on Scott Pilgrim

[xparrot]

So I saw Scott Pilgrim vs. the World when it was in the theater last year, and thought it generally fantastic (this might make more sense if you know that I consider Shaolin Soccer to be one of the greatest things every put on film. No srsly. Cinema exists to be so awesome.) My brother loved it even more and soon after picked up the comics; I just got around to reading them, and found them a surreal blast, if perhaps not the transcendental comic experience some of the reviews on the back would have you believe. And the movie is by and large a good adaptation; it managed a lot of stuff that I wouldn't have thought it possible to convey in the changed medium.

What the heck was up with the casting, though? Most of it was fine, from what I recall, but Michael Cera as Scott - what, did they think because he was the right age and has about the right hair color, that was enough? You don't even need to read the comics to know this was a bad choice. I mean, nothing against Michael Cera, I'm sure he's a perfectly nice guy, but just looking at the cover of the first volume tells you enough about Scott's character to know how ridiculously unsuited he was for the role. Scott is 90% completely undeserved confidence and 10% awkward squish, and the movie reverses that ratio for no good reason except they wanted a name-ish actor. Canada has to have at least one guy who could've pulled it off...!

...Also Gideon was totally supposed to be hawt, dangit.

But the awesome of Wallace Wells was maintained, so I guess that makes up for everything else. XP

Comments

[immicolia.livejournal.com]

Ugh, ugh, YES! I ranted about how totally inappropriate Michael Cera was for that role even before I watched the movie. It was even worse once I finally got around to seeing it. I also read the books before seeing the film so I'm kind of "meh" over the movie in general. Although a part of me wonders how much of that has to do with my state of "OMG, Michael Cera I hate your voice and want to punch you in the face!" XD

(I was also highly disappointed at the fact that Joseph wasn't in the movie. Just because him and Stills were kind of amazing. But Wallace was still awesome and that's the important thing.)

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I might have felt differently if I'd known anything about the comics before seeing the movie - I knew they existed but that was about it. And I haven't seen Michael Cera in enough stuff to find him anything more than mildly annoying, and the rest of the movie was fun enough to make up for that. But if I'd actually him expected to be anything like Scott Pilgrim, uh, yeah, jarring.

But the awesomeness of Wallace makes up for a lot (he was my favorite part of the movie, and probably the comics as well...)

[beege22.livejournal.com]

Speaking as someone who really likes Michael Cera as an actor I have to agree with you. It's very weird that he was chosen for the role when he's established himself playing insecure, neurotic types.

It's an interesting question - did his acting style change the direction of the movie or did whoever was directing/producing plan to change the comic all along?

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Scott Pilgrim may be insecure, but in a totally different and less-than-obvious way. I suspect they cast him first, because he does have some name recognition, and then changed the movie to fit his style...really don't know, though. Ah well, in a few years they'll be able to replace him with a CGI version anyway (not a tactic I'd advise for fixing most movies, but for this one it'd fit! XD)