Raucous Underground

Ok, so we know the basic story but how does it work on the silver screen?

I think that your mileage of the film may vary based on what sort of a background you’re walking in with, but overall, I’d say it’s great. This film predominantly caters to fans of the graphic novels and gamers in general though the gaming aspect really seemed to take a back seat to things and only appeared as a device for comedy and storytelling. There are a fair number of gaming references and the overall story is built sort of on the model of a video game, but the movie doesn’t have the space for as many references as the source material. It still borrows heavily from gaming stereotypes; it wouldn’t be Scott Pilgrim if it didn’t. As far as the transition from books to big screen, There were a lot of things that were shifted around and scrunched together (and some things cut altogether), but I think a lot of the major plot points are still present (of course, I’m still reading the GN’s so I might comment on this again later).

I think I have 2 really glaring issues with the movie. First of all, I think it covered the first graphic novel pretty well, but it because of it there was a good bit of jumping around. Even then, it wouldn’t have been so bad but some of the transitions could have caused confusion. For example, at one point the scene goes from Scott and Knives hanging out into the first dream he has where he sees Ramona. These scenes are two totally separate bits in the graphic novel but in the film, Scott literally goes from talking to Knives to drifting into the dream. If I hadn’t read the graphic novel, I’d have thought he went into some kind of psychotic episode. Still, some different transitions would have helped this and it only really happens in any sort of notable way early in the film.

My second gripe is that there’s a specific scene early in the film that shows Scott and Knives playing a DDR inspired ninja video game in an arcade (HA you can’t fool me! Arcades have been extinct for hundreds of years!). It’s a very cheesy, could-never-be-real game, meant to take the place of any game from reality since showing them play an actual game would have probably cost money. What’s worse is there’s a whole plot point based around it about how Scott can never pass this one aspect of the game which shows up in reality later in the movie and Scott overcomes it, having grown as a person and further malarkey. It just felt sort of cheesy to me though it did allow for one aspect of the graphic novels to make it into the movie.

Beyond those two issues, the movie is a lot of fun. The action is great and full of energy. All of the fight scenes are really interesting and I would love to see more films use an over the top method to the madness. I liked the use of the visualized sound effects and other comic-esque visual cues; they were all used really well and to great affect. There is the matter that the relationship between Ramona and Scott is never really looked at in the sense that it can be hard to tell why they’re together, but then Mario’s motive for saving Peach have never really been explained either. The story in general could be a bit more solid by explaining why characters did what they did and felt the way they felt, but the humor and action still make for a fun ride.