Title: I GOTTA BELIEVE!
Print Status: Available
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Comic ID #6752
Title: I GOTTA BELIEVE!
Print Status: Available
Title: I GOTTA BELIEVE!
Print Status: Available
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Tom, it is one heck of a ride. It is loud and it is fast. I really hope you like it when you get to it.
After seeing it twice I completely understand why it did not do so well. It is a movie that is constantly moving, so I can see people having problems with the pace constant transitions. I’d be surprised if this didn’t get a lot walk outs during the opening credits.
Overall this has replaced ‘Inception’ as my hands down favorite movie of the year, and taken a spot on my all time list.
side note: The ending made me cry like a 2 year old.
Edgar Wright will always have a ticket sold to me for what ever he does.
Better than Inception?!
Now THAT’S an endorsement!
It’s much different than ‘Inception’. To put it musically if ‘Inception’ is a moody orchestral piece, ‘Scott Pilgrim’ is a punk rock show.
Toy Story 3, Inception and Scott Pilgrim are in a 3 way (bow-chica) tie for best film of the year for me. I don’t care that Scott Pilgrim didn’t make as much money. Episode I did better in the box office than Princess Bride, but which are you going to remember fondly? That’s right.
I think it was slightly better then ‘The Expendables’, which I thought was awesome. It’ll surprise me if ‘Scott Pilgrim’ doesn’t become a major sleeper hit.
That movie rocked on so many levels, but let’s face it, it’s an indie movie about an indie comic. It’s not going to get the same blockbuster success as something with Julia Roberts or Sylvester Stallone, even though, it’s probably a better movie in the long run.
I loved it. I will probably watch it again. But it’s not for everyone.
Love the comic, Tom.
I’m disappointed, but not surprised by Scott Pilgrim’s wimpy box office numbers. I was at best on the fence about seeing it until I started reading the comics this weekend, and even now I’m only moderately interested in seeing it. Sad to see a prepubescent shoot-em-up film and a crappy adaptation score more cash than something with a little bit of style, but that’s life I suppose.
Style is not always an indicator of quality, though. I’ve heard Scott Pilgrim favorably compared to Speed Racer – which was packed to the gills with style – but not entirely substantive.
I’m all for visual inventiveness, but there also has to be a core in there somewhere.
I loved the movie, and I am not a Nintendo kid. You’re absolutely right about the trailer, though. I couldn’t get past Michael Cera as Scott, but it felt good to 1) see Cera win a fight, made more plausible by the video-gamey nature of the action, and 2) avoid being totally typecast (see 1).
I found this article from Cinemablend which offers an explanation of why Scott Pilgrim had such a poor opening weekend. One good point it makes is that the trailers didn’t so much fail to sell the movie, as they represented it as exactly what it is: a crazy sex-video-games-and-rock-and-roll action-comedy based on an indie comic book. Plus, it’s hard to discount Michael Cera hatred as a factor in its failure to find mainstream appeal. I found the article pretty insightful.
Personally, I found Scott Pilgrim entertaining and funny, and clever on a lot of levels. I thought the entire cast tore up their performances, Cera included. Wrote a review of it at This Week in Webcomics if anyone would be interested in checking it out (blatant self-promotion) (also fairly blatant Scott Pilgrim promotion).
I like the visual shout-out to the comics in today’s’ Theater Hopper. And I don’t think it would hurt anything to crib a bit from O’Malley’s style more regularly! 🙂 The b&w screen-toning looks pretty sharp.
The X-Factor for me is the Michael Cera pushback. 5 years ago this kid could do no wrong. Everyone loved him and wanted to carry him around in his pocket. But if you take people’s temperature now, the audience had turned on him decidedly. They got tired of the nice guy shtick quick. Youth in Revolt and Scott Pilgrim are steps in the right direction, but I’m thinking he’s going to have to do something drastic if he wants to upend audience expectations and continue to find work.
I don’t see that happening, though. Michael Cera the actor I think is an extension of Michael Cera the person. If the commodity you sell is your personality and not your acting ability, you’re kind of hosed.
BTW, Jackson – I got your link about your review, but I’m intentionally avoiding Scott Pilgrim reviews right now. I’ll check it out after I’ve had a chance to see the movie!
I actually wasn’t familiar with Cera until this movie. I hadn’t seen Juno or Superbad, and I wasn’t even aware that he was in Juno. When I first saw the trailer for Scott Pilgrim, I was like, “Huh! Who’s this guy? Dude seems a little wimpy for Scott, but whatever, it looks like it might work.” And then I became aware of the Cera-hate through my brother, who is a Cera-hater. So I’m not really in a place to know what the fuss is all about or whether it’s merited…though I have been wanting to see Juno lately.
The movie is absolutely amazing! It’s just so much fun. They managed to keep most of the best lines from the books in the movie too. Unfortunately as a result of compressing six books into one film they had to focus largely on action and comedy and cut out a lot of the more poignant, subtle, and meaningful scenes. By the end of the movie I feel that the message of the books is still there though. I saw the movie with two people who had read the books and four people who hadn’t. The people who hadn’t read the books said that they thought it was funny, the visual style was really interesting, and that they basically understoood the story.
As much as I want to admit otherwise, Scott Pilgrim never had a very big chance at the box office. It’s a property that’s not well known to the general public, the trailers apparently sucked (though I have no idea what people are talking about here, I loved the trailers), and I’ve seen a staggering amount of people hate on the movie and not want to see it because of things like “Cera sucks, he can’t act!” “A movie about hipsters? Pass.” “Too many movie sites are praising the hell out of this movie, it must suck.”
Those people are, quite clearly, insane. I’ve seen it twice already and it’s probably my favorite movie of the year. Fast, fun, hilarious, and generally having a blast with pretty much everything. It’s one of those movies that someone can just relax and enjoy (and not in a stupid-movie-shut-off-your-brain kind of way), and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone and everyone.
Plus, it is technically Edgar Wright’s highest grossing opening weekend, since it did double what Hot Fuzz did and nearly four times what Shaun did. So, comparatively, not too bad. And it’s not like box office is ever any real marker in judging a movie’s quality.
The thing that I’m finding interesting about SP’s poor showing at the box office is how incredulous and disbelieving people online seem to be about it.
Everybody is walking around with a fanboy hard-on for this film and can’t for the life of them understand why it doesn’t appeal to all demographics.
Haven’t seen the movie, wasn’t intrigued by the trailer, but today’s comic is one of the best and funniest Theater Hopper moments ever. You don’t have to know “Scott Pilgrim” cover to cover to appreciate what’s happening there. And we’ve all met That Guy, too.
Thank you very much for the compliments, gomro. I appreciate them! 🙂
1. The movie industry doesn’t expect Scott Pilgrim to drop off much, if at all, next weekend (from Movieline.)
2. On a personal note, as someone who saw substantial parts of Expendables, Eat, Pray, Love, and Scott Pilgrim, anyone who saw all three movies will probably remember all three of them 20 years from now, but will only be interested in rewatching one of them (Pilgrim.) You’ve seen Expendables in the past, there’s nothing new there. Eat, Pray gets pretty annoying pretty fast with the self-centered whininesss, but Pilgrim has more going for it in story, appealing characters, and an inventive style that really gets both comic books and videogames right for once.
Just my 2 cents.
You make an excellent point about SP’s longevity, Edly – and I agree. That’s basically what I was referring to when the film finds it’s second life on DVD.
Scott Pilgrim is a film that people will run out to buy because they love it. They’ll watch it over and over again. Both The Expendables and Eat Pray Love look like films you grab from a RedBox at McDonalds because there’s nothing better to watch.
I liked Scott Pilgrim enough to see it twice, however I wishes they waited so that they could have used the comics ending (which honestly was not only a more believable ending, but actually connected to the rest of the story). Honestly a great movie, but could have been much better if they had stretched out the time line with a montage showing Scott and Ramona developing feelings for each other instead of just constantly kicking Scott to the ground leaving us no time or incentive to care about the relationship between characters.
I’ve not been able to make it through the first Scott Pilgrim book (and I’ve tried twice), and I thought the opening of the movie was appropriately boring by comparison. So if that 15-20 minutes is as faithful to the first book (which I don’t like), then I can only hope that the rest of the flick is as equally faithful to the other books.
Once the fights started, I started enjoying the movie. It just took forever to get there. And we don’t really learn anything about these characters, unfortunately. Michael Cera is by far the weakest link in the flick. But the lack of characterization also stood out to me like a sore thumb.
Overall I thought it was fun, though. I’m sure it’ll do better on DVD.
I’ve never read the Scott Pilgrim comics, so I went into the movie with no real expectations. I thought it was just okay. Michael Cera plays the same type of character he always seems to play. In that, he reminds me of Woody Allen, which isn’t necessarily a compliment. The fight scenes and sight gags were okay, but I didn’t get any real sense of the characters. They were strictly two-dimensional. I went into the movie not caring about these characters and left feeling the same way.
Tom, this was brilliant!
Thanks, Gav! Glad you liked it!
On Saturday, I saw Expendables and then right after I saw Scott Pilgrim. I’m really glad that I saw them in that order. Expendables was good, but Scott Pilgrim was great. It’s now one of my favourite movies of all time (if not my #1 favourite). I liked it so much that I went back and saw it again last night.
Very funny strip, Tom. Kinda rang close home too, as one of my friends has been a Scott Pilgrim fan for years, and I only just got into them with the release of the final book. Needless to say, I’m super exited about the movie (which hasn’t come out yet where I live).