rant – Page 4 – Blue Ink Alchemy

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Gamers, Fanboys, Behavior and Respect

Since I and others may get worked up over this, here’s a picture of our kitten.

I try to keep the contents of this blog focused on storytelling and the best ways to do it in modern media. One of those forms of media is games. Video games, to be precise, and it’s a form of storytelling and interactive entertainment I’ve enjoyed since I was knee-high to a corn stalk. It’s in my blood. It’s part of my life. I am a gamer.

And yet, I feel like using that word has come to carry a negative connotation. Some have tried to distance themselves from the hobby to some degree. Some have pointed out that a lot of gamers are doing it wrong. Some are curious as to what’s going on with the term in general. And others want the label drowned in the bathtub altogether.

By the way, you should really go watch and read all of that stuff I just linked if you haven’t already. It’s worth your time especially if you’re a gamer, and it’s the basis for this entry.

For my part, I want to make something perfectly clear. I don’t think I’m better or worse than the large community of gamers out there. I’m just as guilty as taking joy in the failures of another gamer who happens to be on the opposing side of the Internets as anybody. I’ve shunned social interaction, ambition and even relationships for the sake of gaming. I’ve gotten pissed off to the point of physical violence over another failed attempt at a challenging level. After the experiences of suicidal depression, a nervous breakdown, abandonment, divorce and the rigors of the mental health recovery system in this country, I made a promise to myself that when I came across a flaw in my behavior, I’d take a look at the problem, find out where I’d gone wrong and strive to improve my behavior going forward.

Sometimes I do that. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I kick it right into the goal, sometimes I bounce one off the post. Nobody’s perfect, right? Yeah, I might lose my cool when I nearly get run over by somebody in an Audi who’s in a hurry to get from the local Starbucks to their next high-powered marketing meeting. Who doesn’t? And I might invoke the works of other gamers and critics – like I did two paragraphs ago – and be seen as taking them out of contest. Mistakes are going to happen. I’m a human being.

My point is: so are you, and so is everybody else out there. I want to be treated like one, and so I make the attempt to treat others like one. Is it really that hard? Am I strange for wanting this? Has common courtesy somehow become taboo, uncool or downright lame?

No. It hasn’t. And nobody should feel that way.

I’ve gotten into arguments over games, stories, programming procedures, politics, religion, philosophy and the best variety of Pop Tarts. And some of those arguments have gotten pretty heated. But when it comes to an actual debate, even when I bring up a point that I know is going to be unpopular for one reason or another, it’s never my goal to piss anybody off, make anybody feel inadequate or ashamed to feel the way they do. I especially have zero interest in perpetuating the notion that disagreement and dissension should be met with blind hatred phrased in abusive language.

Now before I get into the meat of this, let me pause to say that some of the discourse I’ve had recently related to games and gaming has been balanced and respectful. It’s heartening to experience respect and debate on the Internet, but the unfortunate truth is that this feels more like the exception than the norm. And that’s a problem. I’m also not opposed to the use of profanity. I make precision F-strikes from time to time to get a point across. But using that language in a demeaning, personal attack is a far cry from using it to emphasize a point.

Let me give you an example, specifically regarding the word “faggot” or “fag.” For a lot of so-called gamers out there, if you present a counter-argument to the prevailing sentiment about a given game or aspect of gamer culture — the characterization of a video game’s protagonist or lack thereof, for example, or the virtures of an RPG or turn-based strategy game over the plethora of FPS games out there — you must be a “fanboy” of whatever side you’re percieved to be on. Additionally, it’s not only acceptable but encouraged to imply if not out-and-out state that as a “fanboy” you are automatically also that aforementioned f-word and all it implies. The reinforcement of a negative sterotype of a particular minority of humanity, the perpetuation of the acts that are wrapped up in that stereotype and the consequences desired by certain political and religious groups for being a part of or even associated with that minority have become the default reactionary response of these so-called gamers. In other words, if you were to say that Team Fortress 2 is a better multiplayer experience than Halo or Call of Duty, the default reactionary response of these gamers is that (a) you play Valve games to the exclusion of all other games to the point of obsession and (b) you should be burned alive for being so clearly deviant from the accepted norms of gamer society.

This behavior is absolutely fucking disgusting.

Putting aside the fact that this sort of rabid defense of a given sub-strata of gaming makes these valiant defenders of whatever they’re defending just as much a “fanboy” as the object of their ire, the virulent vomiting of acidic homophobic or racist hate renders any sort of counter-point they want to make entirely worthless, if they have any point to make at all. People work personal attacks into their commentary all time, be it for the sake of comedy or lacking anything further to say of intellectual importance. And in the interest of full disclosure, in the context of gameplay, busting out the occasional “Your mom” joke when you’re among friends is pretty harmless — I’ve done it & will likely do it again. There’s no intent there to harm, which is a point I’ll revisit.

But in the context of discourse and debate, when all you do is attack the person making the point instead of the point itself, all you’re doing is proving just how aggressively juvenile and socially inept you are. Pointing out flaws in an opponent’s logic, citing sources that discredit their thesis, deconstructing their argument in a way that’s just as constructive for future talking points as it is furthering your point of view — that’s interesting, intelligent, thought-provoking and respectful discussion. Invoking lewd sex acts done by or to your opponent or their family isn’t any of those things, nor is it all that funny.

As I said before, busting out the occasional “So’s your face!” among friends is one thing. Constant, unrepentant and abusive behavior is quite another. Making fun of someone aiming to have everybody laughing, including the one being made fun of, is one thing. Spitting out derogatory remarks laced with profanity for the sake of proving your superiority is another. See what I’m getting at here? Are you picking up what I’m putting down? Does this make any sense to you whatsoever?

Another picture of one of my cats associating with games. It calms me.

I know it might seem hypocritical of me to be telling people how to behave and to knock off personal attacks in what is looking more and more like a personal attack, albeit directed at a number of anonymous people. But how else do we call attention to this fundamental flaw in our society? What other recourse do we have to point out how bad this makes us look as a community? Why should we continue to let this be accepted, encouraged and in some cases defended behavior?

We can, and should, do better. We have a whole lot of language we can use. We are fully capable of rendering our arguments in ways that are not personally insulting, potentially inflammatory or deliberately pejorative. And when you get right down to it, the words themselves are devoid of meaning other than those we give them. George Carlin, may he rest in peace, said the following regarding language:

There are no bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad intentions. And woooords.

So I’m not saying that certain words are taboo and should never, ever be used. Taking words out of parlance is tantamount to censorship, which I’m just as opposed to as I am treating other people like shit because they happen to disagree with you. What I’m driving at here is that, as gamers, we should respect the opinions of other individuals even when we disagree with them. If we want to be respected, we need to show respect to others in order to earn the respect we crave.

We are a culture of short attention spans and ever-emerging distractions. We’ll get fired up about something for a bit and then move on to the next big release, content update or point of contention. I’m afraid this will happen when it comes to this aspect of our society. If that means I need to jump up and down in my cage, thump my chest and throw some poo, so be it. After all, the only thing necessary for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing.

Now, I’m not saying these gamers are evil. That’s just as wrong as all of the homophobia. I’m just reiterating the fact that this kind of behavior, from its roots deep in the insecurities of socially inept gamers to its manifestation as streams of profanity wrapped around racist and homophobic epithets with the intent of degrading an individual for the sake of elevating one’s own sense of self-worth, is completely unacceptable. It wouldn’t be tolerated to use these words with that intent to someone’s face, and it shouldn’t be across the Internet, either. If you engaged in this behavior around a gaming table where dice are being thrown, or while sitting on the couch as a guest in someone else’s home, it would not go on anywhere near as long or be anything close to this ‘accepted.’ In fact, you’d be sitting by yourself pretty damn fast in most public situations because nobody wants to associate with the dickhead who thinks it’s funny to imply people he doesn’t like should be burned alive.

Wil Wheaton says... (art courtesy Scott Kurtz, I think)

You can disagree with me if you like. You can even hate me for pointing this out, even though it’s been pointed out before. Send hate mail, engage in the very behavior I’m opposing, vote for projects other than mine out of spite, whatever. If that’s the price I have to pay for sticking my neck out in the name of common courtesy and asking that a level of decency be introduced to the interactions we have with one another as human beings sharing the same planet and trying to enjoy the same hobby, I’ll pay it gladly.

There Is No Sex

September 14, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 3 Comments

Art courtesy Lucian

Once again I’ve provided a provocative title to try and get your attention. Is it working? Is it?

Yesterday’s post on females in fiction has generated some feedback, but thoughts from one of my friends got me thinking. He said, “Why not disregard gender entirely? Why not just write characters?” This is something worth consideration. Tyrande, the Baroness, Hit-Girl… they’re characters no more or less valid than Brann Bronzebeard, Destro or Kick-Ass. They all have interesting angles, they all exemplify parts of ourselves and they call can be used and abused at the hands of different writers. There are differences in character much deeper and more nuanced than their disparate gonads. So why do gonads come into it at all?

Is there, in fact, no sex? Or more to the point, no genders?

Proceeding with Lucian‘s intriguing line of thought, consider the following. While this is not a direct quotation from the conversation we had, it’s still thinking outside of myself, hence it gets the blockquote treatment.

The purpose of gender existing is to help us construct schema for social situations. A schema is a semi-conscious pre-evaluation of a situation based on how things are “meant” to work. Driving’s a good example. Driving has a tight schema: we expect people to drive on a certain side of the road, stop at red lights, etc.

Gender works like that for social situations. You see a person, evaluate male/female, and pre-judge how they will act based on gender stereotypes. The problem is, stereotypes hardly ever really hold true,
and they are usually reinforced into place by social expectation. Not to mention, they are harmful and insulting to “both” genders.

That is how gender works and why it exists.

And why it is very, very boring.

From the perspective of the writer, at least when it comes to fiction, the goal should be to write compelling characters, regardless of their gender. Now, this doesn’t mean that the newsboy on the corner should have as much depth or development as John Dillinger. But the characters we do spend time with should have some dimension to them, things for the audience to discover.

Say what you want about the stories in the Mass Effect universe, but many of the characters we encounter have depth and nuance divorced from their gender. Would Wrex be any less interesting if it turned out he was female? How about Tali’s fans – would they still exist in their large numbers (with me among them) if Tali was a male Quarian? I’d still want to hang with Tali if he were a guy, for the record. I’d also like to believe that Miranda would be just as smug and Jack just as caustic if they were men. Sure, their character models would undertake radical changes and Miranda probably wouldn’t be called Miranda, but that’s beside my point.

Under those layers with varying degrees of curvature and color that we call “bodies,” the characters we create that carry our stories should be interesting, thoughtful, compelling – human. “Human” means more than gender. It applies to our lives, and I think it should apply to our fiction as well.

How important is gender, when you get right down to it? When it comes to what’s really important about our characters – motivation, outlook, goals and fears – is there, in fact, no sex?

Doing Girls Right

September 13, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 11 Comments

Women in fiction can be tricky things for writers, especially male ones. Every individual, regardless of gender, is a creature of nuance, and unless you want your work to be regarded as lacking substance, easily disposable and the sort of thing no publishing house will get near with a ten foot pole, your ladies are going to need just as much development as the gentlemen. But there is definitely a wrong way of doing it. Or them, if you want your discussion to become kinky.

Gracing the top of today’s post is the feral and beautiful face of Tyrande Whisperwind, from the Warcraft universe. When she and her people were first introduced in Warcraft III, they were depicted as a semi-Amazonian society, where the females hunted, fought and provided for settlements while the men healed, dealt in the arts and acted as spiritual guides, when they weren’t hibernating. Tyrande, a high priestess, rode a giant tiger into battle and, despite being mated to the world’s most powerful druid, wasn’t the sort to be pushed around. To this day, the quote that will always define her for me is “Only the Goddess can forbid me anything, Malfurion!”

Unfortunately, this depiction of a strong female leader didn’t hold up over time. Richard Knaak has, through several of his novels, chosen to take Tyrande down a slightly different path, that of a somewhat meek woman not entirely comfortable in her own skin whose identity is completely entwined with that of her husband. Let’s leave aside, for the moment, that fact that night elves do not marry – they choose mates privately and don’t make a big deal out of it. According to Knaak, Tyrande’s more of a “teenybopper”, either waiting to be rescued from one peril or another, or wringing her hands shyly while the men (more than likely Rhonin and a couple others) sort out how to fix the issues of the day. This isn’t helped by the fact that a lot of role-players take their night elf females in exactly this same direction, watering down the uniqueness and draw of their entire race as far as I’m concerned.

This is starting to sound a bit like that complaint I had about the Baroness.

The thing that really irked me about the Baroness’ derailment in the G.I. Joe movie was the apparent necessity to not only have her secretly being a “girl in love” but also mind controlled. First of all, just because you have a female character doesn’t mean they need to be defined by a relationship to a male. Tyrande suffers from this at Knaak’s hands, as I mentioned, but I see it everywhere, even in good works like Inception. Granted, in that work, Mal is actually a projection of Cobb’s unresolved feelings and guilt over the loss of his wife, so it’s more a case of him being defined by his relationship with her, but it can be interpreted as this sort of problem as well.

G.I. Joe, though, has no wiggle room. Everything that made the Baroness interesting, clever and fun to watch was never real to begin with because (a) she never stopped loving that unemotive dull-surprise-faced Duke for whatever reason and (b) she was being manipulated and brainwashed by Cobra’s malevolent doctor. The worst part is that for most of the film this was barely eluded to, even if eagle-eyed viewers could see the penny on the rails long before her character’s train hit it. It was going in a cool direction before it jumped the tracks. She wasn’t uninteresting, meek, submissive and just waiting for a male to take her away, unlike other supposed “heroines” I could mention. But after the changeover she might as well have been walking next to Edward Cullen instead of Duke.

So let’s take a look at a girl done right.

Kick-Ass introduces us to Hit-Girl. Instead of being defined by her relationship with her father, she turns it around and defines that relationship herself. And when she’s on her own, she doesn’t fall apart. You won’t catch her wringing her hands in dismay or wondering what to do next. She takes action. She does the best she can with what she’s got. And she does her own way, woe be to anybody stupid enough to be between her and what she’s after.

I hesitate to call her a “role model” due to the violent, foul-mouthed way she goes about doing things, but once you get past the bloodshed, there really is a lot to admire about Hit-Girl. As a male writer, I often find myself struggling to ensure I deal with female characters fairly, neither watering them down to the point of being uninteresting or inflammatory to potential female readers, nor amping up their sexuality to sell more words. I mean, I like a good-looking woman as much as the next red-blooded straight guy, but when it comes to works of fiction as well as real relationships, there’s got to be more to her or I’m likely to lose interest. You enjoy eating cheesecake in the moment, but how often do you remember eating it a week or a month later, unless it was really, really good?

Give me a few more examples of either extreme. Lay on me what sort of things you’d like to see girls in fiction saying, doing and being. What’s overdone? What isn’t done enough? I just want to ensure that, in my hands, girls are done right.

When it comes to writing, of course.

*ahem*

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

September 10, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 2 Comments

[audio:http://www.blueinkalchemy.com/uploads/gijoe.mp3]

Ours was a Transformers house. G.I. Joe wasn’t on anywhere near as much when I was growing up. In retrospect, this might be why my initial impression of Michael Bay’s Transformers movies was a little bit rosier than my overall take has become. So I went into G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra expecting a dumb, flashy action picture more in line with those movies than the colorful inventiveness of Iron Man or the “introspection coupled with action” brilliance of Equilibrium. I didn’t quite get what I expected, and I mean that in both the best and worst possible ways.

Following a very brief scene in 17th century France to give us the family history of the man who would be Destro, we open to find that man, James McCullen, showcasing a new weapon for his NATO investors. His arms company, MARS, supplies most of the world’s militaries with weaponry, pursuing his family’s policy of never getting caught selling arms to both sides. His new weapons’ warheads, which dissolve metal upon impact and self-replicate to encompass city-wide destruction provided a kill switch isn’t triggered, are left in the hands of a special ops unit ambushed and assaulted by a highly advanced force. Before the weapons can be stolen, however, a different highly advanced force comes to the rescue. The latter is G.I. Joe, an international black ops outfit formed of the best & brightest from around the world provided they can deal with silly nicknames. The mysterious bad guys still want the warheads, though, touching off a conflict that will define both teams forever. Oh, and don’t be fooled by the word “international” in there: G.I. Joe is still as American as baseball, apple pie and questionably motivated military interventionism.

“A Real International Hero” doesn’t quite roll off the tongue the same way.

When you go into a movie like G.I. Joe, there are certain expectations. There will be explosions, one-liners will be dispensed and you’d better bring your own batteries, as they are not included. However, this movie seems aware of this. It has some fun at its own expense. I’m reminded of the scenes in You Only Live Twice or Thunderball where James Bond dispenses a cadre of henchmen or breaks out a neat gadget and you can’t help but smile because you know it’s the result of invoking the Rule of Cool. This movie has a level of camp that never becomes overly silly, but it seems aware of this for the most part. I mean, it opens with the words “In the not too distant future.” And in another move that distinguishes this from Revenge of the Fallen, the fights are relatively clearly shot and paced so you never lose track of combatants or where the action is headed. As I mentioned, I didn’t expect a level of inventiveness I’d attribute to Marvel. But how often have you seen people doing parkour on moving cars? Or a dogfight under water?

Now, in a movie like this, you can’t expect top-flight actors to give their all. That said, most of the performances fall on the “passable” side of “phoning it in.” The Joes we’re introduced to during the first real action sequence are actually a well-balanced team, and Rachel Nichols in particular tries to give Scarlett a little bit of depth and nuance. I really liked her, Snake Eyes, Breaker and Heavy Duty. Dennis Quaid seems to be here just to be the gruff leader and Brendan Frasier has a cute little cameo. They’re not ground-breaking characters and lean towards cliché, but what do you expect? It’s G.I. Joe! There’s kickass energy weapons, cool vehicles and freakin’ ninjas! We’re here to have fun, right?

He knows war is good for business, and knowing is half the battle.

On the Cobra/MARS side of things, I have to say there were times I didn’t quite buy Christopher Eccleston’s Scottish accent. Still, he gave McCullen a sort of cultured gravitas I wasn’t expecting, while Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s role had a touch of mad menace I really appreciated. This is Cobra we’re talking about, so of course things lean towards the sort of malevolent camp that makes Blofeld look like a Machivellian genius, but it’s more fun than laughable where these two are concerned. Oh, and Arnold Vosloo just owns the Zartan role. He’s a very bright spot in this film. Again – having fun’s the order of the day.

There was a lot of potential in G.I. Joe. I was on board for some of the action-aimed fun and I found myself really wanting to like it. When the movie’s firing on all cylinders, it’s a fast, fun and inventive little action flick. But like a date who chats you up pleasantly for an hour at the local pub only to duck out for a “phone call” and never come back, sticking you with the check and refusing to respond to your texts afterwards, this movie let me down. I could point to the overuse of action clichés, the occasional bit of dodgy CGI or the fact that there’s a reason why ice floats (I’m looking at you, climactic action sequence). So what makes me feel like G.I. Joe is so full of potential but ultimately a let-down? The answer lies in some spoilertastic territory, so fairly be ye warned.

A scene from G.I. Joe, or Halo? Hard to tell, isn’t it?

Let’s start with Channing Tatum. You don’t really need to do a lot to carry an action flick as the hero or main protagonist. Kick ass, take names, crack wise and show a bit of emotion here and there to inform the motivations of the character. Tatum as Duke does kick ass. But he doesn’t seem interested in taking names, his one-liners are utterly flat and he has the emotional range of a brick. Considering the ways we see Rachel Nichols, Saïd Taghmaoui and even Ray Park show emotion here and there, I don’t think I can legitimately fault director Stephen Sommers or the writers – for this. Tatum feels like a beefier, even less emotive Hayden Christensen. He’s not having fun, and since he’s our main protagonist, it waters down our fun as well. On the other hand, I think I’ve found the perfect guy to play Master Chief in the inevitable Halo movie! Michael Bay, give Channing a call! I’m sure he’ll be excited to be a part of it. Not that you’ll be able to tell.

Then, there’s Marlon Wayans. I haven’t liked anything a Wayans brother has done in terms of acting since In Living Color, save for maybe Blankman or Don’t Be A Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood. Half the time Marlon as Ripcord just looks sort of lost. The other half, I just struggled to take him seriously. To me, it feels like he’s trying and failing to channel Will Smith. His jokes never really made me laugh, I didn’t buy him as either an action hero or the sort of guy to figure out the connection between the attack on the Joe’s base and McCullen – his line felt like it should have belonged to Breaker. He just feels superfluous, along for the ride, sort of tacked on. He’s not having fun because he’s trying too hard. I’m really not sure how to articulate why his presence made me so uncomfortable past my personal lack of affinity for the Wayans brothers in general and Marlon in particular. So let’s move on to the real deal-breaker.

I’m going to get this out in the open: I dig Sienna Miller. She smoldered in Layer Cake and completely nailed the selfish Victoria in Stardust. I think she did the most with what she was handed in this, and for the most part she pulls off a classic femme fatale in a black catsuit with kickass guns and the coolest pair of Transitions lenses ever. The problem I have here is the exact opposite of the one I have with Channing Tatum. I feel Duke would have been fine in the hands of another actor. The Baroness, on the other hand, bothered me because she was assaulted in the writer’s room and never really recovered.

You see, for most of the film the Baroness is a cunning, smirking, damn fine looking kicker of ass who loves every minute of being the bad girl. She especially delighted in playing her rich scientist husband for a sap, and watching Storm Shadow and McCullen vie for her affections. For some reason, though, this sort of strong female antagonist seemed to intimidate the writers, who worked in a relationship with Duke right from the beginning. As much as I loved seeing a black-haired Sienna blowing things up and complimenting other girls on their shoes while she points a gun at them, in the back of my mind there was a sinking feeling as I felt I knew where this was going. Sure enough, towards the end the Baroness pulls a High Heel Face Turn. But wait! It gets worse! It turns out she was brainwashed into working for MARS the whole time, so all of her awesome villainy wasn’t even her fault! She’s really a sweet girl who missed Duke and was ready to forgive him for the pain he caused her! Seeing an interesting character and a strong female one at that completely undermined in this way just made me sick. At that point I very nearly turned my back on the whole affair, but I was already on around the 110th minute so I figured I might as well see it through to the end. It never got better. I’m sorry, but this sort of character derailment just isn’t fun for me, and while some of the characters are bad or flat, this sort of thing is just completely inexcusable.

Like I said, I wanted to have fun watching G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, but going back to my baseball analogy: One, two, three strikes – you’re OUT!

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.

Movie Review: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

August 29, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 1 Comment

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a film that’s difficult to put into a genre. Its central story is, at first glance, a romance. A great deal of the dialog is comedic. But how many romantic comedies do you know where the conflicts are resolved through kung-fu matches? And how many kung-fu battles have you seen in a movie that include running scores, power-ups and visible sound effects? The term “something for everybody” gets bandied about a great deal, but Scott Pilgrim just might fit that bill. The problem with having so many of these elements in a film, however, is that some elements don’t get as much time as they should.

That isn’t to say this movie is bad. This movie is far from bad. This movie, in fact, is very good, and you should go see it if you haven’t already.

Scott Pilgrim. Age: 22. Rating: Awesome.

Based on the acclaimed series of graphic novels by Brian Lee O’Malley, the eponymous Scott Pilgrim is a Canadian bass player who’s unashamedly between jobs, dating a high schooler and mooching off of his gay roommate Wallace, who tolerates Scott because it’s fun to watch him squirm when discomforting things happen to him. Scott’s precious little life takes an unexpected turn when a mysterious girl named Ramona Flowers skates through his dreams. Drawn to Ramona’s mature and world-weary personality, Scott encounters more than he bargained for when he is attacked by Ramona’s evil exes. Like Mega Man needing to defeat a series of Robot Masters to restore order in the world, Scott Pilgrim needs to defeat a series of super-powered individuals to get what he wants. Luckily, despite being a slacker and a dweeb, Scott’s also the best fighter in the province. As for what he wants, let’s take a look at Scott as he’s depicted in the film.

Let me make this perfectly clear: if you pass up on this movie because you don’t like Michael Cera, you are making a mistake. It’s not that I don’t understand where the ire against Cera comes from. Previously, in romantic comedies, he’s cast in the role of the screenwriter’s projection of the ‘right guy’ for the girl. You know what I mean, the sensitive, quiet, intelligent and otherwise marginalized young man who’s so much better for the girl than the large, attractive, macho jerks she tends to date – a Marty Stu, if you will. Now, while Ramona has dated some jerks, and Scott is somewhat sensitive and quiet… he’s also, himself, a jerk. He knows he’s sensitive but he uses that sensitivity to milk those around him for sympathy. His intelligence is applied to remaining as free from responsibility as possible. He exists in a personal space that I think a lot of young men of my generation, including myself, have at one point or another: the militant refusal to grow up. In a way, the ‘final boss’ in the story is the kind of person Scott could become if he’s not careful – a pretentious, self-centered, smirking and completely slimy hipster douchebag.

+2 versus critics.

Meeting Ramona (very well played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead) doesn’t just change Scott’s life because he has to fight to the death in order to date her. The message she conveys to Scott and, by extension, those of us in the audience who live or have lived in that aforementioned Neverland in our heads, is as necessary as it is harsh. “You’re not Peter Pan. You have to grow up. You need to get over yourself. If you can stop being self-absorbed and self-aggrandizing you can let the good things about yourself shine through and speak for themselves; otherwise, you’re going to turn into something you hate.” Ramona also presents us with a personification of the sort of things we deal with when we get to know somebody. Their past, the people they’ve loved and lost, the mistakes they’ve made that haunt them; this ‘baggage’ doesn’t just sit around. It’s active and nearly constant, trying to keep us out of the moment and pulling us back into the past. While ultimately the battle Scott needs to have is with himself for his own sake, he also needs to be willing to fight past Ramona’s baggage in order to be a part of her future.

Now, when you get right down to it, all of this unsubtle metaphorical self-examination occurs under a surface of retro gaming references, genuinely funny comedy, a slew of callbacks to the graphic novels and some really memorable performances. Kieran Culkin’s come out of nowhere to own the role of Wallace, Scott’s smirking roommate who acts as something of a mentor. The League of Evil Exes seems to have come to life directly from O’Malley’s pages, and Chris Evans and Brandon Routh in particular seem to be having a great deal of fun in their roles, which I found quite amusing personally as I tend to think of them as Captain America and Superman, respectively. And I will admit, when the dual cameo shows up at the end of Scott’s fight with a particular evil ex, I went into full fanboy mode. I’ll say nothing more for fear of spoilers.

So here’s a picture of Sex Bob-Omb instead.

It’s not a perfect movie. Condensing six novel-length parts of a narrative into a two-hour movie means things are going to get trimmed, watered and reduced down. A few of the characters are robbed of some of their development, and even Scott’s growth towards the end is somewhat truncated compared to how it occurs in the books. Now, the books were still in production when the film started shooting, so the last third overall is different from the source material. However, I think a lot of the people who still didn’t feel any sympathy whatsoever towards Scott at the end might have been buoyed up by some of those missing experiences. Not that Scott or any protagonist necessarily needs to be 100% sympathetic in order to carry a story – in fact, Scott’s jerkass behavior in the beginning and middle of the movie drives home his need to get over himself all the more, and holds up that rather uncomfortable mirror to those of us who’ve been there.

In spite of its flaws, I really liked Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Director Edgar Wright, the man who brought us Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, really makes the visuals pop off of the screen and worked with O’Malley to ensure the characters that do get developed do so in a well-paced arc that shows their complexity and their humanity. There’s a lot of great music throughout the movie, the visual style is a quirky flavor of awesome, the dialog is smart and the fights all have a great deal of energy. The video game rules by which Scott Pilgrim’s Toronto operates go unexplained but, really, we don’t need to understand why Scott has a Pee Bar or where he stashes all of those coins after a fight. When the ex leaves him more than 2.40 Canadian, that is.

Reversal!!

Stuff I Liked: I’ve yet to see an Edgar Wright film I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed. Michael Cera acquits himself well with a very faithful and very good Scott Pilgrim. The messages in this movie are necessary to our generation and rather clearly conveyed under all the trappings of indie rock and 8-bit kung fu.
Stuff I Didn’t Like: A lot of the characters – Kim Pine, Stephen Stills, Envy Adams and Stacey Pilgrim, to name just a few – feel a little underdeveloped. The metaphors aren’t terribly subtle. I expected Scott to have a little more smirking self-confidence at first to more closely follow his arc in the books, but this is a minor quibble. And I really didn’t like how people went to see The Expendables or Eat, Pray, Love instead of this film. America, I am disappoint.
Stuff I Loved: The music. The fights. The fact that Toronto is actually playing Toronto instead of standing in for America. Ramona, Wallace, Knives and the League of Evil Exes. The playful, retro and refreshing visual aesthetic. This exchange:

Young Neil: “What’re you doing?”
Scott: “Getting a life.”

Bottom Line: Go see this movie. I plan on buying it on DVD when it comes out. Brian Lee O’Malley, Edgar Wright, this great cast and a hard-working crew have labored to produce something fresh, original and fun while other studios churn out the cinematic equivalent of a corner convenience store hot dog. You know, the ones that have been sitting under heating lamps for at least four hours? Ew. See Scott Pilgrim vs. The World instead of the other stuff that’s out there. Trust me. You will not be disappointed.

Tag: rant (page 4 of 8)

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Movie Review: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

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