Comic book movies are in vogue. It's become hard to find a person who hasn't seen Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight", hasn't at least watched one of the three "Spiderman" movies, or hasn't seen "Iron Man". For years comic books trudged along on the under belly of popular culture, the nerds and geeks clinging to there "1st editions" and "limited trades", rooms without light, late night forum discussions on the finner points of Batmans utility belt. It was all underground. And somewhere along the line someone said.. Hey.. What if we made a movie based on a comic.. but with real ambitions. And thus started the current influx of comic book movies we're beginning to see evidence of everywhere today.
Of course, why wouldn't people follow this trend? The Dark Knight was an overnight sensation, with one of the largest grossing weekends of all time. Hollywood is about making money, "All about the benjamins, baby!", and where the money is they follow. It seems now that all the "big names" in comic books have been picked up, DC and Marvels most famous franchises are all due new movies, sequals and a ton of spin offs in the very near future. And yet, my favourite comic book movie of all (suprisingly even more so than The Dark Knight) came from a little obscure comic book series by Bryan Lee O'Malley.
Scott Pilgrim started his meloncholy adventure from obscuredom to the big screen with a simple one issue graphic novel, released August 18th 2004, Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life. And it was all go from there, the novel was a critical success amongst comic critics and popular media critics alike, cited for it's inventive storyline and quirky nature the comic managed to squeeze out 5 subsequent sequals. Flashforward to 2010 and the Scott Pilgrims debut on the big screen lead by a director as quirky and creative as the comic books themselves, Edgar Wright.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a fast pased fun-filled thrillride. That sounds like the blurb off of the enevitable DVD release but it's true. The film begins slowly, we are introduced to the main charactors, Scott Pilgrim (Rating: Awesome), his 17 year old, chinese, catholic high school attending girlfriend Knives Chau and the rest of Scott's band (Amazingly named Sex Bob-Omb). Right out of the bat the pop culture references start and the subtle nuances to classic video games seep in, I can remember grinning like an idiot at the familiar sounds of Legend of Zelda eminated from Young Neils Nintendo DS. Also as prevelent straight out the gate is how amazing and up-beat the films score is, The song over the title credits "We are Sex Bob-Omb"(written by amazing alternative band Beck) is so in your face, garage style it lifts you right out of your chair and slams you back down and says, get ready, this movies going to kick your ass.
And it does. The plot picks up as soon as we are introduced to our second lead of the film Ramona Flowers, Scotts (literal) dream girl. Of course like any dream girl theres about a million barriers in the way of him and her and the most prevalent of these is of course, Ramonas seven evil exes. And thus we reach the main plot points of the film, Scott must defeat Ramons seven evil exes to be able to date her in perpetual bliss.
The visual style of this film is utterly amazing. Even the slower first quarter of the movie shows just how quirky as a director Edgar Wright is. Stunning jump cuts, cinematography, and graphical nuances all create an amazingly comic feel to it, and although I'm not a huge fan of "Woah! Look at me, I'm a comic book movie" in this sence it works. When the action really kicks in this is when the visual style of this movie shows. Fast paced cutting, over the top cgi, and an amazing video game-esque style really make the action in this movie a sight to behold, the ending confrontation at the Chaos Theatre may have one of my favourite action sequences all time (Coins, all I'm going to say.).
The casting in this film was something that worried me when I first saw the initial trailers to it. I will admit straight out that I'm not a fan of typecasting. I like actors who can really break out there traditional roles and work into the movie with there passion and power as an actor. To me, Michael Cera was not this, and the trailers led me to beleive he was playing a rehash from his Juno hay-day. I couldn't have been more wrong, I don't know when it happened but somewhere along the line Michael Cera became a credible action actor during Scott Pilgrim. I think the reason this worked so well WAS because I was expecting dorky Cera.. and I got him for a little while and then, woah, someone "manned up". The casting of the seven evil exes was great, fantastic even. Brandon Roth (Superman Returns) as the super-vegan powered ex was probably one of my favourite things I've ever seen in a film (the whole sequence with him is hilariously entertaining). The support roles were all extremely well played with Anna Kendrick( looking stunning as always) playing Stacey Pilgrim and Kieran Culkin as Wallace Wells giving another suprisely amazing performance.
In summary, this movie is stunning. I am the exact target market for this movie and I can understand why people who go into this without the background knowledge of video games, pop culture and other such little nuances would find it annoying and in your face. But if you're a 15-30 year old brought up in this culture, or you're just a lover of fun film then go give Scott Pilgrim a try. It'll give you a fun ride that'll leave you buzzing for hours after it.
Rating: Awesome. (8.7/10)
Breakdown:
Music: 1.9/2
Visual: 2/2
Casting: 1.6/2
Plot: 1.5/2
Directing: 2/2
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