If it's not a good game or catholic...who do you call...why pokematic, "hi."
I'm not entirely sure why I hate this movie. Could it be that the expectations were set to high? Could it be that I should have seen it in theaters as opposed to DVD? Or could it be that it truly sucked? That's right, I didn't like Scott Pilgrim. The rest of the world loved it, and so did critiques. But I hated it. I thought it was so stupid.
As many of us probably know, Scott Pilgrim is based off of a no name manga that only gained popularity after the movie was made. Now I am not familiar with the manga, but I can assume that it follows the manga closely since there aren't crazed fans complaining left and right about how it doesn't follow it. But for me, it follows the manga format a little to closely. By that I am referring to the large amount of comic book elements. You know, the "bangs" and "pows" and "that night" elements everywhere. It flowed just like a motion comic. Except for the fighting, but I'll get to that. The problem with that is that I felt that it didn't feel right as a live action movie. The times when it had the actual motion comic for the flashbacks were a welcome relief. All the comic book elements would work so much better that way. In my professional opinion, the entire movie should have been done that way. Well except for the fighting scenes.
The fighting scenes are the only part that shouldn't be done like a motion comic. The fighting scenes worked exactly like a video game, and again that's a bad thing in a live action movie. It had health bars, combos, points, and the works. The only thing it was missing was 8 or 16-bit animations for the fight scenes. I know video games are getting better graphics every day and are looking more realistic. But for something that is trying to mimic classic fighters, it really could have been far better if it were 8 or 16-bit graphics.
I know it sounds as if all I care about is the way the video was done. And it really could have been better if it did switch between motion comic and video game graphics. But I am not so shallow as to only care about that. If the video was done to my specifications, it would have been amazing. Animation can get away with the crap that they tried to pull off in this movie. The lack of a compelling story, ridiculous effects, cheap jokes, and other aspects really killed this movie for me.
Let me start out by talking about Scott's roommate. Now I don't have anything against gay people and gay characters. In fact one of my good friends is gay. I do have a problem when they don't shut up about being gay, such as Scott's roommate. It seemed as if every scene with him was nothing but saying that he's gay. "Hi I'm Scott's gay roommate. I like men because I'm gay. This is my boyfriend. I have him because I'm gay. Did I mention that I'm not strait?" It got old very fast and became a negative of this movie.
Another aspect I didn't like was the stupid video game jokes. Everyone found these to be a big selling point of the movie. It could be that I read about them in Nintendo Powers and everyone talked about them and I knew them. Seeing them in context, well they weren't all that spectacular. "The name of the band Scott's in is called 'Sex Bombom.'" "At one point Scott powers up." "Scott gets an extra life." With everyone talking about that, it made it sound like a perfect nerd movie, BUT IT WASN'T! The trailers were right, it is a movie about some guy trying to fight off his girlfriend's evil ex's, not this amazing nerd movie. The jokes sounded like they would be all over the movie, but only happened a few times in order to focus more on the story.
While I'm on the story, I might as well mention how bland the story was. Here's the summary of the story; A loser named Scott Pilgrim is in a band, the only fan of them is his girlfriend that is 10 years younger than him, he falls for this girl with 7 evil ex's, and now he has to fight them off. That was it. Well I guess there's the plot twist about how the 7th ex is the new owner of sex bombom, but that's not a story saver. Done properly that could be good, but it wasn't. Typically, story can take a back seat to jokes and action, but that's only if the other aspects are good, which they weren't.
Now I feel I should talk about some of the sheer weirdness of their world. In live action movies, I like for there to be an element of realism. I'm fine with a super hero doing something amazing and everyone thinking that's amazing, but that wasn't the case with Scott Pilgrim. For someone who is supposed to be a loser he sure can do some amazing things. The fight scenes involve such amazing fights and super powers. OK, I can deal with that. But then after the fights, everyone just acts like that's normal. Wait, a super amazing fight just happened and everyone acts like it didn't happen? That's OK in cartoons, but not in live action.
So story, video style, jokes, Scott's roommate, and way the world works all sucked. Is there any more? Yes, Scott Pilgrim himself. A good nerd becoming awesome story can turn out very good. Take spider man for example. He's a nerd, but through a radioactive spider bite, he becomes Spider Man. That was a good movie series and Amazing Spider Man was even better. I feel as if they might have overplayed the loser becoming awesome bit though. Well at least with no external help. He starts out as a 24 year old loser who can't get a girlfriend that isn't 14 and their dates consist of going to the library. He also is in a band that no one likes, except his girlfriend. Initially I thought that maybe he was 17 or still in high school so then it isn't to desperate. But then I found out that he and his friends are 24. Wow, jailbait much? Super loser.
Well at a concert he meets this girl who has 7 evil ex's that he has to fight off. Yeah, a loser like Scott is going to be able to fight off 7 evil ex's. The only way he could win is if they are even worse than him, and based off the trailers, they look tough. But what happens? He fights them off and wins. All of them. If he is such a loser, how was he able to do all that? My guess is because he's a dick. Yeah, major dick. It seemed like he just started going out with the 14 year old and then he started cheating on her with the evil ex girl. Then there's the part where the evil ex girl says "you're just an evil ex waiting to happen." I don't remember what caused her to say that, but I remember he was horrible. He made for a rather bad protagonist.
One reason I've heard that people say made this movie good is that it was different. But here's the thing, different doesn't always mean better. There are many "different" movies that suck. I failed to see how this movie was good. Oh well. This has been Pokematic signing off and bu bye.
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