Scott Pilgrim vs the World is one of the worst movies I've ever seen

Here's what I had to say, in brief, about Scott Pilgrim vs the World: 


This was one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my entire life. It was like watching someone play a video game, only more boring. It was sometimes slightly clever. If only it had a story, or a single interesting character, or anything meaningful to say.


I don't remember feeling that detached from a movie in a very long time; possibly ever.  It was totally unengaging.  There's a feeling that I really enjoy, when a movie makes me feel as if I am outside myself, if only for an hour or two, during which it is an engrossing, immersive experience.  Even very bad films can make me feel this way if there is an engaging character, or even a really funny scene.  Anything.


I might have connected to Scott Pilgrim's character, if there was any character there to connect to. But he's kind of a confused-looking place-holder who trudges his way through what passes for a plot.


If there was something genuinely attractive about Ramona Flowers, that might have worked.  But there was hardly a flicker of life in her, but alas.  She was the MacGuffin, and an empty one at that. All I knew about her was that 1. her hair changes color frequently, 2. Scott Pilgrim likes her and 3. she has evil exes.  Nothing about her that wasn't on every promotional poster for the movie.


Where I really checked out, though, was the first battle with the first evil ex.  That was a scene that was so awful that I literally squirmed in my seat with embarrassment for the filmmakers.  I think the fight scene was supposed to resemble a Bollywood musical number.  I've watched a few Bollywood musical numbers, and this piece of tripe was a far cry from them.


There were occasional sight-gags, and I've never seen a movie that was presented in the same way, as an old-school style video-game with level-ups and coins bursting out of downed foes.  That was...slightly clever, I suppose.


But there was no world for Scott Pilgrim to inhabit.  One method would have been literalism - these supernatural music-fueled fights break out.  Another method would have been for the musical fights to be going on in Scott Pilgrim's imagination, with the humorous return to reality after the fact.  The filmmakers went for neither; God knows why.  Rather it was what I experienced as a miasma of imagery - and I mean that in the Dictionary.com sense.


Part of my disappointment was that the movie could have clearly been so much more.  It could have said something.  


It just didn't.


Or, more likely, it did, and I'm the only person I know who didn't get it.


Maybe the graphic novel is good.

Another Star Wars Trilogy?

Honestly, at this point, in light of the load of feces that was the 3 prequel films, I read this news with a strong sense of dread.  However, there is a rumor out there that Lucas out at Skywalker Ranch is working on a series of sequel movies to the original films - episodes 7-9 or even episodes 10-12.  They will purportedly take place 100 to 1000 years after the originals, and will not focus on the Skywalkers.

If George Lucas writes these sequels themselves, I will come out and say right now that they will be complete and utter garbage - one more gobbet of spit in the face of ever Star Wars fan.

On the other hand, maybe he learned his lesson and will hire a talented writing team to put together some well-written scripts, and new classics will be born.

I'm not betting on it, though.  I think that if the rumor is true, he'll write them himself, and they will be another abomination.

Hobbit Interview

Here's a transcript of an interview with Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro about the upcoming Hobbit movies. Its a long read but worth it to get an idea of what they're thinking.

I'm still not sure what this second film is going to contain - at the very least, it looks like it will fill in the information about what Gandalf is up to behind the scenes during the main action of the Hobbit (i.e., Dol Guldur, etc.) which is cool - but I'm not sure how you make a whole movie out of it.

I talked about this before, but that was with the assumption that they would be splitting the Hobbit movie into two parts, and from the interview it sort of looks like they're just filling in blacks left between the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings - and, I dunno, narratively, a lot of those are blank for a reason...

We'll see. I'm excited regardless.

How to Divide a Hobbit?

I don't have the wisdom of Solomon, but I want to consider something briefly. It is now confirmed many times over that The Hobbit is going to be filmed and released by New Line Cinema. Peter Jackson will be writing and producing for the film, along with Phillipa Boyens once more, and Guillermo Del Toro will be taking the reins as director. Sir Ian McKellan and Andy Serkis will be reprising their roles as Gandalf and Gollum respectively.

Word has it that The Hobbit will be two films, which I find surprising. I think that the Hobbit will be easier to turn into a film than The Lord of the Rings was, and it is a good deal shorter and simpler as a story. It is very direct, the main characters don't split up into three or four different groups, and there are fewer names and characters to keep track of. So the choice to make it two films is odd to me.

I wonder how they will split it up?

If it was me, if I had to divide the move into two parts, I would end the first movie at the point when Bilbo is alone in Mirkwood, separated from the Dwarves, when he confronts one of the giant spiders trying to wind him up to carry him off and eat him. He kills the spider, there alone in the dark, and it is at that moment that he turns a corner as a character. Tolkien identifies the same moment in his letters when he talks about Bilbo as a character. This moment of courage, all alone, is for me the dramatic turning point of the story.

Bilbo has previously shown him self to be far more useful and clever than he was when he nearly got all of the Dwarves eaten by Trolls much earlier in the story, but it is at this moment that he becomes heroic. So the first film would be about Bilbo's transformation into a hero, his ennoblement, to use a term that Tolkien loved to use, and the second film would be about Bilbo-the-hero saving the Dwarves from giant spiders, from the prison of the Elvenking, and ultimately, from themselves just before the Battle of Five Armies.

I wonder where they will split the story up, however. Given that Peter Jackson is involved, bless his heart, but there's no knowing which scenes will be elongated while he and Del Toro enjoy themselves lavishing us with brute-force drama and gorgeous eye-candy. It remains to be seen.

Where would you divide the story of The Hobbit, if it was up to you?

There Will Be Crap

There Will Be Blood is one of the worst movies I've seen in a while. It is a lumbering, senseless beast, with a soundtrack desperately trying to make you care about what is going on. So much is going on musically, even as so little is going on on-screen. In the end, the soundtrack cannot resuscitate this dead screentime.

Daniel Day-Lewis plays an oil-man who is evil for no reason whatsoever. He is full of hate and he has no reason to be full of hate. He attacks people and broods like a turn-of-the-century emo kid on PCP. His character, Daniel Plainview, is a silver-miner turned oil-prospector. He meets a lunatic preacher about whom nothing whatsoever is interesting in any way played by Paul Dano. That anyone tolerates Paul Dano's preacher character, Eli Sunday, in this film is no less than miraculous. He is as frothing and shrill as he is stupid.

For no reason, people's lives are threatened. There is slapping. And some more slapping. And a little more slapping. People jump on each other. Plainview's adopted child, named H.W., tries to burn their home down for no reason after he is deafened in an accident.

Honestly, I think that Daniel Day-Lewis demonstrates that he is still one of the best actors alive, but his performance is nowhere near enough to justify this film. No amount of acting talent could make this script fun or interesting to watch. A lot was also said about the cinematography. I don't know how to judge cinematography, really. It is a beautiful looking movie at times, but that is a far cry from a beautiful movie.

The movie constantly tries to promise that something is about to happen. Its going to be big. Its going to pay you back for all that time you spent bored and uninterested, waiting, hoping against hope that something would actually happen. Someone would explain why they are a lunatic. You'd get some characterization. Something. Anything. That something, when it finally rears is head just shy of the closing credits, is an anticlimactic fight scene in an empty bowling alley between two screaming characters who have long since lost even the capacity to be caricatures of real people. And then its sort of over.

I have no idea how anyone won awards for this film. Run from it, or else...there will be crap.

P.S.

I just realized why this movie was such a complete waste of time. It was done by the same person who did Punch Drunk Love. And that was also the worst movie I'd seen in a long time when I went to see it whenever it was out in theaters. I asked for my money back, but understandably, I was denied. You can't blame the theater, after all, for showing a hideously bad movie. It was my fault for paying to see it, and I admit it.

Paul Thomas Anderson, please stop making movies.