Scott Pilgrim vs. The Movie

Isabel and I checked out the Scott Pilgrim movie tonight.

As a film, it was one of the most engrossing spectacles I have ever scene. Edgar Wright outdid himself in creating a live-action comic book. The special effects are seamless and practically charactesr unto themselves...without being an actual character. It's not like Jar Jar Binks shows up or anything. Actually, the effects such as floating text are pretty crucial to the movie -- not just as background either. Characters actually interact with them in direct, meaningful ways. The video game pop-up graphics are as central to the movie as they are to an actual video game.

The movie also seems to tone down some of the issues I had with the book series, although I suspect this was more in the interest of time than bowdlerization. 

There is still a lot of sex going on offscreen, and Pilgrim's gay roommate Wallace always has at least one new guy in his bed every scene set in their apartment. Scott and Ramona's first night together might also show more skin than you'd feel comfortable seeing on the screen during a first date (either yours or the characters'), but it was really no worse than what you'd see walking by the Victoria Secret in any mall. And the film playfully bleeps out severely inappropriate language.

If you can tolerate the licentiousness in a handful of scenes, you'll probably enjoy the movie greatly. You'll probably enjoy it more if you've read the books and if you can catch all the video game references, but Isabel claimed to have have appreciated the movie without extensive knowledge of either graphic novels or Final Fantasy or Street Fighter.

It's also one of the rare films where the discrepancies between the source and film versions all make sense and might even be improvements. Unlike other geeky adaptations like the Lord of the Rings, I didn't feel like anything in the story was critically lost or that any of the characters behaved other than they should have. And the film seems self-conscious of the changes. There is a scene where Scott's band performs in a venue that did not occur in the comic, and the lead singer says "We shouldn't even be here." I felt like it might have been a meta-dramatic reference. It actually reminded me of when Sam and Frodo say the same thing as Faramir drags them to Gondor. However, when the changes happen in Scott Pilgrim, they are believable changes that do not seem to rely on choices that break the character's original personality.

If there is a change of character, it might be that Scott comes off as a little more identifiable or likeable than in the comics, mostly because the truncated narrative allows him to make fewer awful mistakes with his life and to say fewer dopey things. The Scott we see in the movie is almost always Scott with Ramona, which is generally when he is at his best -- perhaps speaking to the transcendental nature of love as discussed in my previous post.

So, two-NES-controller-calloused thumbs up from me.

If you've ever imagined your life in terms of 16-bit adventure, you owe it to yourself to see this movie.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about in the previous sentence, then just go and enjoy the eye-candy.

Comments

[angelicid.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a good movie. I've never been much of a video game or comic book girl...ever...but something about the trailers for "Scott Pilgrim" drew me in. Thanks for the tips. :)

--Lindsay