Scott Pilgrim: A re-retrospective and reflection.

            I go back and forth on how much I actually like the Scott Pilgrim series.  It’s one of those things that triggers the elitist muscle in my brain when I hear people talking about it and I wonder if people understood it the same way I did and do now. I think a lot of people just saw the character as someone like them who got a girl and fought with swords and missed the big point that was left at the end of the series.

            Scott Pilgrim does have a lot in common with a lot of people in my generation, which is what makes him such a phenomenal character. However, what makes him so realistic as a person are his glaring flaws. He’s selfish and self-absorbed. He’s lazy. He doesn’t have a job. He’s a mooch both monetarily and emotionally. Most importantly, Scott exists in a world where he is the protagonist and only is story matters, which is one of those important themes that’s left lying around.

            Memory plays a big part in the story. Both Scott and Ramona are confronting their past relationships. The way Scott remembers things shapes his character, and when the realization of how he has been making the same mistake as Gideon is what allows him to actually see his mistakes and grow from them as a person.

            Memories only ever give one side of the story, and that’s whoever is remembering them. It’s easy to alter what happened to make yourself the victim of the hero, or that everything was some wonderful fairy tale like Scott does. That’s what allows us to look for other people to blame and avoid growing up.

            There is an interesting parallel between him and Gideon that makes the finale. When Scott finally gets it, he grows up over the space of 5 pages.  Brain Lee O’Malley makes it visible on his face. You can see a difference in the way he speaks and the way he looks. The new shirt and new sword and the “power of understanding” are just the trappings of his newfound maturity and his realization that he’s actually done a lot of wrong to a lot of people and he starts to make it right.

            A lot of comics are about growing up and learning to live with your mistakes. That is literally the entire plot of The Amazing Spider-Man. Peter messes up all the time and has clean it up. He’s a superhero because he knows it’s the right thing to do. He isn’t in this for vengeance or power, but because he made a mistake and it cost him his uncle. He grew up when Uncle Ben died and now he does everything he can to make sure that tragedy doesn’t happen to anyone else.

            And that’s growing up. It’s dealing with your mistakes every single day. When Scott confronts his demons (literally) in volume 6 he and Kim have this exchange

K: If you keep forgetting your mistakes, you’ll just keep making them again.

S:  I don’t care! It’s better than having to live with myself!

And Kim’s right. It’s not until Scott actually looks his mistakes dead in the eye that he realized exactly what he’s done and what he needs to do. He starts changing right there. Actually seeing everything you’ve ever done and how it’s affected other people will do that. Change is what we get when we grow up, and sometimes it sucks. Believe me. I’m 21 years old with an English major who cleans hookahs for 7 dollars an hour. In the 4 months I spent without a job I had a lot of time alone to myself to think about a lot of things. Now that I actually have a reason to get out of bed again all of that’s settled and starting to clear up.

One of the reasons I like Scott so much as a character is because I see a lot of myself in him. I get so concerned in my precious little life that I forget that other people actually have feelings. We all want to be the protagonist of the world so badly that we overlook everyone else’s subplot. We let our own stories take over what really happened, and we end up hurting people we care the most about just by being insensitive.

Scott and I learned it the easy way. We’ve both left people feeling terrible and went on our merry way wondering why they were upset. That ex-post facto realization hits like a train. It makes you change your life and try to undo every bit of hurt. But you can’t. There’s no undo button, no control-z. Things can’t be the same, but you can go forward.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the Movie

As someone who disliked Scott Pilgrim, realized that I was supposed to dislike Scott Pilgrim (the character), and then liked Scott Pilgrim a lot, I was very excited for the film. Michael Cera is perfect for the part (the casting is perfect), the style worked great, and the music was pretty good too. The problem comes through with the adaptation to the screen.

The movie is a little bit shy of two hours, with the majority of the movie being ridiculous fight scenes, musical numbers, and one-liners. This is problem number one, because the source material is six rather thick graphic novels chock-full of dialog and exposition. Seven evil exes is a lot to cover in an hour and 45 minutes (roughly 15 minutes per ex). This doesn't leave a lot of room for the emotional content of Scott Pilgrim that made it really appeal to me. Sure it's flashy and kung-fu and "an epic of epic epicness" but it lacks the power of heart that made it so great to read.

The movie does a poor job on Scott's backstory, and by poor I mean that it's barely covered. Scott and Kim's relationship is barely touched, so when Scott apologizes to her I found myself wondering, "what for?" Envy Adams has an incredibly small role, only appearing during with the third evil ex, and her relationship with Scott is immediately forgotten. It builds it up and then drops it to go to a very long fight scene (like ten-ish minutes). Yes, it was cool to look at, but the stylized bass battle takes away from any sort of maturity that Scott could get to (such as legitimate closure with Envy).

Also, the ending (SPOILER ALERT) is kinda weak. It resolves rather hurriedly, and Scott really doesn't learn or grow like he should have. Gideon is not the ASSHOLE, and Scott never really confronts himself (He makes peace with the negaScott, but doesn't except his faults as well). It just sort of cops out and hopes that a happy ending and swordfights will cover for a copout.

These are the complaints of someone who wanted to see a movie of the book. I know that's not possible. This is more mass market appeal and that's great. I'm glad the book got publicity but the movie lacks the power to actually make any sort of statement. Maybe it should have been two movies, or maybe they should have toned down the LOOK WE'RE NERDY LIKE YOU and KUNG FU. Maybe they should have let the graph finish before they wrote the movie.

In short, it's really fun. If you were a big fan of the books you'll be a bit disappointed. I enjoyed it, but I found myself wanting more dialog and less style. Plot is good. That's why the books were popular. Add a little more of that next time and we'll be good.

(I wanted to avoid a rant here, but there is a lot missing from the books and some serious changes that don't really work. I'm not going to list them, just be re-warned)

Scott Pilgrim: A Retrospective (Part One)

After a great deal of rereading, I have decided Scott Pilgrim is great. That said, I'm going to take the next couple of posts to look closer at the characters, themes, symbols, and all that stuff I hated doing in English class. I'm just going to say this once, so

SPOILER ALERT

That is all.

There's a very obvious place to start with such a character-driven story, and that is the titular character: Scott Pilgrim. Scott is 23, plays bass (poorly) in a (terrible-ish) band. He has no job, few possessions, and has a habit of sleeping until noon and playing videogames all day. The story is mostly from Scott's point of view, with a sort of muddle consciousness about it. This is, after all, his story pieced together from his point of view (this is something you should make a note of).

Anyway, Scott Pilgrim has this "Precious Little Life", in which his gay roomate puts him through most of the chores of being a productive member of society and he dates a 17 year old Chinese high-schooler. His life is a strange balance, and while delightfully quirky, is infuriating to pretty much everyone else. As his ex-girlfriend Kim says, "Scott, if your life had a face I would punch it."

In walks Ramona and Scott begins his journey of self-discovery and growth. Unfortunately most of that doesn't happen for a while. A lot of the time I found myself thinking, "Man, what an asshole".

Scott is self-centered, in the sense that he is the protagonist here, and so that anything that is not Scott related is swept away. Scott is so busy in volume 5 that he is completely out of the loop on his friend Stephen coming out. Also, since most of the insight into his romantic past comes from him, we get a one-sided perspective of who he is in a relationship. Scott, in a discussion with another ex-girlfriend argues that he was "totally a paragon" during their relationship, a fact that really isn't true. He doesn't have the best memory for the times he's been a dick.

The point when it becomes obvious that Scott is kind of a self-centered ass is in book two when he breaks up with Knives. This girl is kind of obsessed with him, but in the adorable way. She is 17 and absolutely baffled by this apparent badass. However, Scott is obsessed with Ramona and just sort of ditches Knives. He does not really think about her again.

Scott views himself as this paragon hero who has never done anything wrong and is perfect and awesome and adorable, when in fact he really isn't. Whenever Scott is assaulted by the truth about himself, he fights the "NegaScott" a dark-link style version of himself that represents everything he'd done wrong and buried in his memories. Only when he accepts his past can he move on and face Gideon and become a better person.

In the final showdown, when we finally get some insight into Gideon, there's some pretty obvious symbolism. Scott (who "never drinks") spills booze on his shirt and has to change into one with Gideon's logo on it. Scott and Gideon duel, and it becomes incredibly clear that Scott and Gideon have a lot in common, except for the fact that Scott has the desire to change for Ramona. Once Scott understands his shirt logo changes to the subspace star.

Scott was an asshole. However, he had a reason to be better in Ramona. Once he moved on and got it together could they both move forward without him becoming another evil ex. Scott is a few people's evil ex. He was an asshole and I had good reason to hate him. Once he got a job and some closure did he become sympathetic.

Next up- Secondary Characters and evil exes

Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour & Brightest day 5/6

What right does this series have to suddenly become really good?

Seriously! Here I was being all critical and then the finale is way too good to even get into. There is explanation and closure and an actual meaning here. Needless to say I'm pretty thrilled.

I was skeptical at first, scoffing at the ridiculousness of it and generally being a jerk, but damn it got good. I don't know what more to say. It's good. Much better than...


Brightest Day 5&6: Let me sum it up. Each character gets like 5 pages and crawls along through a plot that somehow relates to the White Lantern. I don't really care about Aquaman or the Hawks. Deadman's story seems very good by he is bogged down by the rest of the series. Seriously guys, get to the point.

Scott Pilgrim, Round Two

In short, I'm still unsure of how much I like it.

Yeah, it's quirky and fun, but at the same time its angst-ridden and full of high-school style drama that just gets annoying after a while.

That's it. This should be set in a high school.

Scott Pilgrim should be chock full of swearing and adult situations, given as it's about "adults", but it isn't. The characters talk like adolescents, and have the same maturity level. Again, it's audience pandering, and I don't really know that I fall into the audience for that. It seems more for kids who like Japanese stuff a little too much and play Final Fantasy with fanatical fervor. The concept of "drama" here is very basic, with love triangles (in reality, that's an oversimplification, given as Scott is romantically linked to every girl in the story who is not his kid sister).

The character of Scott Pilgrim gets on my nerves too. I know that he is supposed to be a lovable slacker, sharing a futon with his gay roommate (they point out that his roommate is gay all the damn time) in a totally hetero way. He has no job, but he's in a crappy band, which apparently makes him awesome. He just sits around and plays bass (poorly) and video games.

Now, generally this can be taken as the affable slacker, a hipster Seth Rogen who, while being lazy and immature, is funny and genuine and makes Katherine Hiegl swoon because he's so different or whatever. The thing is that when it comes to women, Scott's kind of a dick. A good portion of the book is them pointing this out. I don't have a lot of sympathy for Scott here.

The whole evil ex thing is suspect at best too. I guess it will be wrapped up in book 6 but they have taken their time. I mean, without that element it would be just a romance story and then I'd feel even weirder reading it, but it just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I need motive here, and by book 6 we should have gotten there. We are at the peak of our story. This should have been covered in rising action.

I'm going to finish it, mostly out of a desire to get some answers, but I'm still not sure on my final verdict. At this juncture, though, Scott Pilgrim needs to get it together.

Scott Pilgrim Versus Me

Scott Pilgrim is good. I'm going to say that right off. I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea and think that this is not an enjoyable read, because it is. I like Scott Pilgrim.

However...

It's good, not great, and sure I am going to finish the rest of the series because I need a fun read after reading Final Crisis, The Killing Joke, and The Last Will and Testament of Hal Jordan (an amazing and fairly unheard of book that I'll talk about at some point) over and over again. Scott Pilgrim is light and fluffy and has one-dimensional webcomic-style drama that rarely makes you think as well as some very enjoyable action sequences. While these action sequences do tend to leave you with a quizzical look, wondering what exactly happened and how these skinny hipster kids can fight like that.

Be warned that this comic is hip and knows it. There are a veritable asston of videogame references, which grate after a while. It gets old, especially when it seems the book is trying to establish it know more about games than you and was playing Super Mario World when you were in diapers. I love games, but after a while it becomes annoying. We get it. Scott Pilgrim is a nerd. We are all nerds. Let's move on.

I understand that Scott Pilgrim has some manga roots. The art style and the fact that it's tiny and not normal comic book size lends itself more to that (I do not like the fact that this book is small and not in color. I just want to get that out there). This also comes through in the over the top action and general ridiculousness that is Scott Pilgrim. Apparently demon hipster chicks and people turning into coins (yes, we get it, the book is hip) are normal, so the characters barely mention the fact that it's INCREDIBLY WEIRD. The bar for average is very low here.

Anyway, these things aside, it's fun. The less you think, the more you enjoy. I'm going to give more time and see where the story goes, but I'm not holding my breath. I think it can get better and be awesome and turn bunnies into gold robots, but that might just be ridiculous.