The Commercialization of Scott Pilgrim, and Other Problems at Hand
I bet you're excited, Mr. Pilgrim
I first found out about Scott Pilgrim around 2005 or so, around the time Scott Pilgrim Vol. 2 was all set to come out. There was a story about it in The Coast, essentially my local version of the Village Voice, because Scott Pilgrim was connected to my home province of Nova Scotia in some way: Bryan Lee O’Malley, the author, is from London, Ontario, but had drawn the first couple of volumes of his series in Mount Uniacke, a small town in Nova Scotia (Buck 65 is also from there, if anyone cares.)
In the first two volumes, I was immediately drawn to it. Scott was a wonderfully identifiable character, basically like any 23-year-old Canadian slacker trying to make his way. He meets an extraordinary girl named Ramona Flowers, awkwardly but charmingly goes steady her, and then he finds himself thrust into an unexpected video game quest to defeat her seven evil end bosse-erm, evil ex-boyfriends.
The first three volumes were great. The setting was realistic and believable, and the way it integrated so many video game in-jokes, like Scott’s rival band with music-based superpowers Crash ‘n the Boys, people exploding into a couple of bucks in spare change and such, and all the crazy action scenes, felt like they weren’t really part of Scott’s universe. They were presented in a tongue-in-cheek way, and many of the characters reacted to it like they weren’t sure what the hell was going on, but that it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility. I liked how Scott is completely mystified by the 1-UP he gets in Volume 3.
It was populated with so many likable side characters, as well, making Toronto seem more like Toronto than some video game iteration of it, even with the in-jokes and bombastic violence. There was Stephen Stills, the lead of Scott’s band, the type of guy whom everyone says his names in hushed tones. There’s Hollie, the sassy lady who works at No Account Video, and seems like a female Quentin Tarantino. Even some of the ex-boyfriends, like Todd Ingram, the superpowered vegan, have a kind of goofy charm to them. It was a delight following these people around. They felt like comic book people, not comic book characters, if you follow me.
So when Volume 4 came out, I couldn’t wait for the library to stock it, so I rushed right out to Strange Adventures to get it. It sat on myself for a month or so, since it came out in the middle of my first NaNoWriMo, and I couldn’t spare time for it. Finally, around December, I read it.
I read the first five pages, rendered in splashy colour and with a parody of the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 logo bearing the title, and I began to worry.
I kept going a bit into the first chapter, where Scott walks in on Knives Chau, Scott’s own beguiled ex, making out with a girl.
I set the book down immediately. One of my favourite series has become “quirky”. I couldn’t believe it; maybe I was just tired after having won NaNoWriMo, and I had just gone a little mad. I picked it up again the following summer, reading a bit into the first chapter. No, it was still “quirky”. I haven’t touched it since.
Around the time this came out, they announced the Scott Pilgrim movie, starring Michael Cera. Michael Cera, the 21st-century epitome of comedy blandness. The kid that was funny as George Michael Bluth, and kind of just stuck with it. The guy that thinks wearing a headband or having long hair is the same as having a different personality.
Give him a half-grown mustache, that will make him seem like a "bad boy" for Youth in Revolt.
Though Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame, were involved, I already wasn’t looking forward to this film. Wright and Pegg’s involvement isn’t as optimistic a sign as it looks: I think they do better with British humour, and besides, Simon Pegg didn’t automatically make Run Fatboy Run funny.
Then they showed the first picture of the cast. My heart sank.
Who are these wide-eyed bad-dyed douchebags?
Then the first trailer came out, where some guy throws Scott into the top of a tower, action words appear in the air when anyone does a slow-motion punch, and some guy prattles on about a cleaning lady joke. The movie’s visual style looks like Robert Rodriguez threw up his Skittles. The joke with the 1-UP is shown, except Scott just grabs the 1-UP like he expected it. Knives Chau, who in the comics was a vindictive, spiteful stalker and was actually cool, is now just annoying and whiny, and also kinda stupid. The ocean floor opened up and my heart sank further.
Accompanying this monumental release is a video game on the PlayStation Network, that combines many of my favourite things: beat-em-up action, Ubisoft Montreal, 4-player co-op, and Paul Robertson, creator of still one of the most awesome things in the world, Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006:
The man is a mad genius when it comes to pixelated graphics, massive video game explosions, twisted enemy designs, and insane violence. The Scott Pilgrim game is probably the closest mankind will ever get to PBCBSF’06 being a real game, which is sad to think about.
I confess that the video game is the most appealing thing I’m seeing out of this circus. There could still be problems, though, and it’s the same problems that Scott Pilgrim suffers from. Paul Robertson, like Bryan Lee O’Malley, was cool because he came out of nowhere, and surprised us all. His works weren’t products, they were creations, and damn incredible ones at that. Now that it’s being extensively marketed, all of it might be tied down to each other. P. Robertson might be able to stay on this side of edgy (Australian animators are good at that), but it sounds like O’Malley wants a ticket on the Hollywood train:
Those changes included a move to Los Angeles, where O’Malley says he’s bought a house and is writing a screenplay.
“I’m a big sellout,” he jokes, adding that he’s exploring many options while enjoying life in Tinseltown.
It’s a far cry from where O’Malley was just a few years ago. After leaving in Toronto in 2005, he says he and his wife moved to Mount Uniacke, N.S., where they bought “the cheapest house in the world.” In 2007, they moved to North Carolina where his wife is from. Heading to L.A. seemed like the next logical step in his burgeoning career.
I suppose I can’t blame his enthusiasm, or even that he wanted to stop “slumming it” in my neck of the woods (hell, I certainly do); most Toronto boys pretty much go native when they go to the States. But there’s some things he seems aware of: he points out in the article that Cera has been “typecast” lately, but also that “this is completely different for him, I think.” Really, because from what I saw, it was George Michael wearing t-shirts with cool logos on them, occasionally punching a guy in slow motion.
I don’t even want to know what happened to Vol. 5 and 6 of Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 5 which has a foil-printed cover, and Vol. 6, the “epic conclusion that draws everything together.” All this hoopla over it leads me to ask: if Ramona had seven evil ex-boyfriends, and Scott breaks up with her, will he become an evil ex-boyfriend later? Or are they just going to date for years and get married? Unless one of those things happens in Vol. 6, I don’t think this is all that “concluded”.
Even disregarding the commercial aspects of this, the movie in and of itself still has a problem. Since it’s just one movie, and the comic book series is six volumes (and 5 and 6 were written “with the movie in mind”). Another movie that had to deal with this was M. Night Shyamalan’s latest cinematic blight, The Last Airbender. It stuffed the entirety of one season of the TV show into just a smidge over two hours, which resulted in disastrous pacing, a cast with no personality, and a plot that felt like it was checking boxes off a list. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a smidge UNDER two hours, and though it doesn’t have as much to cram in, it’s still something I’m weary of, especially since the movie insists on distracting itself with special effects and crummy visual gags.
One movie that I’m persistently reminded of during all this is 2008′s Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. Michael Cera was actually kind of likable and funny in it, and it has genuinely funny writing. Besides that, though, see if the plot follows a similar vein: Nick breaks up with a girl named Tris, and he has a hard time accepting it. He has a chance encounter with another girl, Norah, and they hit it off. Tris, in response, goes through a comical downward spiral. Much of the plot consists of the characters traversing various locations in New York City, and it eventually ends with the two leads finding each other, and they share romance. The plot basically reads like Scott Pilgrim, with no evil ex-boyfriends plot, and a couple of story elements tweaked (Tris breaks up with Nick and can’t accept it, rather than Scott breaking up with Knives and can’t accept it, it’s New York instead of New York: Canadian Version, etc). Nick and Norah feels more like the Scott Pilgrim movie, with its down-to-earth story about young romance, and its emphasis on music. Even its goofier moments embody what I like about Scott Pilgrim, which Scott Pilgrim seems lacking in.
What’s strange is that this series has drawn Hollywood’s attention after only one volume. A lot of great comics and stories are out there, but what is it that catches the eye of American movie executives after only one volume? One might say chance, but I think there’s something about the sort of media that grabs Hollywood by the nuts this quickly, though I’m not sure what. Maybe it’s that it makes such a sensation, despite it not really having come from anywhere. Maybe it’s that kind of “pizzazz” that attracts them, that they know would probably have instant appeal and adaptability. But that’s just a guess.
With all this in mind, thoughts of this work being the next new thing, reaping fame, fortune, and cultural acclaim at the slight expense of stripping it of everything that made it appealing to begin with, and Bryan Lee O’Malley going along with this march, how do I cope? I read some Bryan Lee O’Malley, of course:
This is Lost at Sea, one of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s earlier works. It’s an honest and vulnerable story that can be challenging, comforting, and even difficult at times, so it probably won’t be made into a movie or a beat-em-up game. It’s about a girl named Raleigh, who thinks she has no soul because her mother sold it to a cat. She deals with this fairly well, along with the other difficulties in her life: her best friend had moved away, her parents had divorced, her boyfriend is simply a face on the Internet. She goes back to Vancouver with three people from her high school that she barely knows, partly out of necessity, but maybe for a more complex reason.
The art style is simple and understated, it reminds me of an adolescent and less cartoonish Calvin and Hobbes. It has humour as well, but it’s a subtle sort of humour, more designed to put a little grin on your face than make you burst out laughing. Raleigh seems like sort of a wet rag at first, even kind of a bitch, but we find out that she is deeply introspective, rapt in her own confused thoughts. These three strangers help her work out her problems, and though it seems like none of them are solved, and even the characters don’t know what’s been accomplished, it feels like a much greater thing has happened from their efforts.
It doesn’t have loud fight scenes, it doesn’t have popcultural references, its inking isn’t bold and in-your-face, its characters make more non-sequitars and complaints than wisecracks, whole pages go by where nothing really happens, and it’s one of my favourite books. I named one of the girl characters in one of my novels Raleigh after the book’s main character; she came to mean a lot to me, soulless or not. I’ve read the book so much, the binding is starting to fall apart; I hope I can get another copy soon. If you go out and see the Scott Pilgrim movie, pick this up on your way home from it. If enough people buy it, maybe it will catch Hollywood’s eye, and they’ll find themselves stymied by a work like this. What a wonderful thing that would be to imagine.
