And this is why we can't have nice things
By
Agonus,
Posted on: 2010-09-03 14:51 in Comic and Hero-Villain Culture
Of course, I've also seen a number of reviews that make no mention of any confusion, and I went into the movie stone cold on what the story was about, past the general fighting of 7 evil exes, and found it easy to follow.
In fact, this conversation is entirely suprising to me because I thought the story and background was pretty clear. Maybe a bit shallow, but even thinking heavily about it, I am not left with the feeling of "Why?"
Which is what I think Captain Foamy is talking about. Different levels, different strokes, and different avenues for different folks.
"Ben is short for Frank."
-Baffling Beer-Man, The Tenacious 3: The Movie
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The movie probably does do that. Because I kind of did know what was going on (due to being a fan of the book), I didn't dwell on it.
However, the book never exactly explains why the world is the way it is. It just is. And even then, maybe it... Isn't? Doubt is thrown into the mix that maybe all of the exciting fights and absurd effects only exist within Scott's mind, but it's never confirmed, and the movie certainly didn't take that approach so it's dismissed.
My wife thought it was okay and didn't bother questioning, "Wait, why is he shooting fireballs and flying now?" so I think she accepted it.
I think my official stance is this, though: "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" was presented as the best video game adaptation to cinema (that's what many reviewers called it, that isn't my tagline). When playing a video game, you don't question why Mario has such uncanny jumping abilities for a fat Italian plumber, or why a plumber is dating a princess, or why a giant lizard-guy stole the princess. You just set out to save the day.
Scott Pilgrim just wants to save the day as well. He doesn't need your questions, your "How?"s and "Why?"s. All you need to know is that he is the best fighter in the province and too stubborn to know when he is beaten.
Thanks for eight fun years, Paragon.
I will also add that I like watching shows and movies where everything isn't spelled out and I can think about and ponder motivations for characters that make sense, if the movie leaves that door open or if they purposively want us to do down that avenue. That's why I loved Lost and that's why I love discussing it with people.
I do think some films have plot holes or vague motivations just because of poor writing. I did not get that feeling from SPvsTW.
"Ben is short for Frank."
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I forgot who said it and on what board, but someone said until the scene where Ramona was rollerskating away from Scott and the ice was melting, they didn't like the "style" of the movie. But with that scene, they saw that the universe Scott inhabits (whether that is his mind or the actual world) is not our "reality" and was able to take the fighting/special movies/video game characteristics at face value.
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Originally Posted by ChrisMoses
My wife thought it was okay and didn't bother questioning, "Wait, why is he shooting fireballs and flying now?" so I think she accepted it. |
"Ben is short for Frank."
-Baffling Beer-Man, The Tenacious 3: The Movie
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I do - that's why I don't play those types of games |
Originally Posted by ChrisMoses
When playing a video game, you don't question why Mario has such uncanny jumping abilities for a fat Italian plumber, or why a plumber is dating a princess, or why a giant lizard-guy stole the princess. You just set out to save the day.
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@Golden Girl
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I'm critical of it because I believe in Scott Pilgrim's case, its the singular reason its failing to find more than a tiny audience. If that was *intentional* then I have to question the enormous amount of money spent on production and marketing. There's nothing wrong with wanting to make a very specific story you know is only going to connect with a very small audience. Its not like Christopher Guest thought A Mighty Wind was going to make a hundred million dollars. But people don't criticize movies like that for being insular, because they are being deliberately insular. Best in Show probably targets almost as small a niche as Scott Pilgrim does, but it does so consciously. If Scott Pilgrim was deliberately made intended for that small of an audience, there'd be no problem. But it aspired to reach a much larger audience, yet made absolutely no attempt to engage them. That's a mistake worth pointing out, because if the lesson Scott Pilgrim teaches is just "the movie going audience is too dumb to recognize its genius" then its really Scott Pilgrim's fans that haven't learned the lesson.|
Originally Posted by CaptainFoamerang
That is the thing, though. Not only does tolerance for the unexplained vary from person to person but from movie to movie. And you've got camps of people that view films as purely for entertainment purposes and thus roll with everything they're presented, ones that believe films and whatever they deem to be lesser forms of media explain themselves too much and the audience should be left to figure it out for themselves, and ones that think that films have to explain and account for everything or it takes away from the quality.
I just think with everything that comes along with a story, we can find better things to criticize than how much background information we're given or how gently we're eased into the world. |
The real lesson is that the storyteller must always target their audience, and must always speak their language. Its asking a lot for the audience to keep an open mind and hear what the storyteller wants to say. Its asking too much for the storyteller to force them to learn a different language just because he doesn't want to translate for them. Its a cop out to sit around and wax poetic about how great the movie was, and therefore the problem has to be with the audience. Whatever else the movie was, it failed to reach the audience it seems to have aspired to reach, and it failed for obvious reasons. Its worth coming up with a more nuanced lesson other than "we should never make these movies ever again" or its polar opposite "we should keep making these movies until the movie going audience grows a brain." Both of those are equally bad lessons to learn.
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Well there's the storyteller and there's the marketing department. You can always go back and forth assigning blame to one or both of them if a movie underperforms, but, as I said way back in I think my first post of the thread, I tend not to care how much a movie made at the box office when I'm considering which movies to buy or watch for the night. So long as I enjoyed the movie I'll consider it a success no matter how much it made or lost. Still, you can't really blame the storyteller if the marketing department and executives target a larger audience; I think it was made quite clear from the trailers that this was going to be a movie for geeks/gamers, so if doesn't reach anyone else outside of those groups, there's really no reason for anyone to give a **** except for the marketing department and executives.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I'm critical of it because I believe in Scott Pilgrim's case, its the singular reason its failing to find more than a tiny audience. If that was *intentional* then I have to question the enormous amount of money spent on production and marketing. There's nothing wrong with wanting to make a very specific story you know is only going to connect with a very small audience. Its not like Christopher Guest thought A Mighty Wind was going to make a hundred million dollars. But people don't criticize movies like that for being insular, because they are being deliberately insular. Best in Show probably targets almost as small a niche as Scott Pilgrim does, but it does so consciously. If Scott Pilgrim was deliberately made intended for that small of an audience, there'd be no problem. But it aspired to reach a much larger audience, yet made absolutely no attempt to engage them. That's a mistake worth pointing out, because if the lesson Scott Pilgrim teaches is just "the movie going audience is too dumb to recognize its genius" then its really Scott Pilgrim's fans that haven't learned the lesson.
The real lesson is that the storyteller must always target their audience, and must always speak their language. Its asking a lot for the audience to keep an open mind and hear what the storyteller wants to say. Its asking too much for the storyteller to force them to learn a different language just because he doesn't want to translate for them. Its a cop out to sit around and wax poetic about how great the movie was, and therefore the problem has to be with the audience. Whatever else the movie was, it failed to reach the audience it seems to have aspired to reach, and it failed for obvious reasons. Its worth coming up with a more nuanced lesson other than "we should never make these movies ever again" or its polar opposite "we should keep making these movies until the movie going audience grows a brain." Both of those are equally bad lessons to learn. |
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*watches Foamy explode into coins as NP drop kicks him from the shadows* |
By ninja pirate What you say is completely, utterly true. It also happens to be completely, utterly irrelevant. We're not talking in some abstract philosophical terms. We're talking about what you as a writer need to do to engage your audience. You need to get your audience to connect with your story. They need to know "why?", and in story terms, not in abstract writing terms. Of course everything in a story happens because the writer wanted it that way. Duh. You might as well proclaim the sky is blue or that water is wet. |
Ninja pirate said exactly what I said.(Which if we had rep I'd throw some your way.) You are injecting this broad vague statement when people are having a critical discussion of details which you know nothing about first hand yet you carry on to despite you don't know what you're talking about. Which you don't simply and quietly bow out of till you have better info.(like batman you gotta have enough time to plan, you come back with all right tools to win..instead of being one. You should know that as knowing is half the battle heh. Even I have the decency to see the movie I am nerdraging up threads about.)
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By CaptainFoamforbrains I'll just repost a couple of select quotes to save us time |
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By Ninjapirate If you don't have enough background info to understand what the hell is going on, how can you have any sort of substantial critical discussion of the movie? |
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| So, in that regard, on my personal scale it seems it was a success. Mostly everyone who saw it liked it, aside from outliers like Lastjustice and Golden Girl (if she actually saw it - I couldn't tell/can't recall). |
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BY BBM In fact, this conversation is entirely suprising to me because I thought the story and background was pretty clear. Maybe a bit shallow, but even thinking heavily about it, I am not left with the feeling of "Why?" |
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BY Chris moses think my official stance is this, though: "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" was presented as the best video game adaptation to cinema (that's what many reviewers called it, that isn't my tagline). When playing a video game, you don't question why Mario has such uncanny jumping abilities for a fat Italian plumber, or why a plumber is dating a princess, or why a giant lizard-guy stole the princess. You just set out to save the day. |
Ultimately I had a bigger problem with the lack of on screen relationship between Scott and Ramona, but you've even agreed to that. (which Chris ...your signature sprite is really hard to look at due to the flashing colors and motion. Could you change it to something less annoying please?The regular avatar one of Scott Pilgrim is perfectly fine.)
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By Arcanaville Its worth coming up with a more nuanced lesson other than "we should never make these movies ever again" or its polar opposite "we should keep making these movies until the movie going audience grows a brain." Both of those are equally bad lessons to learn. |
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I meant shallow in the sense that I could see how the story/background was a bit shallow, not that I was shallow 
Because I don't even know what the meaning of that word is ::flips hair::
"Ben is short for Frank."
-Baffling Beer-Man, The Tenacious 3: The Movie
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I'm not commenting on whether the movie might "succeed" for a single viewer. If it succeeds for you, great. I'm talking about the fact that the movie failed to reach the audience it intended to reach, and there are consequences for failing at that level that will make it harder for the next guy.|
Originally Posted by CaptainFoamerang
Well there's the storyteller and there's the marketing department. You can always go back and forth assigning blame to one or both of them if a movie underperforms, but, as I said way back in I think my first post of the thread, I tend not to care how much a movie made at the box office when I'm considering which movies to buy or watch for the night. So long as I enjoyed the movie I'll consider it a success no matter how much it made or lost. Still, you can't really blame the storyteller if the marketing department and executives target a larger audience; I think it was made quite clear from the trailers that this was going to be a movie for geeks/gamers, so if doesn't reach anyone else outside of those groups, there's really no reason for anyone to give a **** except for the marketing department and executives.
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And while I can't blame the director for what the marketing people do, I can still blame the director (especially when he also worked on the screenplay) for very obviously failing to synchronize scope with reach. He made a $90m movie that needed to reach triple the audience just to break even, before a single marketing dollar was spent. If you make a $90m movie that you actually *know* only a subset of a subset of the gamer-geek population will go see, you're either the best Hollywood con man who managed to steal a bunch of money and donate it to the Scott Pilgrim fan club, or you're an idiot.
Since I don't think Edgar Wright is an idiot or Robin Hood, I think its more likely that he simply failed to consider that his movie was unrelatable, and that this was more than a trivial defect in an otherwise niche-genre movie.
I'm not telling you what to like, or how to choose how to spend your entertainment dollar. And as I said, I don't think Scott Pilgrim is a bad movie as such - I liked it for what it was. But I can still take a step back and say it failed in at least part of what it tried to do, which was project Scott Pilgrim to a wider audience.
And there has to be a balance between artistic freedom and commercial success. Who is supposed to subsidize your personal taste in movies otherwise? Hollywood is not going to spend a hundred million dollars on Scott Pilgrim movies that only make back forty as a form of community service.
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Thanks for eight fun years, Paragon.
Where are you getting the $90m spent on making the movie, before marketing? All I have heard is that it cost $60m, plus, apparently, $30m for marketing.
And I doubt very much that making the movie more "broad" (explaining why Scott Pilgrim fights like he is in a video game, etc.) would have made the movie a more significant amount of money. It was a niche project that the studio hoped would ignite the geeky fanbase and appeal to a wider audience through, I guess, sheer enthusiasm of that original geeky fanbase and good reviews. Like Serenity. It was a niche movie given X amount of money to be made to both fill that niche (so it can't deviate significantly from the source material) and to, somehow, get more mainstream appeal. And as we have seen with both this movie and Serenity and to a lesser extent Kick-*** and Watchmen, you can't have it both ways, no matter how hard you try.
"Ben is short for Frank."
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Thank you for changing it in anycase.|
Originally Posted by ChrisMoses
I had changed it already...
Unfortunately. The yeti should not be tamed so easily. |
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Originally Posted by BafflingBeerMan
And I doubt very much that making the movie more "broad" (explaining why Scott Pilgrim fights like he is in a video game, etc.) would have made the movie a more significant amount of money. It was a niche project that the studio hoped would ignite the geeky fanbase and appeal to a wider audience through, I guess, sheer enthusiasm of that original geeky fanbase and good reviews. Like Serenity. It was a niche movie given X amount of money to be made to both fill that niche (so it can't deviate significantly from the source material) and to, somehow, get more mainstream appeal. And as we have seen with both this movie and Serenity and to a lesser extent Kick-*** and Watchmen, you can't have it both ways, no matter how hard you try.
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I said elsewhere that perhaps it would have worked better as an hour-long series on HBO, where it would air weekly for 7 straight weeks, with each episode ending with an Ex battle.|
Originally Posted by Lastjustice
As my friend said, (which others have said about The watchmen) Scott Pilgrim probably would done better as a Mini series than a full length film. I agree you can't do it both ways most times. I'm sure was some way of getting more money out of this...but that probably won't be the lesson taken as someone will be burnt by this ordeal.
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Even if each actual battle was 15 minutes long, you'd still get about 40 or so minutes to spend on the characters and that might help the audience to connect with them more.
"Ben is short for Frank."
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Since this forum is the center of my geek world, and a lot of folks have come into this thread and other about it and expressed their enjoyment with the film, it seems to me that the movie did reach the audience it intended to reach: geeks and gamers. It's not the filmmakers part that they decided to give him a bunch of money to make a niche movie. Is he going to turn them down? I don't think so. |
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I'm not commenting on whether the movie might "succeed" for a single viewer. If it succeeds for you, great. I'm talking about the fact that the movie failed to reach the audience it intended to reach, and there are consequences for failing at that level that will make it harder for the next guy.
And while I can't blame the director for what the marketing people do, I can still blame the director (especially when he also worked on the screenplay) for very obviously failing to synchronize scope with reach. He made a $90m movie that needed to reach triple the audience just to break even, before a single marketing dollar was spent. If you make a $90m movie that you actually *know* only a subset of a subset of the gamer-geek population will go see, you're either the best Hollywood con man who managed to steal a bunch of money and donate it to the Scott Pilgrim fan club, or you're an idiot. Since I don't think Edgar Wright is an idiot or Robin Hood, I think its more likely that he simply failed to consider that his movie was unrelatable, and that this was more than a trivial defect in an otherwise niche-genre movie. I'm not telling you what to like, or how to choose how to spend your entertainment dollar. And as I said, I don't think Scott Pilgrim is a bad movie as such - I liked it for what it was. But I can still take a step back and say it failed in at least part of what it tried to do, which was project Scott Pilgrim to a wider audience. And there has to be a balance between artistic freedom and commercial success. Who is supposed to subsidize your personal taste in movies otherwise? Hollywood is not going to spend a hundred million dollars on Scott Pilgrim movies that only make back forty as a form of community service. |
I'm saying let the execs and marketing department worry about how what they did affected the movie's box office performance, and we as the intended audience can worry about whether or not it was actually good.
- CaptainFoamerang
Silverspar on Kelly Hu: A face that could melt paint off the wall *shivers*
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Quote:
Adult Swim produced an animated one-off episode, voiced by the film's stars, that suggested the comic series would have worked just fine on TV. Edgar Wright had the harder task of compressing a six-chapter graphic novel series into a single live-action dramatic piece.|
Originally Posted by Lastjustice
As my friend said, (which others have said about The watchmen) Scott Pilgrim probably would done better as a Mini series than a full length film.
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In any case, Wright's directorial career isn't likely to be derailed by this, thanks to the largely favorable reviews and the praise of such heavy-hitter directors as Quentin Tarantino. Nevertheless, his forthcoming adaptation of Ant-Man had better be a demonstrable success.
Michael Cera, however, desperately needs to reaffirm his box office credibility.
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Yeah he needs take on a couple safe projects to give himself some credit with the execs. I don't see too many people willing bank on him as a leading man after this for awhile. I'm guessing he probably can still get work in some larger cast as a supporting actor though. His career is far from over all things concerned...atm anyways.
| Michael Cera, however, desperately needs to reaffirm his box office credibility. |
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I don't think your impression of how movies get made is realistic.
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Originally Posted by CaptainFoamerang
Since this forum is the center of my geek world, and a lot of folks have come into this thread and other about it and expressed their enjoyment with the film, it seems to me that the movie did reach the audience it intended to reach: geeks and gamers. It's not the filmmakers part that they decided to give him a bunch of money to make a niche movie. Is he going to turn them down? I don't think so.
I'm saying let the execs and marketing department worry about how what they did affected the movie's box office performance, and we as the intended audience can worry about whether or not it was actually good. |
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Well you noted other niche bombs that came out previously. If those films didn't stop them from going forward with Scott Pilgrim vs the World and, according to you, giving them too much money to work with and shoot themselves in the foot in terms of ROI, it seems unlikely they'll stop making such films after this one.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I don't think your impression of how movies get made is realistic.
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- CaptainFoamerang
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pity that, the yeti was indeed a thing of multicolored awesome.
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Originally Posted by ChrisMoses
I had changed it already...
Unfortunately. The yeti should not be tamed so easily. |
Yeti?
Edit: Even I was getting a little Pokemon seizure there.
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In contrast, the other forum I frequent has a lot less hardcore (and -especially- non-comic) geeks, and the reviews were fair, to mediocre, to "I'll wait until I can rent it for cheap".
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creepy cool munchie thing?
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Originally Posted by Father Xmas
Yeti?
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The animated seizure you mean? (falls on the floor and starts twitching.)
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If it was just a bare handful of folks complaining about the lack of set-up, I could understand not dwelling on how much of it there was. But I'm seeing a rather significant number of folks and reviews complaining about this exact thing. Which means, overall, they missed their mark on how well they explained what was going on to the general audience.
The movie almost assumes you know the story before you go to see it. And that's not a good thing to assume.
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