Scott Pilgrim bombs, and I ask: Where have people’s imaginations gone?
I watched Scott Pilgrim vs. the World this weekend, and thought it was an enjoyable and imaginative film. Eager to find out how it had fared overseas, I was disheartened to discover it was a total flop in the USA, and looks unlikely to fare much better elsewhere. The worst thing about this, other than the talented Edgar Wright now being saddled with far greater challenges for funding his upcoming films, was that all of the aspects I found so enjoyable about Scott Pilgrim—its irreverence, inventiveness, and sense of fun—were ignored or rejected by many critics, who struggled to ‘get’ the film.
The Hollywood Reporter dismissed the film as nonsense, calling it juvenile and saying that: “Nothing makes any real sense. The ‘duels’ change their rules on a whim, and no one takes the games very seriously, including the exes, who, when defeated, explode into coins the winner may collect”.
Yes, well done: you’ve realised Scott Pilgrim isn’t a documentary. Also, it’s not anchored in hum-drum reality. The film (and the comic-book it’s based on) has its own logic fashioning its own reality. But the thing is, most films aren’t ‘real’ in any sense—it’s just that they portray ‘TV realism’; that critics are so quick to belittle the kind of hyper-reality of Scott Pilgrim is hugely disappointing, and in part explains why there’s so much generic crap being churned out of the Hollywood machine.
Even the usually dependable Empire’s review begins with a massively dispiriting statement: “Here’s another great film of 2010 which takes place partly—or possibly entirely—within the leading man’s head.” Maybe it’s just me, but I never saw Scott Pilgrim’s acts and scenes as anything other than totally ‘real’ for the characters that were experiencing them. In this comic-book world, foes really do explode into coins when defeated, and everyone has the power to ‘battle’ in crazy, over-the-top ways.
That everyone feels the need to ‘explain’ every single thing that happens in a movie, or to ground it within the reality that we inhabit, is depressing as hell. Movies should be an outlet for the imagination, not reportage; and those movies claiming to be or striving to be larger than life should not feel the need to anchor themselves in more mundane settings, surroundings and reality, just to cater for people who aren’t willing to just go with the flow and live within a world they’ve never seen or experienced before, and that they themselves will never get to experience, except through the screen.
You know, I was thinking about seeing this and that sort of review makes up my mind… I will try to see it in the cinema, if only to prove there is an audience… (When I saw the trailer my mind was instantly making comparisons with the Wii game No More Heroes, since I’m unfamiliar with the comic book)
Thing is, I didn’t watch it because having no idea about it before hand, I saw the poster.
It’s Michael Cera looking gawky, standing next to a slightly less gawky looking girl.
Or to rephrase “It’s every Michael Cera movie ever”.
People now tell me it’s slightly more interesting than that but basically the damage was done.
@Merman: You don’t need to be familiar with the comic to enjoy the film; you do, however, need to just go with the film’s logic, rather than sitting there going “but in real life people don’t explode into coins”, which is what most of the boneheaded critics did. God knows what those people would do if they read Hellboy; their heads would probably explode.
@Dudley: Well, it in essence *is* a Cera flick. However, it’s one expertly shoved through a hyper-reality filter by Edgar Wright, and it comes off a lot like Spaced. Frankly, it’s not as good as Spaced—it doesn’t have enough heart (although apparently the original books are better for that), and there’s a certain ‘coolness’ to the characters that the Spaced lot never had (they really were outcasts and geeks)—but as someone who finds Cera’s schtick tiresome, I still very much enjoyed Scott Pilgrim.
I shall be seeing this later. You Cera-haters – are you including his performance in Arrested Development? Because if so, you’re utterly, barkingly insane.
I wouldn’t worry too much. This movie will find a much bigger audience once it hits the DVD/Blu-ray/stick-it-on-your-iPod/stream-it-from-Netflix/like-it-on-Facebook market.
The movie hit the US just as its target audience were all moving out of home, heading off to college and finishing off last-minute assignments.
It also came out at a time when there was an abundance of other distractions in theaters. Not just Inception and The Expendables but about half-a-dozen other comedies that had far greater marketing budgets.
We can safely ignore the negative reviews from the middle-aged critics–they were never going to get the movie in the first place. The movie’s been overwhelmingly well-received amongst its target audience and will find them in larger numbers outside the movie theater.
And I don’t think Edgar Wright’s going to be struggling for a job once Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (which he co-wrote with Steven Moffat and Joe Cornish) hits theaters next December
The problem is that even a big DVD audience won’t be enough to make the film profitable. On Tintin, I hope it’s a hit, only to cement Wright’s rightful place among ‘hit’ directors in Hollywood.
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