Saturday, August 14, 2010

AND MICHAEL CERA AS MICHAEL CERA: Based on yesterday's movie thread and the demographics of this blog's readership, seems we need a thread to discuss Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. There's a lot to admire in the movie--in particular the visual style and the well-tuned comic performances by folks like Chris Evans, Aubrey Plaza, Kieran Culkin, and Brandon Routh. However, I had a problem with the film's narrative--it's never entirely clear to what extent the highly stylized things we're seeing represent reality, how Scott views reality, or some alternate universe altogether. Also, at one point, a "rule" is introduced concerning how Scott must defeat the evil exes, but it seemed to me as though that rule had been broken in one of the previous fights.

However, my biggest problem is that for the film to work, you have to really buy that Ramona Flowers is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is gorgeous, but ultimately, I found her to be a pretty standard issue Manic Pixie Dream Girl (minus the mania) with a primary character definition of "bold rejection of social norms as evidenced by your dyed hair." Mary Elizabeth Winstead is gorgeous, but the script doesn't give her a lot of character beyond Scott telling us how wonderful he thinks she is. Contrast with Anna Kendrick and Aubrey Plaza, who manage to create fully drawn (and very funny) characters in their much smaller parts (as Scott's gossipy older sister and a profanely apathetic woman who seems to work in every store Scott visits, respectively), in part because of the writing, and in part because of their sharp-tongued performances.

The audience ate the movie up, though, and was responsive not just during the movie, but during the pre-show, including scattered applause for the Old Spice commercial, and serious derision toward the Devil trailer. If you think you're going to enjoy this one, you probably will, but I'm not quite sure what the studio was thinking, spending as much as $90 million on a movie that, while it will become a cult classic, isn't going to be a crossover hit.

16 comments:

  1. christy in nyc10:37 AM

    I guess I pretty much agree with this. I mean, I really enjoyed it. I thought it was really great. The "what is reality and what it not" question mostly never bothered me. I think in the books it's basically accepted that this is a world where video game conventions turned real are actually just as mundane as everything else. But by the same token, the part that was always hardest for me to grok even in the books was Ramona's whole deal. It was just that much more surreal than the other stuff that I was never quite sure how it all fit together. She seems to literally travel on a different plane of reality than other people.

    On screen this translated into an even-more-simplified kind of "I'm troubled by my past" thing that was sort of vague even in the end, despite the (really awesome) animated recreations of some of her past. I don't want to make excuses for yet another film with yet another female lead that's so much flatter than her male counterparts. But the truth is that in the books, even though I did get a much better sense of Ramona's personality in them, she's still a much tougher nut to crack than any other character. And with the limited time alloted for the movie, she got even more of a short shrift.

    As for the secondary characters, they were really great. But along the same lines as the above, I thought it was interesting how much screen time Wallace gets as opposed to, say, equally important fan favorite character Kim Pine. (One scene I would have loved for them to fit in would have been the one where Kim and Ramona and Scott all get drunk and bond. Great Kim Pine moment, plus it would have humanized Ramona a bit more. I mean, what with the whole Bechdel Rule renaissance going on right now, the fact that Kim and Ramona really like each other personally would be meaningful to find out). Although I can't complain too much about Wallace really--Kieran Culken was awesome. It just felt a little un-Scott-Pilgrim-like to have such uneven focus between the supporting characters.

    Otherwise, though--I mean, wow! How faithful they were to the books, especially visually. Every single set looked EXACTLY like the setting from the book. Every character except for Scott physically resembled their drawn counterpart to an uncanny extent. (Only one quibble: they needed a much bigger, more dramatic wig for Envy Adams). Steven Stills? I mean, where did they find an actor with such a rectangular head and such low nostrils? The audience in our theatre verbally reacted at how similar he looked.

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  2. StvMg4:35 PM

    As someone who had absolutely no familiarity with the source material, I enjoyed it, though I kinda agree with your criticism of the lead female character. If nothing else, it was fun to see a summer movie in which I couldn't necessarily guess how it was going to end before I walked into the theater.

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  3. Renee6:36 PM

    I also am not familiar w/ the graphic novels (I think that's what this was based on), but I had a great time watching this.  It isn't a movie that I'll be thinking about after and analyzing (although I did wonder what was so great about Ramona but I just kind of took it at face value), but it was fun while it lasted.  The graphics and visuals were great, there were some hysterical lines, the music was fun, and it was just a good way to spend the afternoon.  I liked it a lot.

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  4. So Matt, tell us, do you think Mary Elizabeth Winstead is gorgeous?

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  5. Dan Suitor10:17 AM

    Dan Fienberg should be popping up any second to let us know that Ramona Flowers is the embodiment of male desires, and that if she seems like a malformed character, it's because Scott Pilgrim is caught up in his own head and projecting a lot of his stuff onto Ramona.

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  6. Dan Suitor10:25 AM

    Also, Scott Pilgrim cost about $40 million, and I doubt they spent $50 million promoting it.

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  7. Box Office Mojo has $60M for production budget, and commenters over at Finke (some of whom know what they're talking about, and some of whom are full of crap) are heavily tossing around $90.  Certainly it's possible for them to spend $30M on promotion given how ubiqitous the ads have been (though the "Michael Cera plays guitar" one-sheet was a bad idea).

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  8. LA Times: "Universal spent about $85 million to make the picture, along with a small investment by Relativity Media, though a studio spokeswoman said the final cost after tax rebates was $60 million. Regardless, especially when marketing costs are included, the film appears poised to be a major financial disappointment."

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  9. Enjoyable picture, but I think it might have made more sense financially and artistically to do it as a six part series of five half hour episodes with an hour finale.

    That way, you give each evil-ex backstory and battle their own room to breathe, as well as room for all the characters to be more than 2D, and you can showcase one or two songs per episode.

    Go fully video-game/anime with the battle sequences to save on costs, run it on SHO or HBO, and bask in the critical accolades and fan-love.

    You don't see a bunch of stories about how Flight of the Conchords isn't going to cover production costs because of a bad opening weekend. Had they put together a cast that could tour as Sex Bob-Omb, they could have made money on DVD/Blu-Ray, Soundtrack, and even a tour.

    It's nice when studios take chances, but if they aren't smart in how they throw their money around, then execs get real conservative and copycat real quick when expensive risks like this one don't pan out.

    A modestly budgeted but inventive series would have had a much easier time being perceived as a success compared to the film that got made, and rather than scaring future producers away from taking on similar projects, would have paved the way for other profitable projects along the same lines.

    It is interesting though, that the film that drew the fewest fans, seems to be generating the biggest discussion at a lot of sites I like to visit, might just be a demographic thing, or it might be that the other big releases are exactly what you expect them to be, so no surprises, and no passion one way or the other.

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  10. Dan Suitor9:58 PM

    Simply put: there's not a lot of money to be made doing Scott Pilgrim as a television miniseries. The ad revenue + DVD/merch sales wouldn't even close to what a successfull Scott Pilgrim movie could make. The graphic novels were seen to be an appealing subject material with decent name recognition and widespread critical adoration, thus it made sense to make a movie out of it.

    I too noticed the Pilgrim Phenomenan, in that it was trending highly on Twitter and all over my Facebook feed. My theory: the kind of fans Scott Pilgrim attracts are just as likely to torrent a pirated copy of the movie on Monday as see it on Friday.

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  11. Daniel Fienberg2:19 AM

    Am I wrong? And she's not the embodiment of *all* male desire. She's the embodiment of Scott's confusingly formed desire. There's a reason why none of the other active male characters in either the graphic novel or the movie find Ramona particularly intriguing after the initial introductory montage. She's not *everybody's* ideal. She's his, just as she was the idea for seven other people who, in the balance, prove to be rather douchey. 

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  12. christy in nyc10:24 AM

    I don't think you're wrong that she seems flat because we're mostly seeing her filtered through the point of view of her male love interest(s). But that's not so much an explanation for it; it's the heart of the problem. The all-too-common problem in movies.

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  13. SO MANY movies set a woman up as an object of desire without bothering to, you know, actually give us, the audience any good reason to believe it that I've given up.   I assume now that all men in movies meet a woman, feel a spark, and that's enough.  Right?

    (This is why one of my favorite scenes in a movie last year was when Steve Martin and Meryl Streep went to her cafe.  She talked about her love of cooking, he admired her cooking scars - we were given a real reason for his admiration - she has a passion that she's turned into her life's work.)

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  14. Dan Suitor5:28 PM

    No, Dan, I actually think you're right on; I read your review and loved it. I kind of figured, going in, that the movie was going to gloss over a lot of the "Scott's actually a bit of a jerk and doesn't see it because everyone's the hero of their own story" stuff- and I was right- but I'm glad that Wright touched on it at the end.

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  15. Dan Suitor5:29 PM

    See Fienberg's comment above: Scott's kind of a shallow flake, and so it's realistic that he'd fall for Ramona at first sight.

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  16. Paul Tabachneck1:01 PM

    No familiarity with the source material at all:

    LOVED THIS MOVIE.  It was so strange and beautiful!  Anyone who knows me personally will tell you that the second best possible thing you can do is throw video games, comic books, and goth girls into a bowl and blend them.  The best thing you can do is if after that you add bands literally battling TO THE DEATH with new Beck songs produced by Nigel Godrich.  COME ON.  That is just awesome.

    Every time one of those conventions threw itself into the mix, I was like, "Right on.  Gotcha," because the movie was clearly not going to wait for me to catch up if I wanted to waste any time questioning it -- except for one moment, where and Scott's sister and I yelled "WHAT?" in unison at a particular gamechange. 

    Great experience.  Loved it.  Will be watching it again.

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