The fact that Scott Pilgrim vs The World didn’t do so well in theatres makes me sad.
Anyone who has seen the movie has come out raving about how amazing it was. I haven’t heard any bad reviews of it at all.
For me, I read the comics a year ago on a friend’s recommendation and immediately fell in love. Not only is it a comic, not only is it set in modern-day Toronto, but the characters pretty much epitomize my social circle. And like so many of the best stories, it’s like regular life only better. Brian Lee O’Malley has a knack for telling a story with heart and hilarity. I get all the jokes. I recognize the character types. On the movie screen, these look like people I could meet tomorrow at a party. And in fact most of these people I have already met. They just tend not to throw down in battles to the death at a split second’s notice.
The movie reflected the comics perfectly. Which is why it didn’t do so well at the box office.
At first I was confused. It’s so good! Everyone I know liked it! And then I realize, not for the first time, that my social circle is not a representative sample of modern culture. Even Twitter, where Scott Pilgrim was trending for days, is a really poor sample of the wider world.
Scott Pilgrim is about middle-class white slacker kids between 17-25 in Toronto. It’s a very accurate depiction of this particular social class.
People over the age of 25 or so tend not to like people who have graduated from university or college and are now working minimum wage and playing in bands and going to parties and not particularly being productive with their lives. So they’re not going to see this movie.
Kids under the age of 17 might look up to this kind of lifestyle but since this isn’t a particularly glamourous lifestyle either, probably not.
So now we’ve got a narrow age and culture limit to work within, but the market for this movie goes even smaller than that. Because essentially it’s about geeky hipsters.
Hipsters: Most people don’t like them. Scott Pilgrim and his kids are more indie than pretentious-hipster, but they (we?) are all lumped together these days.
Geeks: Still aren’t cool, no matter how much some people like to say so. Yet again, though, Scott Pilgrim and his friends don’t play Starcraft II so they’re not really that geeky they just make jokes about Super Mario Bros.
And since someone pointed this out, Brian Lee O’Malley’s art style is kind of manga-inspired, so even some comics geeks would scoff at it because they “don’t like anime” (don’t get me started).
So while to the outside world this movie is about these unwanted subcultures, each subculture on it’s own also doesn’t see itself fully represented here and isn’t interested either.
So the market for Scott Pilgrim vs the World comes down to a very narrow slice of the Venn Diagram where Hipsters and Geeks overlap, within this particular age group of white middle class kids.
I don’t want to think that this is where it ends, though, with me and my friends cherishing this cult classic into our old age. I get the feeling that when this comes out on DVD it will be easier to push on our unsuspecting friends who are on the fringes of our group, close enough to get the jokes and not feel like outsiders. The story, the romance doesn’t hinge on that. It’s a story about love and people growing up. That’s pretty universal. I’m very thankful this movie got made.
The Red Notepad 