on Scott Pilgrim

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