Scott Pilgrim vs. Video Game Logic

If there is one thing that should be in more movies, it is 8-bit sound effects. While likely less realistic, they are strangely effective at communicating abstract sounds. That said, here is my review of the movie.

Scott Pilgrim is not a movie about a guy trying to win over a girl. It is about a relationship between the guy and a girl, as told from his perspective. In Scott's case that perspective is something of a guy that that recent NYT article was talking about. He is self-centered, disconnected from any relationship that does not seem to contribute to making himself better, and generally a sweet but asshole-ish dude. Also, he clearly was a child of the late 80s with constant thinking in terms of Video Game Logic. This VGL is actually very important to the movie so lets talk about that.

As a disclaimer, I have not read past the second book in the series of comics. I know this makes me a bad nerd. Oh well, I got distracted watching Doctor Who or something…

VGL was first named for me as a bunch of my friends and I were playing the XBOX game Ninja Gaiden. A remake of a beloved NES game, Ninja Gaiden was pretty awesome but used a seemingly strange way of telling us if a door could be opened or not. It had a red or green light. These sort of thing might have worked if the level was some sort of industrial site, but we were on a kind of passenger ship. And the lights were HUGE. In real life these lights would never exist, but here they were. From there on my friends and I began to notice all sorts of things that made perfect sense in video games, but not in real life. These include but are not limited to total easy changes in jump momentum, wondering into people's homes in strange small villages, and one use keys. All of these things would be questionable in many ways if the game space was the real world, but in the Mushroom Kingdom you just accept it and move on.

Scott has a bunch of what might be considered non-diegetic (to anyone but him at least) concepts like character stats, hit counters, "vs" displays, points, and even scene title cards. In VGL these are simply a part of playing the game. Mario does not see the timer that we do that forces him to finish a level quickly. That is just something we know about, thus non-diegetic or outside of Mario's world, but still a part of the game as a whole. These are unfortunately the only things that most people seem to be focusing on when it comes to the gamic influences on the movie as a whole.

Instead, I want to focus on why anyone would join together to create a League of Evil Exes to prevent Ramona (and Scott) from being free from the past's grasp. To this, I propose, that the League is nothing more than another projection of Scott's as he dates and gets to know Ramona. VGL then can become what is truly is, an easy oversimplification of the world in order to better make sense of it. After all, we have to simplify the world in video games because of things like graphics and simply user mechanics. It is for our sake that we don't have to manage every key we find or have a fight staged with health meters. Scott just takes it one step further. Each time a bump comes in his relationship with Ramona, Scott sees it as tied to a past trauma of an (evil) ex who he must defeat in order to get closer to Ramona and produce a sort of fairy-tale romance. The fights with her exes, like the applause in one scene are all in Scott's head.

This introduces a concept played up this summer by the last scene Christopher Nolan's Inception, but seems rarely brought up if not made explicit: the unreliable narrator. While there at first seems to be a omnipotent third-person narrator, maybe The Voice as played by Bill Hader, visual cues of everything revolving around Scott, the applause scene, and the lack of any subject of conversation but Scott all suggest that this whole thing is from Scott's view only. This is not that bold to suggest. However, we cannot trust Scott to not inflate his own story. Especially when even the version of himself he is presenting is so untrustworthy! The movie can then only be seen as what this shallow and kind of selfish dude understood his relationship to be.

This is kind of disturbing because this actually paints the very crowd it is meant to appeal to as a bunch of people who see relationship baggage as bosses on some quest to get laid or fall in love or something. Seriously, is coming to accept that a new partner was a school bully, a bit too ready to dump someone, bi-curious, or still kind of mad for a former lover so hard that we have to think about these things as personified forms that we can beat until they explode into bus fare?

Even the last "fight" between Scott and "Nega Scott" was nothing more than Scott putting off a confrontation with a part of himself that he simply doesn't see as something he needs to deal with. Going to brunch with a dark part of yourself is nothing more than saying that you are going to wake up hung over some time soon.

This Scott-sided view limits our ability to have any absolute understanding of the relationships or girls in them. Ramona and Knives overlap for Scott much longer than I think Scott, our narrator, lets on. Considering the way that time seems to skip forward throughout the movie, this should not be a shock. This would definitely explain and even validate the extreme reactions of the women when the find this out. This is important to consider because it would also serve to explain why Knives felt so totally wronged and why Scott ended up feeling that he had cheated on both of them.

Individually, both girls are clearly not ever remotely understood by Scott. Knives is constantly seen as only a silly love-struck teenage girl with a crush and a single minded desire to have Scott back. While it seems likely that Knives did hold a grudge against Ramona, it is never totally easy to assume that any of her other actions are simply to get Scott back. After all, she is still dense enough to talk nothing but good things about Scott's big ex in front of him. That seems like something that a girl out to win back a boy would try to avoid. While it might make him sad enough to return to you, it could also just piss him off. By the end of the movie it is clear that Knives might still like Scott, but has moved on to the wider social life he introduced her to.

Ramona is THE girl with a past. Being with Scott is in many ways totally escapist for her, just like moving to Canada and getting a job as a delivery girl.* It is clear that by the movie's end she is not over her exes. They may be coins to Scott, but to her they still exist as memories of times that have a version of her that she does not like any more. Her hope was that by going someplace new she could simply bottle those memories, but of course they had to come out for Scott to deal with. Besides feeling naive for thinking she could run away from the past, at the end of the movie she is nothing but embarrassed for having shown just who she once was to Scott. Her fights were only just beginning.

*The delivery profession is clearly seen as the lowest non-blue collar job out there. This is why Fry and the rest of the cast on Futurama are so easily depicted as sad and lonely people. They are just working for a delivery service. Yeah, it is to other planets, but still all they do is take packages across the galaxy, return to Earth, and watch TV. Likewise Ramona makes her job seem cool because she rollerblades while wearing goggles, but that is just a superficial look to make the job seem less like something that requires no skill.

The video game logic Scott applies to these girls prevents him from ever seeing these romantic interests as dynamic characters who have more complexity to them than just their color pallet changes (hair dyes). Accepting all this, we are able to see that the movie is not anti-feminist at a core level, but simply depicts them all as Scott's pixilated versions of themselves.

These are not totally naturalistic assumptions to make about a movie. This is why the movie was a box office flop. However, I expect that in the very near future as video game logic becomes more common Scott Pilgrim will become a classic.

Role Models

This movie is not quite heartwarming, but by the end of it you will be happy to have gotten to enjoy a story whose characters were way more important than their plot.

Paul Rudd, after having a hard day (he hates his job chugging energy drinks and his girlfriend dumps him) ends up being forced to do community service with a Big/Little program. So he gets stuck with a nerdy kid who likes to play fantasy reenactments with the local cosplayers. Oh, and his partner and only friend is a man-child who gets dragged along for the ride and he gets stuck with a foul mouthed little black kid.

Eventually they all learn to like each other and that's when the movie does the most self conscious (or just god awful) thing I have ever seen a movie let itself do. Rudd wins back his girlfriend with the most uninspired written on the fly love song ever. While some might like to think they they were just shoehorning a happy ending on to a story that need to tie of a lose end somehow, I like to think that they were deliberately mocking this sort of thing in other movies. And if this is the case, I might have to watch the whole movie over again just to see if I can catch if they are really mocking the genre of movie that has made this movie's leads stars.

Nick and Norah's Infinate Playlist

Given my unabashed loved for all things twee I had to see this movie. And I had to love it irrationally. I am sure I will watch this movie again when it comes out on DVD in a long movie night featuring as many movies as I can find that have something to do allowing trendy music to control our hearts and bring us together. That said, this movie is too full of lost potential for me to be truly happy watching it.

The whole plot involves Michael Cera (played with much grace by Mr. Cera) getting over his manipulative ex, hooking up with Kat Dennings, and getting to see a band that is playing after hours in a mystery location. There is also some wackiness with Kat's Courtney Love-esque friend, MC's gay bandmates, and a lame Jewish band. So it is basically set up to be the perfect into the night movie.

The movie fails many ways, but lets focus on the two aspects of the movie that could most easily be improved.

The paths of the characters:

With a premise like trying to find where the best twee band in NYC is playing should have been the biggest focus of the movie in terms of motivations for each of the hipster characters. MC and Kat (Nick and Norah) seem to be using the quest to find Fluffy as the excuse to learn about each other rather than simply being thrown together by the forces of the night to search for the band and fall in love at the same time. This leads to frustrating scenes where the characters are in fact building a connection, but through brute force alone.

Zanny sidequests are bound to happen, but that really should have been left to sidekicks, who were used quite well for the first part of the movie but then suddenly become nothing more than a plot mechanism to find Fluffy without even any work. I point to Superbad's McLovin for how to use the sidekick in a movie like this. They should interact as almost coincidentally connected stories that don't really have to help solve the primary conflict. They just need to provide that bridge the main characters can use to reach their destination.

The music:

While I am happy that Mark Mothersbaugh took care of the original music. The "playlist" was never stressed enough. In a post Garden State age movies about music really need a soundtrack that "will change your life."

I am no music expert. I can barely make myself listen to the newest Jenny Lewis album, much less any kind of truly underground stuff. But I expect the filmmaker to at least have a friend that might be able to do this sort of thing. I need a list of songs by bands that should be popular and will be thanks to this movie. This would drive up the cred of the movie.

The music also should have been a bigger topic of conversation. The one time they really get into talking about music in a deep way is a conversation about The Cure ("More like The Cause."). If these people are such music geeks who are brought together because of their love of music then we need to see that.



Oh, and more bands should have bunnies as their symbols.

The Dark Knight

As far as superheroes go, Batman is totally nuts. While I am pretty sure this view became the common and popular one in the 80s, I also think that everyone since Bob Kane has thought this about the guy. After all, what kind of guy spends all of his free time either training for or actually fighting criminals in a bat suit? He has no super powers (beyond the incredible), but is just a kind of smart guy who knows how to fight.

In fact, he isn't even a hero in the way that someone like Superman is simply because he is not seen as some sort of angle that is here to protect ourselves. He is a vigilante. He only does what the cops can't do. He can break in and tie people up as gifts for the police. Because of this he can't be totally trusted and with good reason.

That said it wasn't until Frank Miller that this stuff was really seen as important to the Batmythos. But now it is everywhere. Bats is mad at the world. He sees crime and sin and desires something like justice. He desires order and safety. And for this sort of thing ordinary criminals are not enough.

This is where the Joker steps into the modern story. While just about ever other villian in Gotham has a very clear motive for evil, the Joker is only out to be Batman's mirror image. The Joker's past called him to see the world as not something that needs to be fixed, but something that needs to burn. That people fight all the time to just be decent. The Joker thinks the world would be better without that.

The problem comes in when the Joker and Batman begin to become too symbolic for good storytelling. It is always clear why the Joker doesn't just kill Batman; he is not in for the killing but the fun of torture. Yet, why can't Batman kill the Joker. This is a man who is powerful enough to have a bomb put inside another human being, a man who takes joy in watching people die, a man who thinks all of life is one big killing joke.

In Mr. Nolan's newest bat-flick we see this come up near the end of the movie. (None of this is really spoiler-y if you have seen anything about the movie that just came out.) And this keeps the movie's ending from being truly great.

The problem is that Batman is never allowed to truly become dark. There is talk about being a hero or being "something that is needed" in the movie. Yet, he never quite makes it to the point of being what is needed. Maybe this is suppose to be what keeps him from becoming something like the Joker, but it also keeps him from achieving his goals.

Overall, the movie is pretty awesome. The action is not over the top. The acting is good enough. The Joker is scary as all get out. The pieces were all set for Bats to become what I have always though he should be and he missed it by that much.

Speed Racer

The only time I was ever unsure about this movie was when I first heard about it. At that time all I could think was "who the hell wants to see a movie based on that old cartoon?" It turns out that most everyone should.

I can't say that I have ever really watched the old cartoon, but I have seen enough to know why some people really love it. It is full of fun characters, wacky hi jinx, and enough feel-good moments that the show has soul. And from what I remember the attempts to remake it were pretty much lame. Why should a live action remake be any different?

Well from the first moment I started seeing stills though, I knew it was going to be awesome. The way the everything looked so shinny. And then there were a few promos that showed the high speeds. This was going to prove to be eye candy.

It was more like cocaine for your eyes! Everything was so bright and colorful that by the time you leave the theater you expect the rest of the world should look just like that. While I could do nothing

While I never had the child's desire to jump up and fight with the people on TV, I know why many of my friends did. This movie is pretty much what every kid wants to grow up to be. We all want to be successful, famous, and sticking it to the man. Of course having a loving family and a cute, but confident, girlfriend helps too.

All together you are only going to enjoy this movie if you like anime, video games, and that old feeling of being a kid.

In Bruges

I had only see the trailers for this movie, but I took a chance with it this weekend. All to often this method of movie going leads to anguish, but not this time thankfully.

In Bruges is about two hitmen who are laying low in the small Belgian town of, you guessed it, Bruges. From here we find that the younger more wound up one, played by Colin Farrell, who is amazingly the least clichéd Irish actor, has mistakenly killed a kid. Soon his partner is told to kill him, but can't bring himself to even let Colin off himself. And the conflict between them and their boss drives the rest of the movie.

This plot is pretty simple, but what makes the movie so great are all the supporting characters. You have Chloe, the local dealer and hottie; Eric, the local punk; and Jimmy, the American midget actor. Most movies would only be able to make you see each of this characters in detail by destroying the plot's flow, here the plot is almost about the characters.

Along with great characters, the writing is amazing as well. It feels like In Bruges was written by Quentin Tarantino and Samuel Beckett over a few pints of bitters. As Colin, his partner, and Jimmy (along with a bunch of whores) are sitting in a nice hotel doing lines of coke (stolen from the local hottie), a discussion begins on the inevitable war between the whites and blacks. This comes after a number of scenes in which Colin muses over the idea of the Afterlife. Alone each scene seems pretty bland, but as this odd unapologetic debauchery is mixed with the need for peace and forgiveness you begin to wonder if Bruges is heaven, limbo, or worse.