"Scott Pilgrim" vs The Indifferent Public

Slam evil! 

The Indifferent Public won. "Scott Pilgrim vs The World" was a labour of love for filmmaker Edgar Wright, who bases the film on a popular graphic novel of the same name. Despite mostly glowing reviews, the film tanked and failed to recuperate its budget Stateside. In brief, protagonist Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cena) falls in love with Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) but needs to fight her seven evil ex-es in order to pursue a romantic relationship with her. Meanwhile, Scott's own former flame, Knives Chau (a luminous Ellen Wong), is struggling to deal with their break-up. There to deliver unrequited assistance to the sometimes socially insecure Scott is gay roommate Wallace (Kieran Culkin), who has the film's best dialogue.

The movie is quite clever and visually interesting, if superficially so. Not only is it structured like a video game, where the hero levels up moving from one fight to the next until he eventually faces the big boss, but the movie also inserts icons and images from earlier gaming animation. (The film's opener, featuring a rendering of the famous Universal Pictures logo, is one of the film's best moments.) This structure also points to the film's problem: there is a certain monotony to narratives based on "leveling up", both in games and in movies informed by games.

The film "Doom" (Barthkowiak 2005), based on the popular video game set on Mars and detailing what happens when the gates of hell are inadvertently opened, used another gaming convention, that of the first-person view in first person shooters (FPS), to provide a unique P.O.V. in action cinema. This apparent "innovation" wasn't unique (film has always played with point of view) and added little to a predictable SF-horror. Borrowing from gaming does not automatically signify something better or advanced; it's simply borrowing to (a) address so-called 'geek culture' directly and (b) claim visual innovation where there is none.

Back to "Pilgrim". When Scott punches someone and the word "BAM!" appears overhead in swirly white letters, I had to wonder whether the film was attempting above approaches (a) and (b). For all the claims that this is part of what makes the film original, didn't Ang Lee do something at least conceptually similar in "The Hulk"? And wasn't it superficial there, too?

I'm not at all slaying "Scott Pilgrim". I liked the film well enough, but I have to wonder: "Scott Pilgrim" is loaded with pop culture references. Many reviewers seemed to celebrate the film's cultural "knowingness", as when the well known Seinfeld 'pop' plays when Scott barges into the room a la Kramer. Surely though, simply including such references cannot stand as criteria for quality? If you were to remove half the references in the film, would it make it a lesser film? I understand that it can create context and give the movie a certain 'feel', but are all references indeed warranted? If you have to consult the IMDb's trivia section to explain all the oh-so-cool references, what does that say about the film?

"Scott Pilgrim" reminded me a lot of another film that used violence, an awareness of its own artifice and pop culture references (see above) to tell an unconventional love story between young people trying to define themselves in a dynamic universe. I am, of course, talking about Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers" (1994). "NBK" is still, especially considering when it was made, more visually inventive than this film, and has greater cultural staying power since there was some biting social commentary in Stone's film. "Scott Pilgrim" does not comment on anything, really, so happy is it to be contained its own world. ("NBK" itself is far from perfect, but that's another discussion.)

Now, the argument can be made that simply providing commentary about something also does not stand as a criterion of quality. This is valid, as "Caligula" (Brass and Guccione 1979) demonstrated. Yes, there's some socio-political commentary, but who cares about that if the commentary is without impact and you get to see Helen Mirren naked? But what was so visibly absent from "Scott Pilgrim" was commentary of any tangible kind, even though the opportunity was there to parody and/or problematise 'geek culture'.

In the end, I guess, "Scott Pilgrim" is surprisingly conservative. Here I am talking about missed opportunities, not about the film's characters and content only. And don't be fooled by the term "evil ex-es". There's no conception of "evil" in this film; the ex-es can be described as misguided or egocentric at worst. There's no real threat of any kind. Also, since the film is kind of a game as well, we understand that no-one, least of all our hero, is ever in any real danger. This is far removed from the equally fantastical "Kick-Ass" whose heroes were convincingly vulnerable, which added dramatic weight to the absurdity of some of the proceedings.

I expected short term fun from "Scott Pilgrim vs The World", and I got that. I just feel let down that the film didn't give me anything more than that.