we eat.

Claude Levi Strauss - Genre

Levi Strauss developed the theory of 'bricolage'. Bricolage is a change that takes place giving traditional objects or language a new, often subversive, meaning and context.

A very obvious example was the use of a safety pin by punks as a piercing. Strauss believed that texts were constructed from various parts of other texts, which means that all texts used elements from other texts in order to create something new. That DOESN'T make it postmodern. However, for a text to become postmodern, it deliberately takes elements from outside its 'genre' and makes you notice them (like the safety pin piercing).
Levi-Strauss saw any text as constructed out of socially recognizable debris from other texts. He saw that writers construct texts from other texts by a process of:
Addition Deletion Substitution Transposition

Jacques Derrida - Genre

Jacques Derrida said that 'a text cannot belong to no genre, it cannot be without... a genre. Every text participates in one or several genres, there is no genreless text'
(Derrida 1981, 61).

Derrida’s point explains why commentators on September 11th could only understand what they were seeing as ‘like a movie’. And also why Kick-Ass is thought of as ‘like a superhero’. This is perhaps what Fiske means by saying ‘we make sense of it by turning it into another text.’ Steve de Souza, the director of Die Hard says that: “[T]he image of the terrorist attacks ‘looked like a movie poster, like one of my movie posters” (119). Film experts were not the only ones to resort to cinematic examples that they remembered when confronted with the events of September 11, unable or unwilling to believe their own vision of horrific events, people do not think back to imagery of the nightmare, but compare that nightmare to films they have seen.

Fiske - Genre

Fiske thought that we make sense of the world not through our own experiences but through the media's portrayal of them. We use 'codes' to create meaning, for example, within Kick Ass, we view the character ‘Kick Ass’ as a superhero, just because he is dressed like a superhero, showing that our perception of a superhero is only apparent through intertextuality from other films for example batman and Spiderman. Infact Kick Ass isn’t a superhero, because he has no super powers and is therefore no different to any other normal person.

René Magritte

René Magritte was an artist, who’s work, which showed a juxtaposition of everyday items in an unusual context, which gave a new meaning to familiar things. For example, he showed this through his painting, The (La trahison des images), displays a pipe, which looks like it could be used as an advertisement for a tobacco store. Magritte painted below the pipe "This is not a pipe" (Ceci n'est pas une pipe), which appears to contradict what he has just painted, but is actually true: the painting is not of a pipe; it is an image of a pipe. When Magritte was asked about this image, he replied that of course it was not a pipe, just try to fill it with tobacco.