Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
We saw Scott Pilgrim vs. The World last night. Overall, I enjoyed it--it's fun and does a better job than many other attempts to bring a comic book sensibility to the screen. The video game tropes were consistently amusing and the characters remarkably true to life for such a stylized endeavor. I was at a party with a lot of those people on Friday night.
I find it amusing and interesting that I generally enjoy comic book movies, despite not actually enjoying comic books. It's no reflection on them as an artform--I respect the work that goes into them and the high quality of much of the visual art and many of the stories. It's just not a storytelling medium that works for me. But I tend to kind of love comic book movies and the better they do at sticking close to their source material, in feel if not content, then the better I like them. Odd, that.
I find myself having a lot of reactions to the violence in the movie.
Clearly, it's intended as a metaphor--the main character has to battle the demons from his new love's past before they can really be together. Been there, eaten the leftovers. It's a powerful image and works well on film. And it's treated in a very joking, stylized way--this isn't "real" violence, it's videogame violence, where the bodies of the defeated dissolve into showers of coins and extra lives are on tap. And this is a movie, after all. I used to really not like action movies, until I came to appreciate them as choreography, but I still notice that what they're packaging is the image of a violence that is not a part of most of our lives.
And women are kicking some butt of their own. I guess that's good, though I'm not sure that it's not just sinking women to new depths.* I did notice how tricky the creators found violence-and-women. Women are allowed to attack men, but men attacking women is questionable. Women get seriously punched by men twice--once before the man knows his attacker is a woman, and once by a guy who actually says "I'm not afraid to hit a girl". But the winning blow in the first fight is reduced to a sexually-powerful poke behind the knee and there is some outrage over the second. The real women-fighting bits are reserved for fights between women--in one case using a man's body as a puppet, a very interesting image. So clearly it's still a problematic issue. I think my favorite aspect of the violence involved the men and women teaming up, each taking responsibility for their own battle within the situation.
But mostly I found myself thinking about other metaphors for the process of overcoming one's issues and helping a new partner to work through things from their past and move on. In my own relationships, I tend to think of it as hacking through impenetrable jungles, or garbage-collecting, or cleaning out the attic and the basement. What metaphors work for you?
I also spent some time thinking about Michael Cera, who played Scott Pilgrim. He was also Nick in Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist--I saw the last twenty minutes of that on TV during my last bout of bronchitis--and various other movies in which he tends to be the geeky loser who gets the girl anyway. I've decided that he's the John Cusack of the new millennium.
The thing is, for me Cusack has a charm that Cera lacks entirely. Reading High Fidelity, it's unclear why all the fabulous women from Rob's past ever put up with his obsessive, inconsiderate, self-absorbed ways. But when the role is played by Cusack, it's easy to understand. He's intensely likable for reasons that have little to do with what he's actually doing or saying. He's a boy teetering on the edge of manhood, sometimes long past due. Cera never teeters--he's just a boy who never wants to grow up. His losers have no promise of winning, even while they're doing victory laps. He's kind of sweet, when he can remember that other people exist. Any Michael Cera fans out there who want to explain to me what I'm missing?
* I continue to be interested in the way that Angelina Jolie transcends this gender barrier. I'm totally comfortable with her kicking ass and getting the shit beaten out of her. And I'm completely intrigued as to why that might be.
I find it amusing and interesting that I generally enjoy comic book movies, despite not actually enjoying comic books. It's no reflection on them as an artform--I respect the work that goes into them and the high quality of much of the visual art and many of the stories. It's just not a storytelling medium that works for me. But I tend to kind of love comic book movies and the better they do at sticking close to their source material, in feel if not content, then the better I like them. Odd, that.
I find myself having a lot of reactions to the violence in the movie.
Clearly, it's intended as a metaphor--the main character has to battle the demons from his new love's past before they can really be together. Been there, eaten the leftovers. It's a powerful image and works well on film. And it's treated in a very joking, stylized way--this isn't "real" violence, it's videogame violence, where the bodies of the defeated dissolve into showers of coins and extra lives are on tap. And this is a movie, after all. I used to really not like action movies, until I came to appreciate them as choreography, but I still notice that what they're packaging is the image of a violence that is not a part of most of our lives.
And women are kicking some butt of their own. I guess that's good, though I'm not sure that it's not just sinking women to new depths.* I did notice how tricky the creators found violence-and-women. Women are allowed to attack men, but men attacking women is questionable. Women get seriously punched by men twice--once before the man knows his attacker is a woman, and once by a guy who actually says "I'm not afraid to hit a girl". But the winning blow in the first fight is reduced to a sexually-powerful poke behind the knee and there is some outrage over the second. The real women-fighting bits are reserved for fights between women--in one case using a man's body as a puppet, a very interesting image. So clearly it's still a problematic issue. I think my favorite aspect of the violence involved the men and women teaming up, each taking responsibility for their own battle within the situation.
But mostly I found myself thinking about other metaphors for the process of overcoming one's issues and helping a new partner to work through things from their past and move on. In my own relationships, I tend to think of it as hacking through impenetrable jungles, or garbage-collecting, or cleaning out the attic and the basement. What metaphors work for you?
I also spent some time thinking about Michael Cera, who played Scott Pilgrim. He was also Nick in Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist--I saw the last twenty minutes of that on TV during my last bout of bronchitis--and various other movies in which he tends to be the geeky loser who gets the girl anyway. I've decided that he's the John Cusack of the new millennium.
The thing is, for me Cusack has a charm that Cera lacks entirely. Reading High Fidelity, it's unclear why all the fabulous women from Rob's past ever put up with his obsessive, inconsiderate, self-absorbed ways. But when the role is played by Cusack, it's easy to understand. He's intensely likable for reasons that have little to do with what he's actually doing or saying. He's a boy teetering on the edge of manhood, sometimes long past due. Cera never teeters--he's just a boy who never wants to grow up. His losers have no promise of winning, even while they're doing victory laps. He's kind of sweet, when he can remember that other people exist. Any Michael Cera fans out there who want to explain to me what I'm missing?
* I continue to be interested in the way that Angelina Jolie transcends this gender barrier. I'm totally comfortable with her kicking ass and getting the shit beaten out of her. And I'm completely intrigued as to why that might be.