Thursday, September 9, 2010

The Scott Pilgrimage Into My Life

So, I watched one of the most hyped movies of the year yesterday: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. As I left the theatre there where clusters of nerds explaining to their girlfriends that Clash at Demonhead was a NES reference and the first evil ex-boyfriend fight referenced Darkstalkers heroine Morrigan. Today as I look at my facebook new feed I see people losing their minds over this movie. People are referencing references referenced in Scott Pilgrim left and right. “Mind blowing action 1000 points” “Awesome movie +4” etc…

Well, you know what?

It was pretty good and that cluster of nerds was my friends and I.

Being the video game/comic/sci-fi nerd that I am this movie stimulated everything that appeals to my entertainment sensibilities. In fact there where so many references that it was somewhat distracting. I spent most of the last fight trying to decide if Gideons character was referencing the new No More Heroes game or if it was more of throwback to Rival Schools' Kyosuke.

During the fight between Ramona and Roxanne I kept reminding myself that I needed to see if Sonic 4 had come out yet.

… It hasn’t.

As for music, all the Sex Bob-omb where written by Beck. If you get a chance to hear his original recordings (available on the soundtrack) they’re really good. I kind of wish that they had just put Beck in the movie and let him sing. I was also happy about the inclusion of the Black Lips (a new interest of mine) on the soundtrack. But we all know that The Legend of Zelda, Link to the Past stole the show for the first half of the movie.

One thing I’ve heard a lot is that Michael Cera ruined it. Honestly, I thought he did the job just fine. Scott Pilgrim is a weird character in the comics and Cera has a weird approach to his roles. For me it works as well as it really could without some serious rewriting. It seems to me that it is cool to hate Cera in that same way that people claim that Zach Galifinakis is only funny in Live at the Purple Onion. It’s just arbitrary contrarianism and I think it’s dumb.

Let go and let Cera.

But I know this review is coming out a bit after we have all seen that the movie hasn’t done that well. I guess that’s a shame. However, we do have something else Scott Pilgrim based to look forward to: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game by Ubisoft.

Honestly when I heard that Ubisoft was making the game visions of glitchy untested somewhat-okay games without endings drifted through my head (yeah, I’m talking about you Prince of Persia and Assassins Creed). I downloaded a demo and you know what it was not what I expected. Scott Pilgrim does not suffer from the Ubisoft curse.

If you played the Simpsons or the X-men arcade games you will be pretty familiar with how to play Scot Pilgrim. The animations are good reiterations of 16-bit animations by modern pixel artists. One of my personal favorites, Paul Robertson, is a great addition. I’ve been a fan of that guy’s stuff for a while.

Though I would have preferred another band other than Anamanaguchi, they did a good enough job. Personally, I think there are better chiptune artists out there but I think my opinion of Anamanaguichi is highly influenced by seeing them at BlipFest 2008. They were a little self –indulgent. But if it works I guess I can let anything go.

So if you’re unsure about the game (and you have an Xbox 360 or a PlayStation 3 (sorry WiiWare)) download the demo and grab a friend. The multiplayer mode reminds me so much of playing the Simpsons Arcade that I couldn’t help but love it. And I think you’ll love it too.

Viva la Pixel!