Review: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: the Movie

Scott Pilgrim is making some noise.

At a Glance:

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Cast: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ellen Wong, Kieran Culkin
Director: Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead)
112 mins
PG-13
TWIW rates: 4/5

Bryan Lee O'Malley's graphic novel recently released its sixth and final volume, concluding the story of young-adult slacker Scott Pilgrim's battle for the heart of Ramona Flowers against her seven evil ex-boyfriends. Scott McCloud calls it "the funniest comic book on the planet right now." There's a Scott Pilgrim video game for PS3 and XBox, and "Scott Pilgrim vs. the Animation" on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. And this past weekend, the Scott Pilgrim movie hit the box office.

23-year-old Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is a loser. He's unemployed, plays bass in a noisy rock band, lives in a tiny apartment with his "cool gay roommate" Wallace (Kieran Culkin), and has recently started dating a high schooler. But all that changes when he meets Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), the literal girl of his dreams: as a courier for Amazon, she keeps showing up in his subconscious because of a convenient subspace portal running through his head. But in order to date Ramona, he must first defeat her seven evil exes. Not only does he have to deal with the same messy relationship history that we all must in meeting someone new, but he actually has to fight out that history in a string of escalating boss battles.

Like the comics, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World captures the ethos of our generation. Scott and Ramona Flowers navigate a sea of "It's Complicated" histories, grappling with the interpersonal relations of young adults who never emotionally graduated from high school. Characters speak in a vernacular of humor based on repetition, repetition, and jokes about how lame jokes are. Scott's battles with the evil exes are peppered with tongue-in-cheek, cheesy pun-liners like "You were a little bi-curious? Honey, I'm a little bi-furious!"

The movie is also steeped in video-game culture, up to the 16-bit pixelated Universal logo with accompanying bleep-and-bloop soundtrack. Contemporary movies often take their action-scene cues heavily from video games (e.g. Clash of the Titans), but SP uses video gaming as a framing device for its love story: battles are laden with pop-up score counters and special power-up modes, and defeated enemies burst into showers of coins. When mistaken for a band member and asked "What do you play?" one character responds, "Legend of Zelda, Tetris..." and a running gag has Scott explaining the history of Pac-Man as a pick-up line. With its audio-visual mash of digitized SFX, comic-book popups, and rock music, it's visceral and entertaining. And director Edgar Wright knows how to use a framing device to tell a comic story: what he did with zombie flicks and buddy-cop movies in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, he does again with video games in Scott Pilgrim.

So there's style. But does it bring the substance? To a degree. It keeps the plot, premise and characters simple, but Cera transcends his usual role of awkward slacker; he projects a Scott who, when given a second chance, steps up to admit his past screw-ups and set things right. As in the comics, Scott is an idiot who learns from his mistakes: a hero with a hair more nuance to him than one would expect. Winstead as Flowers brings a fitting measure of reserve to the table for a character with seven evil exes. The exes themselves rock their performances with outrageous energy; Indian guy Matthew Patel breaks out into bollywood dance-fighting, actor/skateboarder Lucas Lee delivers tough-guy panache, Vegan hipster Todd Ingram exudes arrogance, and sinister music mogul Gideon Graves plays his evil-concealing nice-guy facade to the hilt.

The movie stays as faithful to the comic books as a movie can. It faces the same challenge as Watchmen: condensing a large body of work into two or three hours and arranging the plot into a coherent cinematic presentation. And while Watchmen staggered under a slavish devotion to the source material, Scott Pilgrim enjoys considerably more success in striking the balance. A few elements such as the Katayanagi twins (evil exes 5 and 6) and secondary characters' backstories get short shrift, but the film actually bests the comic in its effective foreshadowing of main villain Gideon Graves. As a result, the film actually has a more fulfilling climax. Certain plot elements are changed slightly or rearranged to fit the cinematic medium, but all but the most diehard Pilgrimite will be pleased with the result.

The big question is, of course, is it worth your eight bucks? I can honestly say it's an entertaining production and a quality movie. Those outside of the comic-con crowd may have accessibility issues with it, as it appeals heavily to the viewer's inner dork, and in some instances I found the pervasive sexual jokes off-putting. However, the action rocks, the humor is laugh-worthy, and Scott is (more or less) a worthy hero for this generation. If you're looking for some quality fun for the dork within, you won't go wrong with Scott Pilgrim.

4/23: Week in Review

This week, the Week-in-Review comes early. Blogger Ari Collins has promised me a guest update on Friday reviewing The Walking Dead, but I still wanted to hit you with a handful of news stories I've found interesting throughout the week. Ergo, this Thursday update.

Before anything else, I'd like to plug a fellow blogger and cartoonist, Bengo, who has been kind enough to provide a few links to TWIW. He co-creates two comics, Lil Nyet and The Scratchin' Post, with his wife, and while I may not read these comics regularly, I can't deny that they're drawn quite competently with a quirky sense of humor. It just goes to show that even if a comic isn't entirely to your tastes, you can still recognize whether it's created with effort and talent. Additionally, Bengo regularly updates The Floating Lightbulb, a webcomics blog that's useful and informative for comic creators, readers, and general enthusiasts. If you like this blog, chances are you'll also like Bengo's.

Anyway, on to the news. Tall Tale Radio featured an interview with Superfogeys creator Brock Heasley this week, which I enjoyed listening to. There are some interesting segments in there about the balance between humor and "the dark bits," the role that major events like character death play in plotting your comic, and even a few words about Heasley's other current project, a memoir-in-progress titled "Bullets and M&Ms." Recommended listening, and it makes me look forward to reading more of Superfogeys when I get a chance.

This past Sunday, Dungeon Mastering posted the second part of its collaborative project with Geeks Next Door, in which the GND characters introduce one of their closet-geek friends to the joys of Dungeons and Dragons. This installment features a concise summary of what roleplaying is, but the real humor is in the creators' commentary that accompanies the comic. Should be of interest to fans of table-top RPGs, and I'm a fan of table-top RPGs, so...

At any rate, that's the news for now. I'd planned to also discuss guest strips in this entry, with a few links to comics currently running guest strips and some reflections on the "guest strip" phenomenon in general, but I need to start getting ready for work. Depending on how late I end up working tonight, I may have time to finish that up in a second post, but we'll see.

This is Jackson Ferrell, signing off. I'll check you later.

Animation and Gaming Ohio 2009: A Guest's Experience

Well, here I am delivering the Convention Report--two days after the fact. This weekend, I had the pleasure and privilege of attending Animation and Gaming Ohio as a guest. As the second convention I've ever attended, it was still a very new and odd experience. Some people live for these things, to the point where conventions are like a second home. To me, they still feel like stepping into another world, an alternate reality.

This being an animation and gaming convention, comics and cartooning received very little direct focus: anime and video games took center stage. I talked to several people who read webcomics, but found very few enthusiasts: most were either casual browsers who didn't really follow specific titles regularly, or gaming enthusiasts who read easily-recognized titles like PA and CAD. Still, people enjoyed talking about webcomics, and passion is contagious. If you're enthusiastic about something, then as long as the other person has even a passing interest, they'll generally perk right up and get into the conversation too.

A number of cool things happened at the convention, and I got to meet several cool people. Here are some highlights.

My Panel, "The Harsh Truth about Webcomics"
On Saturday morning at 9 AM, I delivered a panel on the challenges of monetizing a webcomic. Five people showed up! I'd planned to speak to a larger crowd, so I ended up chucking my notes and simply talking about webcomics with the handful of panel attendees. We had a good conversation, and as we started bouncing ideas off each other, we had some valuable insights into turning online cartooning into a paying job. For example--why do you never see the online equivalent of a "funny pages" gathering several comic strips together in a single place? Would people subscribe to such a service?
For the follow-up panel on Sunday afternoon, we scrapped the premise of discussing webcomics at all and ended up talking about how Japan is weird. Not that the United States isn't also weird. But man, Japan is pretty weird.

Meeting DM Ashura
Bill Shillito, better known as DM Ashura, is a talented electronic musician whose music has been featured in various mixes of Dance Dance Revolution. He's also a very cool guy to hang out with. He and I talked about the value of a public space for gaming and what DDR has done to keep the arcade scene alive; I listened to his music and grooved out at the Saturday night rave that he hosted; we randomly sang bits of "Still Alive" at the closing ceremonies. All in all, it was cool to meet this guy, even if we only briefly discussed webcomics. Hopefully our paths will cross again in the future.

Signing Autographs with Steve Blum
I have to admit, I came into this event with only a vague idea of who Steve Blum is. He's done the voices for Spike Spiegel, Wolverine, and a host of other characters: which means that he is a big name in the voice acting industry. And DM Ashura and I had the express pleasure of signing autographs with him.
There was a line practically out the door, and almost immediately I could see why he was so popular with the fans. He was extremely personable, posing for photos with fans, signing personalized autographs on anything and everything they requested, doing voices on command. One guy had a friend whose sore throat kept him from attending the convention; this guy called up the friend and had Steve Blum talk to him as Wolverine. "So I hear you're out with a sore throat. I know how that feels, bub--no fun at all. So listen, take lots of antibiotics, get plenty of rest..." He's really an incredible guy.
Most people came for his autograph, but DM Ashura and I signed a few ourselves. I made a few doodles along with my John Hancock. One girl was cosplaying as Zach from Final Fantasy VII, and I got to draw a cartoon of Zach on her buster sword.

In summary, the con was pretty incredible. I met some very cool and talented people, I got to be a guest judge at a Rock Band Concert, I drew a bunch of ninjas and ate a bunch of delicious free food and played retro video games in the gaming room, and I killed a man with a trident.

Be sure to tune in again on Friday, when it's back to talking about webcomics as usual. See you then!

SFIV Poll Results

Well. The results of the poll...are the results of the poll.



It's perplexing, because even though "Other" won out, no one wrote in any alternates whatsoever on the original entry. I can only conclude that the three voters for "Other" simply found the available options thoroughly unfunny and voted "Other" in protest. Personally, I thought the CAD strip was unusually well-paced humor for CAD. But that's just me. At any rate, 2P Start carried the day, with its strip poking fun at Chun Li's disproportionately large hands.

Matt Moylan's Lil Formers also weighed in on SFIV this past Monday, but unfortunately, it was too late to change the poll. A shame, too, because Moylan's comic is actually fairly amusing.

Also, on an unrelated note, here's a blog that you may enjoy if you enjoy This Week in Webcomics. It's called "Webcomic Finds," and essentially is about reading good webcomics and talking about the good webcomics one comes across while traveling the internet. The blogger, Ping Teo, appears to be a savvy humorist with a few comic projects of her own. If you're looking for some insightful webcomic recommendations, be sure to give it a look.

Microfeature Thingy: Street Fighter IV

Last week marked the release of the first new-numbered Street Fighter game in almost ten years: Street Fighter IV. Obviously, big news like this provides ample humor fuel for video game webcomics. Weighing in on the topic of the new Street Fighter are the following:

Penny Arcade
Ctrl-Alt-Del
Another Videogame Webcomic
2P Start

Which of the above do you think delivered the best, most hilarious Street Fighter IV coverage? I've rigged up a little poll thing at the top of the main column (EDIT: relocated to the sidebar) where you can cast your vote. And if you've come across a better SFIV strip than any of these, don't hesitate to share it with us in the comments section!

(Your usual Friday recap will go up later tonight.)