One of the most anticipated films of the summer, Scott Pilgrim vs The World had everything going for it in a proven source material in Bryan Lee O’Malley’s hip series of graphic novels, engaging leading man in Micheal Cera and a proven director in Edgar Wright (Sean of the Dead).
As a movie Scott Pilgrim wasn’t half bad. One part slacker rom com, one part video game homage, with a few inventive fight sequences, the story of a directionless twentysomething fighting his girlfriend’s seven former partners had humour and plenty of genre references – all the incredients of a summer hit. It even managed enthusiastic critical responses from sources as disparate as Aint it Cool and The Guardian. And it flopped.
At time of writing Scott Pilgrim had made back only half its $60 million budget at the box office in the US and will do well to recoup its money through foreign markets, rentals and hardcopy sales. So what went wrong?
Theories abounded on blogs and forums as to why Scott Pilgrim failed (too geeky, poorly marketed, unlikeable characters), but the number one culprit was the very tool used to generate interest in the first place: The Internet.
Demographics
According to popular concensus, relying on a generation used to downloading movies for free to create buzz for passing trade was a recipe for disaster. It’s hard to disagree.
So why did the core audience decide not to support a good film aimed at them? Well it’s probably best to say it wasn’t a conscious decision. Given the option between free instant gratification and the expensive ritual of going to the movies convenience won out.That said instant gratification came at the expense of the producers and was illegal seems not to have come into play.
You’d think advocates of a free and open Internet would mount an offense against what amounts to 50% of online activity but, if anything, the argument goes that Big Content has it all wrong by charging in the first place. The mantra that ‘information wants to be free’ has become not a philosophy so much as a rationale and excuse for disseminating material without the consent of the copyright holders.
To be fair, the premise of the Free movement is rooted in a noble ethos based on transparency, learning and a rethinking of companies can make money (by emphasising experience over the product). Something as a counterpoint to pre-Internet culture of gatekeeping and expensive freedom of information requests, Free treats everything on the Web into an amorphous commodity of equal value: information. Be it software code, government reports, historic works of fiction, episodes of The Wire, your musings on Twitter, everything is information and it should not be restricted by privilege, the whims of service providers or unfair pricing structures defined by dinosaur industries.
More importantly Free provides an open forum for the making public of information in as wide a field as possible. The popularity of Wikileaks demonstrates that Free can work where journalists fear to tread as whistleblowers opt for international dissemination of information over limited distribution to journalists in local or national press who are bound by commercial and ethical considerations.
This is all well and good for not-for-profit endeavours but as soon as copyright enters the equation the rules change dramatically. After all, a work of art (or something intending to be art) is a product of financial investment and labour, made by an individual(s) who intends to make a living from their work. Is this kind of ‘information’ the same as – and equal in value to – a binary number? Is Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon of the same value as the Star Wars Kid clip on YouTube?
Rights and wrong
It’s arguable that the way to balance the goals of the Free movement with artists’ right to be paid for their work – and for investors to get a return on their outlay – is to differentiate ‘information’ with ‘content’. If content is no longer profitable then investment in it will decline, leading to smaller output, fewer jobs and a race to the bottom to capture lowest common denominator audiences.
Defining where information ends and content begins isn’t as problematic as it might appear but it does come down to a subjective element: choice. If a struggling local band wants to give away their music for free as a teaser for live performances then so be it. Similarly if the guy in his bedroom hits upon a unique sound but has no interest in performing live should he not have control of his channel of distribution?
Where the Free movement has fared the worst is in the failed political entity The Pirate Party. Having already been convicted in Sweden in 2009 for facilitating he illegal sharing, the website spawned a political entity, The Pirate Party, and ran in this year’s general election on a platform of making all information free to share. Unfortunately, the Swedish people considered finding jobs and a way out of recession to be more pressing needs. For all their campaigning, The Pirate Party secured 0.7% of the vote.
The current problem facing Free is its association with piracy. Until this link is definitely broken and the rights of artists accepted, Free will be seen as a movement for spongers.
It would be nice to see another fun, innovative, geeky movie like Scott Pilgrim vs The World. Just don’t expect to see one anytime soon.
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