Last evening Debbie and I went and saw SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD, the film adaptation of Canadian Cartoonist Bryan Lee O’Malley’s 6 graphic novel series, which was published by Oni Press. I’ll admit I respect the books but haven’t read them all – and I didn’t LOVE them, like some people do… on the flip side, I do LOVE the films made by director Edgar Wright – Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and after seeing SPvTW I would have to say it joins those great films and is something I would rewatch again, many times. There’s a lot of energy, style and thought put into this movie and, unlike most directors, Wright knows how to pace a movie effectively as the movie FLOWS. It doesn’t just break the fourth wall, it smashes it.

SPvTW would have benefited more from 3D than most of the movies that have hacked in the new movie trick du jour, like Clash of the Titans. If you enjoy seeing the medium of film pushed and pulled, SPvTW is the movie for you —- and in that it is similar to the comics. O’Malley pushed and pulled the medium of comics to tell his story, so it’s only fitting that the film have a director that does the same thing for the medium of film.

So far, word about box office performance is that it performed poorly on Friday – coming in fourth after The Expendables and some Julia Roberts movie that Debbie aptly referred to as “divorce porn”. Last night when we were heading into the theatre there was a big line for that Roberts movie, and looking at the people in line I would agree with her description. Our theatre was empty 30 minutes before opening, but was completely full by the time of the movie’s start. Somehow I suspect that SPvTW will perform better in Canada than it does in the US in that it might actually come in 3rd this weekend.

If SPvTW fails at the box office as it seems to have, then there will be a lot of naval-gazing to figure out why things went “wrong”. I’d have to disagree with that perspective – I’d argue that SPvTW failed to connect IMMEDIATELY on a major level for a number of reasons, but will ultimately go on to more than make it’s 60 million dollar budget back and then some. Word of mouth on this movie is excellent and this is a movie people will want to OWN a copy of.

Some of those reasons for lack of immediate success are easy to identify:

– too many preview showings. Nearly everyone in Toronto that I know who would have rushed out to see this movie saw it for free (although no one offered me a pass… :( ) Wallace did a great job of texting people about coming out for the free stuff.

– it’s advertising didn’t properly relay what the movie was about – an unrecognizable Michael Cera hunched over playing his bass guitar is a nice visual but gave the casual observer no sense of what the movie was about. The other poster, Pilgrim and Flowers standing in front of the faces of the evil exes also didn’t give much sense of what this movie was about… this is not Nick and Norah’s Infinite Sadness or Youth in Revolt for that matter.

– competition – one look at the Expendables poster and you know what it is – an action movie filled with dozens of action stars. Eat Pray Love is an Oprah backed and pushed movie. Guys want to see Expendables, women want to see Eat Pray Love… where does that leave SPvTW?

Hopefully Oni will sell some more graphic novels though.