So there it is ... the second official trailer for a Scott Pilgrim movie that I am frankly astonished to see made, let alone so soon after its popular comic book/graphic novel incarnation (the series of six titles will conclude with the final volume released later this year). I've written before how smitten I am with Brian Lee O'Malley's weird and smart and tonally spot-on books, but I thank Michael Cera and company for the chance to leap into the fray once more, as I prime myself for the film's August release.
First of all, I'm ambivalent about the choice for Cera as Scott Pilgrim. On the one hand, the Cera Character Type resonates with Scott's aloofness and haplessness, the just-shy-of-cool energy. On the other, I've heard others challenge the Cera Character Type as being too familiar at this point, so that it overwhelms the Scott Pilgrimness of Scott Pilgrim. If a no-name actor had the role, it could be a better vehicle for viewers to accept a very strange character that as far as I know, has few precedents ... as well as better evoking the blankness of Scott's adrift 23-year-old life. As well, Scott does have a bit of an edge to him--a childish one, but an edge all the same--that's hard to see with Cera portraying him.
And Ramona: I don't want to make the mistake of judging too much on the preview, but from what I see in the trailer makes me concerned that the film may translate her mysteriousness as flatness. She seems a little too robotic here. It's leading many folks to step up already and call out her character as just another Manic Pixie Dream Girl -- which, for all the other problems of the trope, is simply getting boring. From reading the books, I see Ramona as much more than this. Will the film, after all? We'll see.
As for the rest of the broad and diverse cast of the Scott Pilgrim books? I'm most looking forward to see how Knives Chau comes off in the movie (we only see a peek of her in the trailer).
As well, while the fights and evil ex-boyfriends are a charging force in the Scott Pilgrim books, they are also curiously deflated in the storytelling ... the reader becomes sort of surprised when they take place because we'd been lured into giving our attention to other realms of this eclectic group of twenty-somethings in Toronto. Side conversations are maintained even as our hero pulls out his best high-kicking moves. We get a potent mix of astute realism and patent absurdity, playfulness and high stakes. Indeed, the fights, while often fun, can spin easily into a metaphor: Scott Pilgrim fighting to accept Ramona as a person with a past, and a narrative, outside of himself and the world he knows. I hope the film keeps this all in balance, rather than making the fights some kind of standard climactic event.
Finally, I want to offer a song of joy for the Canadianness of this whole story, both book and film. It brims with Toronto. Those who know more about the vibrant, international city than me are pointing out happy notices of local bands featured on T-shirts in the films, and that overall, this is a rare instance of a film set in a Toronto that looks like Toronto (not NYC, or as some other wannabe American city). This is more than a landscape detail: the fact that Ramona is an American among Canadians in Toronto adds to the flux of the story.
This all said: my precious little life is intersecting with Scott Pilgrim's on August 13. See you in the theater.
I watched the second trailer last night with a silly grin on my face...this is exactly what a graphic novel put on the silver screen should be...I was highly disappointed with the Watchmen translation :(
Posted by: Ben | June 01, 2010 at 09:11 PM
Oh no! I haven't yet seen Watchmen. Alarming.
Posted by: Anna Clark | June 02, 2010 at 01:21 PM