After a paltry $10 million opening weekend, I wondered why it had such a poor showing.  And now I know.  It's a great love letter to many people (especially guys) in their teens and 20's, but most everyone outside that demographic will flatly not understand this movie at all.  The sound effects, allusions to comic books (especially manga), and fight scenes taken straight out of some video games will completely fly over the heads of people who are not immersed in that culture.  When we arrived at the theater, there were about 6 people already there (a little awkward, considering they were all couples, but whatever).  Not a large showing, but hey, what do you expect at a Tuesday evening showing?  Anyway, about halfway through, one of the couples walked out.  At least, I don't think they both decided to take the opportunity for an exciting dual trip to the snack bar.  But seriously, I've never walked out on a movie (at the very worst, I fell asleep in the middle of Battlefield Earth).  It's quite a statement to pay your $10 and say, "You know, I find this experience so completely uninteresting that I'm going to eat the cost and go do something else."

These are the people that don't get it.  And won't.  You can try to explain why some things are appealing to people who haven't played Legend of Zelda, or couldn't tell you the first thing about Street Fighter, but it's ultimately futile unless they've been immersed in that culture for at least a few years.  I shudder to think how far my dad would get in this movie before uttering a dismissive "Yak" and moving on to football game or somesuch.  Not that there's anything wrong with that - I don't expect him to understand the themes prevalent, as they weren't around during his formative years.  But for many of us in our teens and 20's, we can appreciate all the nods and effects that invoke the nerd culture of our age.  And I for one really appreciate this mainstream release movie for pushing that culture (kicking and screaming) much to the fore, in what I hope will be its first inroads into real "popular" culture.  But the initial box office returns for this movie tells me how much farther we have to go.

Some people really love this movie, calling it akin to "our generation's Citizen Kane".  I certainly wouldn't go that far, but it's a fun little movie and what it represents to me means a lot more than the sum of its parts.  It's vindication that the so-called "Millennial" generation's underground culture is worthy of serious treatment and is becoming less ignored.  Though initial revenues don't seem to bear that out, this is a first salvo, and I hope that it achieves more success in the after-theater market (which I'm willing to bet will happen).  I could not imagine a movie like this being released 10 years ago, but I'm excited to see what this will inspire for the next decade and beyond.