I hope everyone had a happy Christmas! I had a pretty good one all things considered – got a couple games, a few books, and a new battery for my laptop.
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is the epic of our generation. It’s a delightful romp in a world viewed through the filter of Peter Pan Generation. This is a movie with a near-laser focused audience - if you’re too old you’re not going to understand the language, and if you’re too young you’re not going to understand the language AND you won’t understand the fundamental conflicts. It’s a coming-of-age story about people who refuse to let go of childhood. The title character, Scott Pilgrim, is a self-centered jerk, but he is also an avatar of our generation.
A romantic-comedy told with the language and metaphor of video games, which is fitting because that is, in my experience, exactly how my generation tends to frame our world and experiences. I pretty much knew I was going to love this movie from the moment the 8-bit Universal music started up. The music and sound cues in this movie is pure genius – Ramona makes an appearance in one to scene to a track from A Link to the Past entitled ‘Enter Goddess’, and the Item Catch music is used several times. The music in general is badass, and I absolutely love it, it’s relative quality be damned.
The video game language is there visually as well, with sound effects and subtle hints and foreshadowing woven into the background. The sheer attention to detail is impressive. Overall the movie is colorful and vibrant, eschewing the popular washed out look of many recent movies.
The ‘moral’ of the story, as it were, is my favorite part of the movie. Instead of the usual Hollywood message of ‘Love Conquers All’ love is nothing compared to self respect, and even that it merely a decent level up – you still want to fight for what you want. It’s an important lesson for my age group, because we really don’t respect ourselves. We’ve grown up with the poisonous ‘Disney approved[1. Though Disney was hardly the source of the message, and it isn't really fair to blame them... But I seem to be wandering into a Deep Topic here.]‘ message that Love Triumphs, and that nothing is worth working for because it will either fall apart, or be delivered to us regardless of the effort we put into it.
The movie isn’t without it’s flaws – I rather liked the fast pace, but some of the scenes are off beat, and the resolution to the fight with Roxy was… odd. So far I’ve only read the first and half of the second volume of the comic, so I can’t really speak to the value of what was left out. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series, because as you know the book is always better then the movie.