The Book of Eli
Shutter Island
Kick-Ass
Iron Man 2
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
The A-Team
Toy Story 3
Inception
The Expendables
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
The Town
The Social Network
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1
True Grit
Of these movies, I was only disappointed in two. Iron Man 2... and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Iron Man 2 is a story in of itself, but in my opinion it was still better than Scott Pilgrim. I went to the midnight release of this film, ready to be wowed beyond my wildest dreams. What I got out of it was a rushed movie with a douche-y main character with a few good moments and characters packed inside. I came out of the theater and I seemed to be the only one of my friends who viewed the movie this way. Everyone else called me crazy, hailing it as the greatest movie of 2010. For those of you still confused - wondering as my friends did why I think such a thing about the movie - here's why.
First, the pacing of the movie was way off. The movie seemed be cruising along at a decent pace for about... forty-five minutes. Then around when the fourth evil-ex shows up things start to roll forward with rocket speed. They completely bypass the fifth and sixth exes (the twins and the most interesting of the bunch) all to get to the ending of the movie. The fact that it moved so quickly wasn't helped by the fact that it was roughly an hour and twenty minutes long. The movie desperately needed at least another twenty minutes to help flesh things out and not cram as much drivel as possible into eighty minutes.
Scott Pilgrim is a douche bag. It's pretty much acknowledged in the beginning of the film by his band mates. Fair enough. But usually movies have what's called "character growth" in them. This is where during some time in the film the main character is supposed to have some sort of epiphany and realize his ways are wrong and change them. That... never happened with Scott Pilgrim. Some sword just grew out of his shirt and told him all his problems were solved, twice. This also plays into my feelings on the ending, which lacked any sort of resolution to Scott's character. He just sorta "won" and that was that. Knives was okay with everything and Scott and Ramona got go off in their little door thing to the end credits.
Now this all isn't to say there wasn't anything I liked in the movie. I loved Wallace as a character. He had the best lines and easily the best moments in the entire movie. The first two evil-exes were fun action scenes as well. It's just too bad they steadily got worse from there on out. There were some great lines in the movie as well and the music wasn't half bad. The movie just didn't come together as well as it could have.
For a series that spans six graphic novels, it deserved more than an eighty minute film. I would have preferred two films, but considering how much money it didn't make I can see why that wasn't going to happen. Maybe Universal should have shown the movie to everyone for free multiple times.
I also don't think that film is the proper medium for Scott Pilgrim. Something more like video games (which they have) or a great animated series (which they made... four parts of?) would be much better suited to the series' style.
THANK. YOU.
ReplyDeleteOh my GOD. I was starting to think I was the only person on the face of the EARTH who didn't think this was the GREATEST MOVIE EVAR. Frankly I found the way they handled the concept of lesbian relationships offensive, Scott was a dick, Ramona was flat and had no depth, and the only decent parts were the fight scenes. Honestly.