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.

Let’s face it. Fiction is a planned endeavor. The best works are ones that are plotted out from first act to last, from beginning to end. They have structure, flow and purpose. Some even have a message to deliver along with a story to tell.

But when that message is tied to an anvil dropped on the audience, or the story is delivered with gaudy wrapping paper surrounding a poorly-constructed product, the whole thing suffers. You can have all of the CGI in the world in your film but if there’s no coherence to the narrative or depth to the characters, all you have is a bunch of CGI. People can get that by logging into World of Warcraft. Or Grand Theft Auto. Or Second Life.

I’m going to use a key example in all of this. Since this weekend turned out to be something of a success in terms of experimentation, even if it kept me from doing things like going outside or spending time with loved ones or smelling like a human being instead of a pile of rage and shattered dreams, let’s use Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Lame Title Talentless Hack Fanboys Clones.

Contrivance is Bad Writing

Plain and simple. If you write a scene that’s intended to be heartfelt, or romantic, or tragic there’s a very basic rule you need to follow. Show, don’t tell. If you can show characters being in love, or caring about one another, the audience will understand what’s going on without having to be told, and what’s more, there’s a much greater chance they’ll actually care about what’s happening. Or, you could just have your characters sitting around talking about how they feel.

There’s a right and a wrong way to show people’s emotions, too. Is it really that hard to weave emotional undercurrents into plot-salient actions and dialog? You don’t need to draw out a scene of two young people frolicking in a field with lilting, string-heavy music playing at fortissimo to show they’re so in love. You might as well be sitting in the wings with a bullhorn shouting, “THESE TWO ARE IN LOVE AND YOU SHOULD EMPATHIZE WITH THEM BECAUSE THEY’RE IN LOVE BECAUSE THEY SAY THEY ARE.”

“You can’t just have your characters announce how they feel! THAT MAKES ME FEEL ANGRY!”

Me too, Beelzebot. Me too.

Contrivance Defies Logic

Let me toss a hypothetical your way. Say you have a plot in which you need to deal with an idea you presented in a previous work. You also have a fan favorite character whose origins you want to explore. How do you work both of them into the same work at the same time?

First of all, why? Why is it necessary for one to have anything to do with the other? If you want to show that character X is a badass, fine. If you want to explain how cloning works, fair enough. But having every single fucking clone patterned on the same person who has the family name of a fan favorite character but about as much development as a patio umbrella and less depth than a teaspoon raises more questions than are likely to be held in the writer’s brain at any given moment.

You know, questions like: Why did they pick this jagoff to be the prime clone?

Why is he trying to assassinate some one in the Republic and fighting Jedi when his clones are going to be used to support both the Republic and the Jedi? Did he just not know? Did nobody tell him what his clones were for? Did he not think to ask?

Did anybody bother to think about this shit, let alone write it?

I paid ten bucks to watch THIS?

Contrivance Destroys Enjoyment

We enjoy stories. We like to read them, listen to them, watch them. We like to envision the action, let the characters grow, anticipate what happens next.

The problem with prequels in general and Lucas’ six hours of wanking onto a green screen in particular is that there’s really only one way for things to resolve. You need to get characters and situations into a certain configuration so the already established works make some sort of sense. Unless you’re going far, far into the past of your own universe – thank God for Knights of the Old Republic – if you don’t do things right you will outright ruin any enjoyment of said previous works.

I can’t think of a better example of this than Star Wars. Every time you see Darth Vader, every time you hear James Earl Jones rumble out his orders and declare the ‘promotion’ of another officer, you see and hear the whiny little psychopath pictured above. It’d be different if Anakin had been characterized as somewhat insecure but nonetheless good-hearted, concerned about the scope of his power and wanting nothing more than a happy, peaceful life.

But no, we got a self-centered, power-hungry, whining, disrespectful asshole.

He had to be with someone so he could have kids, so he’s set up with someone who could have been every bit as inspiring to women now as Princess Leia was back in A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back. You know, a confident, intelligent, competent and brave young woman who isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty but still knows how to look good and deal with people.

But no, we got a vacuous, empty, shallow, entirely underdeveloped plot convenience.

She has to leave the scene before the end of the last prequel, since Luke and Leia get separated for their safety by Obi-Wan and Bail Organa. How can we get this to happen? Does she make some kind of brave but stupid decision to make one last effort to reach the man she loves who is now lost in his own desire for justice that has been subverted and perverted by the Dark Side of the Force?

No. Just have her drop dead of a broken fucking heart. They might as well have said the midi-chlorians did it.

Mister Lucas? With all due respect for the pioneering you did in science fiction and special effects back when I was a little boy…

FUCK YOU.

I know what you’re thinking. “Oh, crap! He’s finally snapped! He’s going to get himself a white hoodie and start jumping on random people so he can stab them in the neck with a #2 pencil to to make sure people get the irony!” First of all, no. Neither Altaiir nor Ezio jumped on ‘random’ people and I certainly wouldn’t, either. Secondly, I’m talking more about the seminal line in the titular Assassin’s Creed than I am their way of dealing with problems. The line in question: Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

I was set on this course of thinking by one Henry Rollins. I saw on the Tube of You that he’d given some thoughts on Jesus. This bit’s sort of brief, but focus on what he says at about the 1:45 mark:

Rollins’ awesomeness aside, he makes a very good point that’s helping me get back into the groove of working on Citizen, a boost that I needed after this weekend’s experiment. Basically, it boils down to not listening to what other people might have to say about trying to do something creative or interesting with my life.

According to some, to make it as a writer, you have to pander to a certain demographic. Success in the modern literary world, according to sales figures, means main characters who are little more than blank slates onto which young & impressionable readers can project themselves, shallow stock supporting characters that do little more than fuel the ego of the protagonist (and by extension the author and/or reader) and presenting the whole project in an easily marketable way that can generate enough hype to overwhelm any criticism of the work itself. If sales trends are to be believed, this is the truth of the fiction market.

But remember, nothing is true.

Further, you don’t want to get too complicated, some might say. Don’t get to involved in your characters. Don’t stop to develop them. Don’t build a world that people can believe in. It’s just window-dressing, a green screen, and shouldn’t have any depth to it. Let readers project what they want into it just as they do the personality-deprived protagonist, and by the way, why are you trying to make that into a human being? You can’t spend time doing this stuff and expect to finish what you’re writing, let alone be successful with it, they’d cry. That’s not allowed!

And yet, everything is permitted.

You see what I’m doing here? I don’t have any intention of giving up. I won’t water down what I’m doing just to make it more palatable to the masses unused to the taste of something more complicated than gruel and wallpaper paste. I won’t compromise the visions that keep me up at night in order to make my work trendy. I don’t care what the teeming masses think is true, or what those in the world of business or sales or marketing think an individual is or is not allowed to do. Just because some people gave up on their dreams long ago doesn’t mean I have to do the same.

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

It might seem a bit odd to take a line from a video game franchise this seriously, but when I stopped to think about what I’m trying to do, what I need to push myself to finish, I found myself ruminating on why it’s important, and not just to me. I’m certainly not expecting anything I write to change the world or sell a bazillion copies or even help me get away from the environment of the corporate day job. I know that it’d take months or even years after finishing just one novel for it to finally see print, and even then I’d be lucky to sell a dozen copies to friends and family.

That’s the truth of this situation.

Nothing is true.

I’m not allowed to expect anything more.

Everything is permitted.

I really like the work of JJ Abrams. I’ve seen bits and pieces of his TV show LOST and I’ve liked what I’ve seen. I like that it makes people think, posits difficult questions to both its characters and the audience, and has a bit of an old-fashioned serial feel to it. I dig all of that.

The show ended last night, and people for the most part like how it ended. They like that it still provoked thought at the end. And they laugh at people who are pissed off because it’s over but it’s still making people’s brains hurt when they try to use them. I dig that, too.

But everywhere I turn, people are blathering on about LOST, and it’s kind of pissing me off.

My wife’s never seen it. I missed the first year or two. So, we’ll be going back and starting from the beginning. That means I’d like to avoid spoilers. Which, in turn, means I need to avoid 90% of the blogs, feeds and Facepages I tend to visit. It’s also irritating because there are interesting conversations going on in which I can’t participate because I have no frame of reference. And by the time I am up to speed, none of my points will be particularly relevant.

I know, that’s pretty much true of any damn review I do on this blog, but I’m still miffed about this, dammit.

It could just be residual anger over the issues I’m having trying to get World of Warcraft working on my Linux laptop. Just because you can install Linux on just about anything doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll work. It’s so close, I’m either going to sort out this last little bug or I’ll have to break down and find a way to install a stable copy of Windows on a different partition through a USB key.

Oh, and there’s still unpacking to do in the new flat, at least one load of laundry needs to get done so there are clean teatowels to tackle the ever-growing stack of dishes in the sink, and my older sister’s wall map and an old monitor linger at the old place.

And that’s not even touching my dayjob workload or my desire to finish the novel in the next couple of weeks or so.

Good times. Happy Monday, everybody!

“You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”

Along with some support for the ideas I put forth in yesterday’s post, there are some that spoke up saying I’m just pushing my male ideas onto women, that chivalry is dead and it should stay that way because it’s a very bad thing that’s denigrating to women.

Cue me looking very confused.

Before I get into why this topic of conversation turned me into a seething ball of hatred, let’s look at why chivalry has become, for some, an epithet that means “the code misogynistic entitled male tossers use to impose their imagined superiority on women.”

In Days Of Old

Knights went to war back in the Middle Ages. To differentiate themselves from common folk, since most knights owned land and had other privileges due to their status, they chose to adhere to a code of behavior called ‘chivalry’. The code actually has Islamic roots, with Moorish knights expected to demonstrate “Piety, courtesy, prowess in war, the gift of eloquence, the art of poetry, skill on horseback, dexterity with sword, lance, and bow.” (Source) Christianity imposed more definition upon the code, instructing knights to use their might and influence to protect “weaker members of society.”

Back in those days, this mostly meant women.

For years, women were seen as inferior to men. Men took on the difficult or dangerous tasks of protecting the homestead from rampaging barbarians or going off to slay heathens in a holy war in the the name of Jesus, the Prince of Peace. Women were expected to maintain said homestead, doing the things men couldn’t do because they either weren’t home or hadn’t be raised to know how to cook. This societal structure was maintained for quite some time, and it’s still a thorn in a lot of female sides to this day.

The Modern Interpretation

“Forget about honor, charity and self-sacrifice, the crux of the chivalric code was men imposing themselves upon women. The gentleness and graciousness with which a knight was to conduct themselves towards women was clearly a facade behind which lurked the desire all men have to put women under their thumb. If a man with wealth, title and strength of arms were to act this way, a woman was all but obligated to bow down before him.”

That’s the impression I get from most arguments made against the old chivalric code. And on a certain level, I am incapable of mounting a defense. Women’s rights have been a struggle for years, and many women still fight to prove that they are just as entitled and capable as men. Indeed, in some behavior of men, both then and now, there’s an undercurrent of condescension. “Oh, let me do that for you, my dear. It’s not your fault you’re incapable of rational thought or gross physical labor.”

I don’t think I need to clarify why I agree with the women who get angry at that sort of attitude. Hell, I’m male (at least, I think I am, let me check… *looks down pants* Yep, male) and this sort of thinking pisses me off. Women, from my experience, are tougher, smarter, more cunning, more quick-witted and far more cutthroat than a lot of men out there. Cross a guy, he’ll punch you in the face. Cross a woman, she will not only kick you in the crotch, but drag you into the street and repeatedly stomp on your balls while declaring to everybody within earshot what a fucking douchebag you are. And this won’t happen right away. It’ll happen when you least expect it, and trust me, somewhere in the haze of pain and humiliation, you might realize why you deserve it.

I’m talking mostly in metaphor, here, but I catch you get my drift. Women don’t need special treatment. A lot of women don’t want it. They’d much rather go through their daily lives without anybody taking notice of the fact that they’re put together differently from men.

It’s not going to stop me holding the door open for them, though. Let me tell you why.

I Call Bullshit

It’s not because I’m afraid of getting my nuts flattened, although there’s something to that. No, it’s because I was taught from a very young age through both instruction and experience that women deserve respect and courtesy, just as much as anybody else if not moreso. My mother busted her ass to take care of me and my two sisters, my grandmother taught us everything she could, and my sisters made damn sure I respected them through various means. I observed the way my dad treated my mom, from the good-natured jibes to the way he listened to her concerns, offered advice and worked towards compromise. I was told, and still believe, that holding a door open for a woman, speaking to her with courtesy and considering a woman more attractive if she’s smart, funny and clever rather than based on looks alone isn’t just common courtesy but common sense.

That, to me, is chivalry. It has nothing to do with oppressing women or considering myself superior to them or any of that misogynistic bullshit. Chivalry in my vernacular is and has always been shorthand for “treating people kindly regardless of who they are, where they’re from or what the color of their skin is, especially giving women the respect they deserve because for every kind act I do, at least a thousand other jerkoffs are treating a woman like shit and I want to make a difference, dammit.” I don’t give a damn what the world at large or the mass media or crusaders of womyn’s lib call chivalry, that is what chivalry is to me and I happen to think it’s an attitude that still has merit.

So if I talk about chivalry, or proceed to act in a chivalrous manner, that’s my thinking behind it. Maybe it’s wrong, maybe I’m flawed, maybe I’m still going to get my balls stomped on by a woman who thinks I’m being a condescending dickface. If I am, though, you go right ahead & pour my intentions into the paving machine and point the damn thing at Hell, because I’d rather be damned for seeking a better code of behavior than sit in the darkness cast by the shadow of others, waiting to be saved.

That’s what the word ‘chivalry’ means to me, and by God, I’m taking it back from people who use it the same way tea-partiers use ‘fascist.’