Was It Bad Timing That Befell Kick-Ass and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World?
By Will Kriegshauser
As you might’ve heard by now, two ultra-cool comic book movies with seemingly everything going for them – Kick-Ass and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World - crashed & burned in theaters. But why, Screencrave? Good question. There are many reasons already elaborated on by critics as to why the two movies failed, but perhaps most of it boils down to bad timing and crazy cultural shennanigans.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
Scott Pilgrim the comic book character is a humble, good-natured slacker twenty-something who plays in a band and as no job. He’s kind of a loser, but a loveable loser. Ask ten random people who they think would be perfect for that role, and seven of them would say Michael Cera. Unfortunately for the producers of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, they caught Cera in mild career downturn that might reflect a growing irritation with the public about his ongoing characterization in movies, namely that he plays the same awkward, loveable wallflower in every one of them.
Cera is impossible not to like, so you might not call it a backlash as much as an implicit gesture by audiences to change his game up a bit. Casting decisions for movies are made way in advance of the actual release, so it’s very difficult for producers to anticipate the fickleness of the moviegoing public. Again, Cera’s a nice guy and a decent actor, but maybe if this latest project’s pitiful opening is any indication, we’re all just clamoring for him to be bad, or different, or something (Youth In Revolt doesn’t count).
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World has an 81% rating on rottentomatoes.com, the famous online review aggregator that collects professional critical opinions. 81%. The movie can’t be that bad, right? If a bunch of uptight, suit-wearing conformists can gravitate to such a gloriously audacious post-modern mash-up of hipster tableaux, then why not everybody else?
Cera’s a convenient and unfortunate scapegoat, but perhaps it reflects a more broader disenchantment with not only hipster tableaux, but movies based on comic books, also. Quick question – who among you had actually heard of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World before you saw it as an advertisement somewhere? Nobody? One advantage of releasing a comic book movie is that fact that it already has a built in fan base, except now that franchises like Spider-man, Superman, and The Hulk have been done, producers keep green-lighting more obscure publications with equally obscure fanbases. As people are starting to find out, the well of good comic book adaptation possibilities is far from bottomless.
Kick-Ass
Kick-Ass’ failure at the box office has already been thoroughly chronicled by the LA Times, so we’ll only focus on how the lead actors were all wrong from the get go. Writer Steven Zeitchik claims that one misconception Kick-Ass’ failure revealed to be false was the idea that people were ready, more than ever, to embrace a new shocking kind of youth violence Kick-Ass was ready to offer. He was only partially right.
Anybody that’s seen Kick-Ass knows that the only real ‘shocking’ violence comes in the form of Chloe Moretz. She plays Hit Girl—the one with the purple wig and the twin Leonardo swords. The difference between poster-preview Hit Girl and screen-time Hit Girl, however, is vast…bloody. Poster-preview Hit Girl is cute. Screen-time Hit Girl chops up bad guys and splatters entrails like the last airbender wish he had the balls. She’s equal parts adorable, and holy-shit! remorseless. America may have been ready for Aaron Johnson and McLovin to fight crime with gory prejudice, just not Hannah Montana.
But maybe another problem is that before they got a chance to see the movie, America couldn’t help but lump in Aaron Johnson and McLovin as being a part of the same hipster subculture Cera lords over. And maybe they’re right. What’s more ironic than a comic book superhero movie where the hero’s aren’t super, and get supremely upstaged by a girl who’s not in high school yet? Backing up even further, who is Aaron Johnson? Wouldn’t it be safer to cast a well-known actor instead of an unknown one to put a face on a franchise very few people have heard about outside of the comic-con realm?
Now, bear with me on this, because it’s about to get a little weird. Imagine that instead of Donatello, you had Cecil Turtle as the lamest member of the teenage mutant ninja turtles.
Now imagine that the turtles are doing their thing eating pizza, living in a sewer, fantasizing about going beastiality on April O’Neil and whatnot until Shredder shows up. Except when the times comes to thwart Shredder, and kindly old Cecil and the rest of the turtles get ready to lay down some bloodless, family-friendly, finely-honed karate, kindly old Cecil grabs Leo’s swords, chops Shredder’s head off and sticks it on a pike on top of the Empire State Building.
In a darker, Roman Polanski-er universe, you could deal with Leo or Ralph finally going amoral and getting some good use out of their weapons. But Cecil? Now that would shocking. Not only that, but he would make the rest of the turtles look like total pussies. That’s Moretz’s basic effect on everything in Kick-Ass – she’s almost too damned adorable to function the way she does, and antithetical to what America wants from her. Or maybe she’s just a particular brand of bad-ass the world isn’t quite ready for.
If the year was 2005 instead of 2010, maybe Scott Pilgrim vs. The World would’ve killed. And maybe Kick-Ass would’ve actually kicked ass if Matthew Vaughn had played it a little safer with Moretz. But it isn’t. And he didn’t. Cultural trends are as easy to chart and predict as the weather. The producers of both movies looked to cash in on what they thought they knew certain demographics wanted, and misfired because of bad timing and bad judgement.
If you have a different theory, or perhaps a weirder analogy (doubtful) to clarify either of these two movies falling hard, be generous and leave a comment.
Thursday, August 26, 2010 3:42PM
I think Kick Ass suffered from poor marketing. Skipped it in theaters, just saw it on netflix and it was the best movie ive seen all year (better than inception). chloe moretz is unbelievably talented, aaron johnson was great, nic cage killed it. the problem is that my age group wasnt ready to take a movie based on an unknown comic book that looked like a kids feel good movie seriously. kick ass was far from a kids movie. it was fucking incredible.
Thursday, August 26, 2010 6:15PM
Scott Pilgrim was great, you're an idiot.
Thursday, August 26, 2010 6:28PM
Wow, that wasn't a good rebuttal at all. At least tell him why he's an idiot. The other guy actually gave a decent argument. Step it up.
Thursday, August 26, 2010 7:48PM
Kick-ass suffered from poor marketing full stop. I hadnt even heard of this film till someone told me about it. No ads or promos anywhere in sight. I suspect the distributors were half hearted about splashing big dollars on marketing because they still had reservations about how the public would take this film. A damn shame and a great pity, Kick-Ass is the best movie I've seen in a long time and like many other people, pray for the sequel.
Friday, August 27, 2010 9:12AM
Last time I checked Kick ass made roughly 97 million dollars at the box office (w/ 28 million dollar budget) also 1.5 million sold in dvd sales its first week, considering the R rating thats not bad, I def dont see it as a faliure with it being well recieved by critics (75 average rating by rotten tomatoes)..While I do agree with your comments about the Scott Pilgram film it was still a really great which at the end of the day that is all that matters…hopefully it will make have cult following and do well in DVD sales well
Friday, August 27, 2010 9:46AM
I'm sorry but I'm pretty sure that everything you just wrote is inaccurate.
They aren't currently filming a sequel because Matthew Vaughn is prepping for X-Men First Class which is scheduled to begin production next week. Also Jane Goldman (Kick-Ass screenwriter) will be with him because she's also penning the script for the film.
Plus, the last time I checked Mark Millar was still working on the next Kick-Ass comic from which the sequel will be based. So where do you get your information? What promos are you talking about exactly?
Friday, August 27, 2010 10:00AM
Are you kidding me? do you know how much money kick ass made in theaters?! Why the heck do you think they are already filming a sequel.? And there were promos everywhere. Go do your research. and stfu.
Friday, August 27, 2010 10:23AM
Other posters are correct with regard to the marketing. The trailers in particular implied
that it was a 'lame' spiderman/batman clone. Which showed absolutely none of the quite simply
mind-blowing action sequences, more hillarious one-liners than any other film I can remember,
the best movie score ever and compeling performances by all the main characters. However the scene-stealing performance of Chloe Grace Moretz has to be seen to be believed. She is in my
opinion the most charismatic and entrancing actress in film today. Her performances are compelling and believable and she seems to have the ability (unlike most Hollywood actresses/actors) to completely envelope herself in the persona of the character being portrayed. It is unforgivable that people were denied the priviledge of seeing this amazing piece of work in the theatres because of the way it was portrayed.
Sunday, August 29, 2010 12:41PM
kick ass does just that and is vastly underated.
Sunday, August 29, 2010 2:11PM
Scott Pilgrim suffers from a lame lead actor. I find Cera an incredibly annoying 1 trick pony. How many times is he going to play the same character? As for Kick Ass, agree with the marketing failure. I just watched it and found it to be the most entertaining flick I have seen all year. The promos i remember gave absolutely no indication to what the film was really about.
Sunday, August 29, 2010 9:33PM
what he said!! I want MORE. I actually got out of comics years ago b/c I got old, stopped smoking weed and tried to live a more adult life. I flirted with some comics lately only b/c I saw Grant Morrison is still writing (although he has lost a lot of his edge too, guess I'm not the only one). anways, on one of my rare trips to the store I saw Kick ass, but didn't open it, judged the cover to be a throwback to the late eighties early nineties a-la "kid anarchy" type of "alt" comics. now I'm sorry I didn't pick it up. we need more of these types of titles, and enough MUTANTS! P.S. Alan Moore rules and I'd love to see "Miracleman" made into a movie, but it's not mainstream enough. (Moore also penned the comic books V for vendetta, league of xtraordinary, the watchmen, and made swamp thing a cool title after the sucky eighties movies bombed)
Sunday, August 29, 2010 9:36PM
totally agree on the score, played the movie again just to hear the score, especially what I call "Kick Ass' theme". Moretz owned that movie. the marketing and trailers were cool, but really misdirected the audience, as the movie was so much more than the trailers attempted to show.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010 11:57AM
[...] week, we posted an article entitled, “Was It Bad Timing That Befell Kick-Ass and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World?” It pretty much explained the reasons why neither film was a huge commercial success, even [...]
Wednesday, September 1, 2010 3:31PM
The lead character drove me nuts with his whining. Hit Girl has a 30 year franchise ahead of her with 6 sequels. It's going to be a fun ride!
Tuesday, September 7, 2010 7:34PM
If you've read the Scott pilgrim books.. you'll realise that Cera's the perfect person to play scott pilgrim. I don't think there would have been anyone to do a better job.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010 9:00PM
http://splashpage.mtv.com/2010/08/31/kick-ass-2-c…
Yes the comic is on the way, and so is the production of the movie. Yes, he is directing X-Men First class which is to come out in 2011, and Kick Ass 2 for 2012.
Thursday, September 9, 2010 11:28AM
Kick-Ass was great! You are an imbecile.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010 11:04AM
[...] Pilgrim vs The World may have not broken any box office records but we predict that it will become a cult phenomenon on DVD. Much like director Edgar [...]
Friday, September 24, 2010 4:00PM
Cera actually can and is hated a lot, just saying.
Sunday, September 26, 2010 10:03PM
I am 51 years old and its the best film since easy rider!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wednesday, March 9, 2011 4:51PM
I am sorry but I have to agree with Fuck You on this. Even though he did not give a good argument. The other guys argument was poorly done. Both movies suffered because The Expendables came out on the same weekend as Scott Pilgrim and Kick Ass was too gritty for the "happily ever after" view point of the American Public. If my opinion matter even a little bit you would know that I think that Kick Ass should have stayed closer to the comic and been more gritty, gotten the NC17 rating and been a better movie. Even though Kriegshauser is articulate and made an argument that some people who like to avoid the obvious truth would like to believe. He is never the less wrong. The reason the movies failed was the poor taste of Americas Majority viewing audience.