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Scott Pilgrim vs the World
327 Plays2 years ago
Get your quarters ready! Gamemaster Bill Barbato makes his first appearance on the show to discuss the film version of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World! We dive into the great cast, address some of the film's criticisms from over the years, and a lot more.
Check out The Final Frontiersmen, Bill's Star Trek Adventures channel on YouTube
Help support the show by renting or buying this film from Amazon
Want to tell us what you think? Have any questions or comments for Perry about superheroes in media or comics? Leave a voice message to play on the show. You can also apply to be a guest on the show.
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Transcript
Introduction and Context Setting
00:00:18
Speaker
mr. pilgrim it is i matthew patel consider our fight
00:00:50
Speaker
All right. All right. Watch out! It's that one guy. Ha!
00:01:30
Speaker
Well, well, you're quite the opponent, pilgrim. Who the hell are you anyway? My name is Matthew Patel and I'm Ramona's first evil ex-boyfriend. For what? Anyone new to have a drink?
00:02:04
Speaker
Wait, we're fighting over, Alona? Didn't you get my email explaining the situation? I skimmed it. Mm-mm. You will pay for your insulin!
Hosts' Background and Comic Book Interests
00:02:17
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. I'm your host, Harry Constantine. And today, welcoming a buddy of mine from IRL, as we used to say back in the day. And that is a fellow teacher out here in Kagoshima, and that's Bill Barbato. Bill, how you doing today?
00:02:34
Speaker
I am doing fine. Thank you for having me on your show. This is fun. Well, thanks for coming on. I mean, you and me have been talking about this stuff for a few years on and off, you know, in person when we do our game days online on Facebook and whatnot. So I figured, why don't you come on the show at some point? I'm not, I'm surprised it took me this long to even ask you to come on, but. I just figured it was because you hated me. So I just looked in the background. That might be a factor as well. It's a good point.
00:03:03
Speaker
Anyway, before we get started, why don't you tell people a little bit about yourself? Yeah, sure. Again, my name is Bill Barbado. I don't really have much of a presence online, but I do stuff in the Star Trek and the Star Trek role-playing community, which could get into later, but that's not the important part. As Perry said, we talk a lot about comic books and films, and especially comic book films.
00:03:31
Speaker
because that's pretty much one of the big things that we share in common is our love of that. Perry of course is a lot more well-versed in comic lore and comic history. I stopped reading quite a number ago, a number of years ago, but I was really
00:03:52
Speaker
into it hardcore through the 90s into the early 2000s. But during my university career, I kind of faded away, but I still keep up with it. Now the Marvel movies gives me a, I guess like a booster shot of what I'm missing in the comic book world every now and then. So it fills that void, but I'm more into science fiction and fantasy
00:04:22
Speaker
and those kinds of stories these days. But yeah, I'm always down for playing games, especially games revolving around superheroes and trying to always get a game set up with Perry to continue our sessions that we haven't had in quite a long time, in fact. Yeah, yeah, COVID messed us up for a bit. And then it was just, it's just been tough trying to find a scheduling because my schedule's insane. So, and it's only gotten worse with two kids now. Oh yeah.
00:04:51
Speaker
Oh yeah. But anyway, I wanted to talk a bit about your comic history then. So what was it that got you into superhero comics in the first place?
00:05:02
Speaker
I could go into a really nice inspirational story of how cool it is to be in love with superheroes. But if you want to know the actual truth, which is, I don't even know if I ever told anyone the truth, which is, I would say a little embarrassing, but I think embarrassing stories are the more fun kind of stories. So how I got into superhero comic books was the Brady Bunch.
00:05:30
Speaker
really okay yes yeah i i'm sure you did not see that coming no i definitely didn't like when you said it was something embarrassing i was trying to run through what possible scenarios and and now i'm not i'm not you know i'm just really confused and curious confused yeah and but at least it checks the boxes for embarrassing but no i was i was home sick one day
00:05:56
Speaker
Um, as you do when you're in elementary school, you try to get sick as much as possible to stay home. And there really wasn't much on TV at the time. And I turned on an episode of the Brady Bunch that was on.
00:06:11
Speaker
And I think it was Bobby or Peter. He was homesick from school too. And his father, Mike Brady, went and picked him up some comics and brought them home and gave them to him. And I thought, you know, I wish I had some comics to read while I'm laying here sick.
00:06:27
Speaker
So I asked my dad to take me to the newsstand, which there was a great newsstand in my hometown. It was from the 1930s and 40s and it was unchanged from the 1930s and 40s. You stepped inside this place. You were transported back to another time. It was astonishing.
00:06:47
Speaker
and run by a mafia guy too so it was pretty cool and they had like just to jump in real quick where are you from again uh i'm from uh western pennsylvania okay just north of pittsburgh uh small town north of pittsburgh they had the little spinner racks of comics there and i went and i picked up a couple of comics
00:07:10
Speaker
and that started a chain reaction that led into mainly Marvel Comics. I was mostly into Marvel. I branched down to DC later and then image when that came on the scene and then spreading out to all the lesser known at the time but probably far more revered
00:07:34
Speaker
um by like actual comic um connoisseurs at the time but um yeah it started with marvel and i i like going into the lesser known the less popular characters i i was far more into them at least in the very beginning than x-men or
00:08:00
Speaker
In comics, I tried to- Sorry, we had a brief connection problem. So you said besides X-Men and what else?
00:08:09
Speaker
Besides X-Men, Avengers, and any of the big name stars at the time, the headline books, I try to avoid those and try to stick to find something new, something that just didn't seem to get a lot of love.
Marvel's Nostalgic Appeal and Experimental Phase
00:08:26
Speaker
I've always been like that my whole life trying to find little things. Not that I think they're going to take off, but
00:08:32
Speaker
And it's not for the, what is it? Like the whole. Like the hipster reason. It's not, I was into sleepwalker years before he was. It was just more, you know, it's like, well, you know, there's less people talking about, so I can't really find out much about it unless I read it myself. So I think that's what drew me to it. And yeah, it just spiraled from there. Eventually I did get into,
00:09:00
Speaker
the big name ones, X-Men, and then X-Men became like my passion until I stopped collecting. So what were some of those little lesser known characters that you kind of gravitated towards early on then? Oh, well, I mentioned Sleepwalker there. That was when I think when I started
00:09:21
Speaker
I think the day that I went when I was sick, that day that kicked it off, I believe sleepwalker issue two was on the newsstand. I'm pretty sure that's why it was and that was one of the first books I picked up. Then there was Darkhawk.
00:09:36
Speaker
which I think he came back semi recently. I heard the name pop up. There had been like, he's, Darkhawk is one of those characters that's like, he's like a popular lesser known character if you know what I mean. Yeah. Yeah. Cause he's like, he's had bouts where he, he hasn't really been able to, he's, he's one of these like cult fan favorite types of characters who hasn't really been able to sustain his own book, but whenever he pops up somewhere else,
00:10:03
Speaker
you know, all the Darkhawk fans get really excited about seeing him again. Yeah, I was surprised. I believe one of the expansions from a couple of years ago, the legendary Marvel deck building game, I was surprised to see Darkhawk was listed as one of the characters in that set. I'm like, okay, so he's still there. He's still getting a little bit of love. That's good. So, gosh, there's so many that just felled
00:10:30
Speaker
So many series that felt that I can't even think of off the top of my head. But yeah, I know of those early ones, Darkhawk, Sleepwalker, and oh gosh, if I remember another one, I'll tell you later. But yeah, those were the ones that I started with. Yeah, those are ones I...
00:10:52
Speaker
because my first kind of brush with comics was the animated series, but the X-Men and Spider-Man, but my brother had ran a comic book store and it was like a sporting good, sporting a collectible store, but he had like comics and stuff like that too. And I'm sure you probably remember for anyone who's listening that doesn't, you know, trading cards were really big in the 90s, especially the early 90s. So he had like these,
00:11:19
Speaker
the sets of like the 19 it was like a 1992 Marvel trading card set and so he had sent me like all those cards he had and like they had like a bunch of so he had the big name characters in there yeah like the X-Men, Spider-Man, Avengers, Captain America all those guys Fantastic Four Hulk but they also had a bunch of the the lesser known characters like Dark Hawk like Sleepwalker and that was my first exposure to a lot of those characters
00:11:44
Speaker
through the cards through the cards yeah and you know and some i remember you know the first time seeing like a sleepwalker trading car i'm like whoa who's this guy he looks pretty interesting um and it wasn't until years later that i actually read the comic and found and found out oh this is actually pretty decent yeah it was shockingly good but it just never picked up
00:12:06
Speaker
There was a lot of that going on back then in the early 90s where they were trying out a bunch of different things and kind of like throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what stuck. So they did that, like they knew warriors, dark hawk, sleepwalker, slapstick, a bunch of other stuff like that. They were just tossing all over the place. For me, I remember one of the lesser books that I got really into, and this was back in like the mid late 90s was, I'm not sure if you ever remember this, but Slingers where
00:12:34
Speaker
It was like, it was a spin off of, there was this time in the Spider-Man books where he had to take on different identities. And so he had like, and there were four Spider-Man books at the time. So each Spider-Man book had Spider-Man in a different costume identity. So you had like Prodigy, you had Spider-Man.
00:12:56
Speaker
hornet ricochet and dusk were the four different identities and then that was like a storyline that lasted for about a few maybe a month or a few months and then after that those identities became adopted by
00:13:11
Speaker
other characters and it was this the short-lived book they called them so they were called uh called the slingers and it was just this really cool like i think like it would only last like 12 or 13 issues um little team book with these four characters that were you that had picked up these identities yeah i don't think i don't think i i heard that one i don't remember it's not sparking anything for it it's worth checking out if you if you can find the the issues i'm not sure if they've got any i don't think they have any trades of it but
00:13:41
Speaker
Some of those, yeah, some of those characters have pretty much all popped up since then. I was just reading something the other day, a more recent Marvel book, and they had like a bunch of the Slingers characters pop up in that. Oh, wow. The original ones. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They popped up from time to time since the book has been canceled.
Diving into Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
00:14:01
Speaker
It was an interesting book. And it's, I remember that was one of those examples of like one of those cult hit books.
00:14:11
Speaker
So, so anyway, today we are talking about something a little bit. It's based on a comic book, it kind of skirt it's one of those movies that kind of skirts the line of whether or not this is really a superhero movie or not but it's got a comic book background it's got enough superhero pedigree kind of behind it that I, and plus it.
00:14:33
Speaker
It's my fucking show. So I make the rules. So so I say, yeah, I say it counts. And that is Scott Pilgrim versus The World. Oh, yeah. Now, this is based on a comic book. It's based on by Brian Lee O'Malley, originally published like a small press, then later picked up by Oni Press and
00:14:53
Speaker
I think now it's been published by some other imprint now. Have you ever read any of those comics that it was based on? I did, I did. I read, I think, almost the original
00:15:08
Speaker
Instead, I never finished it because I really didn't like the comic as much as I enjoyed the movie. Okay. I mean, it's pretty much the same story on the original one, but it expands. There's more characters that are mentioned in the movie, but they actually have a role to play in the comic. But I don't know why I just didn't feel entertained by it, which is quite the opposite of how I feel about the movie.
00:15:37
Speaker
Yeah, I've never read the comic book, but it's, but yeah, it was quite a long list. It's like five or six volumes or something like that. And he had, or six volumes, just found out. And his, it was, I was actually reading about this last night. It was interesting how he got the idea for it was he wanted to make kind of like a Shonen,
00:16:06
Speaker
inspired comic from the shonen manga inspired comic book but he had never really read any shonen manga before he got the idea so I always thought that so when I was reading that I'm like oh okay he so he was a fan of shonen manga and that's that I said but he had never read any shonen I'm like okay and then later he had done research and gotten kind of in the mindset of that
00:16:28
Speaker
That's pretty cool. Usually when you want to make something in a certain style, it's because you have a deep passion for that style and you want to copy it. But yeah, it's interesting though that he's like, I want to make this, but I have no idea what it is. Yeah, yeah. So I thought that was kind of funny when I was reading up about that. Yeah, that's cool.
00:16:46
Speaker
Now I've never read, like I said, I've never read the books, but, and this movie caught me by surprise. I had no idea what to expect going into this. Cause I don't even think I saw any trailers of it. It was just, I was, I think I was just back in town in Chicago at that time. And a bunch of my friends were like, oh, let's go see Scott Pilgrim versus the world. I'm like, what's that? I have no idea what this is. So we go in and
00:17:11
Speaker
you know sitting in the movie theater and watching this movie as unfolds without having any preconceived idea about what it is. I was at first I thought oh it's just like kind of like an indie romance comedy type of thing and then when Matthew Patel appears and they start the fight I'm just like what the hell is going on?
00:17:37
Speaker
that I think that's the turning point in the film for pretty much everyone. It's a quirky comedy. There's the romance elements. It looks like a stylistic rom-com. And then you get to that point. And it's not in just how outlandish the fight is. And you have the whole Bollywood musical. You have the demons appearing. You have flying. You have the superimposed video game graphics.
00:18:08
Speaker
But then nobody really responds to it in the audience as if there's anything really out of the ordinary. It's like, oh, well, that just happened. And they just carry on. And then you get the sense, OK, so this is the world we're dealing with here. You can't really trust anything that you're seeing because it just batshit insane.
00:18:31
Speaker
anything could happen and it's going to be the norm, no matter how strange it might, maybe even for them in the moment, once it's done, it's like, well, okay, let's go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, and like the first, up until we get to that point, I'm just kind of like, eh, it's okay, it's entertaining enough. You know, I'd known Michael Cera obviously from Arrested Development and Kieran Culkin, I'd seen him in,
00:18:57
Speaker
some movie, it'd be goes back, it'd be goes down. So I recognize both of them. And, and one thing that strikes me rewatching this movie now, like, what is it 10 years later, or whatever, is that
00:19:14
Speaker
just how much how many of these people went on to become like really famous afterwards. Oh, yeah, like, oh, yeah, you know, I mean, you got Michael Sarah, he was, you know, not really so much now, but like Anna Kendrick, Aubrey Plaza, Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
00:19:31
Speaker
even like Chris Evans. Chris Evans, yeah. Pre-Captain America, Chris Evans. Brie Larson, pre-Captain Marvel. Brie Larson, pre-Captain Marvel, yeah. And pre-Skull Island. Brandon Ruth, this was after Superman. This was, yeah, this was after Superman returns. But he was in a, his career was in a weird place. Cause this was after Superman returns and he wasn't really doing a whole lot of stuff. Like he had popped up in, he had popped up in this, he had popped up in,
00:20:01
Speaker
Zach and Miri make a porno, but I don't remember a whole lot of other things that he was really doing at the time until his kind of like renaissance of a sort came about with when he started doing the DC TV stuff, when he started playing the Adam.
00:20:16
Speaker
on Arrow. And that kind of like kick-started a new phase of his career. But other than that, like he wasn't really doing a whole lot at this time. So I mean, I always loved him in Superman Returns. I always felt he got kind of a raw deal. So I love seeing him pop up in anything.
00:20:31
Speaker
Oh yeah. I thought, I mean, we're string a bit, but I always thought he was a great continuation of the Christopher Reeve Superman. Yeah. I just thought the story itself was where the fault lies.
Scott Pilgrim's Cast and First Impressions
00:20:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. There were a lot of issues with that, but even like, even in smaller roles too, like you had a Tom Jane pop up as one of the vegan police officers. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of, there's a heavy,
00:20:54
Speaker
comic book superhero film presence in this movie, even though it's not strictly a superhero movie, but it is definitely a comic book. I would say it's more of a comic book video game hybrid. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny how many of these actors who, some of them, like, yeah, like you said, some of them started off in superhero stuff, but some of them went on to do superhero stuff afterwards. Like Mary Elizabeth Winstead, she went on to play the Huntress in Birds of Prey.
00:21:22
Speaker
And like you mentioned, Brie Larson, she went on to do Captain Marvel after this. This movie has, when you look at it now, like you said, 10 years later, it seems even more like a superhero film because you recognize these faces from all these other roles. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. So what were kind of, what did you remember about seeing this for the first time? What was kind of your experience going into it?
00:21:50
Speaker
Honestly, the first time I saw this, again, just like you, I really didn't see anything about it. The only thing I knew about the movie was the name. I saw the title for it. And this was even before I read the comics, because I just heard people talking about it. But I didn't know anything they was about. And back in the day, I used to
00:22:15
Speaker
go maybe every week, every Friday. And I would just buy a new DVD or two that gets released, something I don't know, but it was so cheap back in the US that you could just buy a handful of DVDs and even new releases, they weren't that expensive. So every now and then I would
00:22:35
Speaker
because I'm still in Japan. I was still in Japan at the time. I would ask my mother when she's sending a care package to pick up a few DVDs, throw it in the box. And again, they're so cheap. I didn't really care. It would be an experiment. This was one of the movies because the name was just intriguing to me. So I got it and I watched it alone in my living room.
00:22:59
Speaker
And like I said, no expectations, no idea what to expect. And it was at the time the funniest movie I could remember. I was laughing so much throughout this movie. I loved
00:23:16
Speaker
all the little visual things that they do, the backgrounds, humor, some of it subtle, some of it very overt, but just the whole style of the movie, for that point in time, it grabbed me, it held me, and it had my complete attention, which is pretty hard to do nowadays for me. I mean, my attention wanders, I start doing things, but this movie, I don't think I moved from the sofa until it was finished.
00:23:45
Speaker
And it was an adventure for me. I was taken on this completely unexpected trip that the only thing that has done this since then, I think the only film that has had that same effect on me has been everything, everywhere, all at once. I still have to see that.
00:24:08
Speaker
Oh, I will gladly watch it again with you someday if you would like to, because I'm up for watching it another time, because it's very different from this, but not that much in the sense that it's nothing that you could have predicted going in. And it's hilarious. It's visually amazing.
00:24:33
Speaker
It was, again, captivating. I could not move from my seat. Yeah, I've been looking forward to watch that. I've been checking the Tsutaya for their new releases, waiting for that to pop up because I want to be able to get it with subtitles, I'm sure, if no one would want to watch it too. Yeah.
00:24:51
Speaker
but that's what I'm definitely looking forward to watching, especially because I've been hearing people talk about it nonstop. So yeah, and I'm with you on the whole attention. It is hard for things, as I'm getting older, I'm finding it's harder for things that I'm new to to really grab my attention, especially when it comes to like TV shows and movies, it's a lot harder for me to get into something that I don't have some preconceived attachment to or expectation of.
00:25:21
Speaker
But so this one going into this, this was a time, especially in my life, when I was much more willing to give new stuff a try. So I think that was also a big factor in it. And like you, it was probably one of the funniest movies I had seen in a while at that point. And it had me laughing out loud several points the first time I watched it. Now, what do you feel rewatching it now after, you know,
00:25:49
Speaker
in preparation for this episode? Yeah, it's been a few years since I've seen it when I went back to watch it just for this podcast here. It still holds up. I think the humor is still on point. I think the style of the film, the way it's directed, the way it's put together is
00:26:12
Speaker
just very tight and on point where they have the what you're seeing on screen matches up perfectly with the sounds that they're throwing at you the the whole thing it's
00:26:28
Speaker
I didn't see anything in there that felt like, oh, well, this doesn't work these days anymore. I've seen this so many times now that it's no longer impressive to me. The movie feels timeless because it doesn't really fit in any time. It's so, again, it's so weird. It's so strange that it doesn't feel like, oh, well, this was the mid aughts. This was the late 90s.
00:26:55
Speaker
This is a strange video game universe that exists in the world that also looks like ours. And I think every time I see it, I catch something new that makes me think like, oh, that's interesting. I never saw that before. And there's so many layers to it.
00:27:14
Speaker
that, I mean, you spend so much time laughing. You're listening to what they're saying. You're just trying to take in the absurd story that it's easy to overlook a detail here, a detail there. But when you notice it, then it's like, oh, I wonder what else I missed. I wonder what else was there for a decade that I have yet to even pick up on. So I really, I think, yeah, 10 years later, well, it hasn't been 10 years for me. I watched it again a couple of years ago, but
00:27:44
Speaker
even 10 years from its debut, it still feels fresh, it still feels original, and it's still funny. Yeah. For me, it still does hold up. The jokes, I don't laugh as much as I did when I first saw it, but I still appreciate the jokes. It's not one of those situations where, like, you know, when you watch some movies, like, I think
00:28:09
Speaker
Happy Gilmore or Billy Madison are good examples, right? You know, I remember when I first time I watched those movies laughing my ass off and now watched it just like, oh God, those jokes are terrible. I like, there's nothing like that in this movie. It's still, like I can still appreciate the jokes even if they don't make me laugh anymore.
00:28:29
Speaker
And there are some things that I appreciate even more with time. Like Chris Evans, I've gained so much appreciation of Chris Evans as an actor, not only because of what he's done with Captain America, but what he's done in a lot of other movies too, and just been amazed at how versatile he really is. And it's funny to go back and see this, because at that time, I think,
00:28:52
Speaker
mostly we'd only really known him, at least for me, like I'd only really known him from the Fantastic Four movies. Yeah, I think it was the same for me too, yeah. Which he was great at, don't get me wrong, but, and he had had this, and it was years later I found out that he was also in Not Another Teen Movie that I completely forgot about and I never put those two things
Highlighting Iconic Scenes and Performances
00:29:11
Speaker
together. Oh, I don't even remember. Oh yeah, he was the main character in Not Another Teen Movie.
00:29:15
Speaker
I know those are the kind of movies I watch once and not again. So I have vague humanoid shapes of people in my memory that were in there, but I don't have any actors names. I'd recommend checking it out again. That's one of the rare parodies that actually still holds up pretty well.
00:29:34
Speaker
okay and it's it's really cool seeing Chris Evans in it because you get you get a sense of what he was doing back then and you see what he's doing now and you realize that this is a guy who could really kind of do anything like he can do he can do action he can do humor he can do serious dramas like in um there's this movie that um
00:29:55
Speaker
Cotono rented I think it was last year called Gifted and he was just he was amazing in that and he does really well in like all these different roles and and I didn't realize this at the time because all we'd seen him in was basically being Johnny Storm and the character he plays in this Lucas Lee kind of fits that kind of idea right it's like this egotistical action star type thing so he does kind of fit that
00:30:20
Speaker
But after seeing all this other stuff, going back and watching him in this, it is cool to see how versatile he is over the course of a career. And he's one of the best parts of the movie, his character scene. Just again, going with how a lot of things are subtle and a lot of things are overt, like every scene
00:30:41
Speaker
with these ex-boyfriends that come out and fight, they have the mixture of subtle humor and just over the top humor. But I think for the subtle humor for him in his scene is really how he portrays his character and just with a casual ease that he pulls off what could be corny lines or just cheesy little reactions, he does it with this
00:31:09
Speaker
cocky swagger that makes it even funnier and makes you think like this character honestly believes these things he's saying this character honestly does react in that way like even the look on his face when he's thinking about
00:31:26
Speaker
um doing the taking the skateboard down the the handrail and when Scott Pilgrim mentions to him that all the girls are watching you just see like just in that brief flash in his eyes like everything that's going through that type of a cocky smug character's mind is reflected right there in the half a second the the man is
00:31:49
Speaker
amazing and like watching it 10 years ago I thought it was one of the best parts in the whole movie one of the best scenes and like you said watching it now knowing who he is I mean he always was that person by who he is as an actor and the skill that he has the ability he has
00:32:07
Speaker
it does let you appreciate more that like oh my god a decade ago i was watching a master at work and i was just appreciating how good the scene was but i didn't realize the talent that this man does have
00:32:22
Speaker
Similarly, I felt the same thing with Brandon Routh too, because he does, because you look at Brandon Routh and types of characters he's played, he's always had this kind of like affable, charming personality to him in almost performances, but he always tends to play like,
00:32:38
Speaker
smart characters, right? Like Superman, the Adam, and this, you know, he's even playing like an egotistical jackass who thinks he's smarter than he actually is. Not quite, not quite. Yeah. So it is like, I love watching that the scene when the vegan police come, I love watching this every time. And he's like, he's like, boy, you know, gelato's not vegan. He's like, boy, chickens not vegan.
00:33:03
Speaker
Yeah, again, his scene with Chris Evans too, those are the top two scenes in the entire movie. Every time I've watched it, because I've probably seen it in the last 10 years, I've probably seen a good six or seven times.
00:33:19
Speaker
But every time I watch it, those are the two scenes I'm looking forward to the most. Because again, you have these highly talented actors who can do a lot, who have done a lot before, or most of them really have done a lot since, that really showcase these abilities. But again, at the time 10 years ago, I didn't really know who they were besides these
00:33:46
Speaker
single roles here and there that I may have seen them in. So I've always had like, I can't wait for this scene. I can't wait for the Lucas Lee scene. I can't wait for the Todd scene. And then you go back in, you watch it now and you realize that those are the scenes by probably the two greatest actors in the movie. And that's why it lingers with you that long because they knock it out of the park. It's amazing.
00:34:12
Speaker
You know what always impresses me in this is as well, is Mae Whitman, who she plays the, the only, the ex-girlfriend instead of one of the ex-boyfriends. And because what I know her from, and I'm not sure if you've ever realized this, but she was Michael Cera's girlfriend in Arrested Development, Anne.
00:34:38
Speaker
Oh, right. The kind of frumpy, everyone forgets she's there. And so seeing her in that and then seeing her in this, it always, I always do a double take on that. Cause I'm always like, wait, wait, no, no, no. I'm thinking of someone else. It's not her. And then I double check my, no, it is her. It's the same actress. Oh, I never put that together, no.
00:35:00
Speaker
Oh, that's interesting. Now I have another reason to watch it again. Yeah, because that's an example of an actress who really completely disappears into the role she plays because even if you watch Arrested Development and Scott Pilgrim back to back and you watch her episodes, the episode she's in is Anne, and then you watch her in Scott Pilgrim, I guarantee you, nine people out of 10 will not realize it's the same actress.
00:35:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I never even thought about it, but yeah, okay. I have something new to test myself on. I'm going to watch it side by side and try to see you like that. Yeah, well, I mean, one of the great things about this movie is just the fact how well cast it is. Like all the actors fit perfectly into the roles they're playing. Like, you know, if you want someone, I don't know what it is about Michael Cera. I don't think he's ever not going to be awkward.
00:35:56
Speaker
Yeah, I haven't seen a single performance of his where I thought like, oh, he comes off as a smooth, well-adjusted individual. It's kind of like an awkward teenage Jeff Goldblum. You're getting the same thing every single role he's in, but he does it well. Yeah.
00:36:19
Speaker
Yeah, he pulls it off. Same as Jeff Goldblum. It's like, why, why would you care about him? He only plays himself, but he plays himself well. That if it's the roles that he's in, that that personality, that attitude, that cadence, the way he's delivering lines. Yeah, that works.
00:36:36
Speaker
it could be a horror, it could be a comedy, it could be a drama, but it's still working. And I think Michael Cera is one of those actors that he can't shake who he is, but he knows how to use it to his advantage. Yeah, I think George Clooney is like that too. We're also Dwayne Johnson, right? They
00:36:54
Speaker
They can do, I don't know about, I've never seen enough of Johnson to say if he could do better, but Clooney has proven he can do better, but he's still just kind of gravitates to what he's best known as. And he just kind of plays George Clooney. But he does it so well. He works really well in that. And there are a few actors, Ryan Reynolds does that to an extent as well. He plays Ryan Reynolds in every movie, but he does it so well that we don't care.
00:37:22
Speaker
I think it's because it's hard to hate Ryan Reynolds. It is. It is. There was a kind of funny timing because just yesterday I read an article about T.J. Miller who played Weasel. Oh, I think I read the same one you're about to talk about. Yeah. So and he said he was talking about how like, you know, Ryan Reynolds hates me now and I don't know why he hates me. And I'm just like, well, maybe it's because of all the sexual assault allegations.
00:37:45
Speaker
That's something to do with it, where, you know, a generally good, down to earth, helpful, kind human being doesn't take well to somebody who sexually assaults people. Right, yeah. But it did make me think about the fact, I'm like, is there anything that Ryan Reynolds does that anybody would be like, I hate him because of this? And I can't think of anything, because he just seems like such a decent guy, and he's just so much fun to watch in all these movies. Yeah, definitely.
00:38:13
Speaker
Definitely. And I don't know if I would say that Michael Cera has the same level of like, he's definitely fun to watch in all the movies, because I don't really like him that much. I'm not saying I dislike him, but I don't really like him that much as an actor, but I do like his performances in his movies.
Cultural Context and Subtitles in Scott Pilgrim
00:38:32
Speaker
I think, yeah, I agree. I think
00:38:34
Speaker
if he was the leading star, like he is in this, but you didn't have a strong enough supporting cast, I think his awkward stick would get real old, real fast. One of the things that makes it bearable is when he has other people to play off of, like in Arrested Development, like in this, or like in Superbad too. That was a similar kind of thing where that movie is great, but a big part of it is because he's got Jonah Hill and, I'm forgetting the other actor's name,
00:39:00
Speaker
but all these other actors to play off of and that makes it a lot more tolerable.
00:39:05
Speaker
Yeah, when you get him with the right ensemble, I think you have to water him down. He's good in small doses. Right. Although I will say the worst performance of his that I've seen, and again, it's not that his performance is bad because we already know what the performance is even before he comes on screen. It just didn't work. Have you seen his very brief cameo in the third season of Twin Peaks?
00:39:34
Speaker
No, I haven't seen that this third season yet. OK, I that just I don't know. I mean, as all this Twin Peaks is on its own, having him there really took me out of the entire thing. I mean, you know how strange that Lynch can be. Right. But Michael Cera was the thing that just knocked me out of the series and in the fictional world they were creating for me. And
00:40:03
Speaker
I've tried to watch that episode a couple times again because I thought like okay I was probably distracted that's what I did but I can barely get through his scene at all and it's one scene in the entire season from what I remember but that was where it did not work for me.
00:40:20
Speaker
Well, I think there's, I remember I'm thinking of, I was trying to think of other stuff I've seen him in where, and I think the fourth season of Arrested Development wasn't sure to watch because one of the strengths of that show was the cast interacting with each other. And then when you have them all in these solo episodes because they couldn't bring everyone together because of all the scheduling conflicts, you realize how terrible these people are individually and the humor doesn't work then.
00:40:46
Speaker
Yeah, well I don't think I yeah I haven't seen any episode fourth season so I haven't suffered.
Marvel vs. DC and Character Portrayals
00:40:53
Speaker
Yeah, it don't don't. Okay. I'll take your word for you. Um, but, but yeah he's, and I think but other cast members to like Mary Elizabeth Winstead, she's another one who
00:41:06
Speaker
If you put her in the wrong role, her stick gets real old barrel fast, but her whole kind of like detached persona works really well for Ramona Flowers. But again, I'm thinking of Birds of Prey when she played the Huntress. And she's great in these roles that fit her, but that was a role that just did not fit her style, her performance at all.
00:41:28
Speaker
Yeah, I, again, these more recent DC on TV series, I've barely seen. So I'm not even familiar with her performance. So this was a movie. This was in- Oh, was it? Yeah, this was the Birds of Prey Harley Quinn movie. Oh, the Harley Quinn movie. Yeah, I don't really watch the DC movies. I don't know if I should apologize for that or if I should be accepting an award, but it's, I stick to Marvel, Marvel, Marvel.
00:41:58
Speaker
They're not great movies these days. I mean, there's a lot of fun moments, there's a lot of fun action, but I think that's, we've reached a good
00:42:09
Speaker
plateau of superhero film with Marvel that, you know, when we were teenagers, when we were growing up, when we were into comics and we wanted these movies when we were kids, what we got was horrible. Yeah. Yeah. What we got, but we watched it. We wanted it to be good. We still watched it again and again, knowing we were hurting ourselves. So even though Marvel is not like the high literature version of cinema here where you got
00:42:38
Speaker
these comic books being made into popcorn blockbusters. It's at a good enough level that satisfies what I think comic book fans are mostly looking for and what is strong enough to really please a general film-going audience as well. So that's kind of my limit. DC strays pretty far from that in most of their films. That's why I really can't watch the DC movies.
00:43:05
Speaker
Some of the more recent ones, the post-Snyder ones, I've enjoyed for the most part. Wonder Woman 84 being the exception, being pretty much the only exception. The rest of them I've enjoyed to varying degrees. Aquaman I thought was great. I loved the Suicide Squad that James Gunn did.
00:43:22
Speaker
I was I was still kind of bored by it. Oh, really? I thought I would like it because like I've liked what James Gunn has done with Guardians of the Galaxy. I liked the actors. I liked what I saw in the trailer. But I think I actually turned it off with about 30 minutes left. Oh, okay. And so I'll come back to it later. But it was not holding my attention. Okay. And
00:43:47
Speaker
I never did get back to it at the end. So I don't know. Yeah, that was one I really enjoyed. Birds of Prey, it was one that I enjoyed for the most part. I don't think it's a Birds of Prey movie. And I think there are some questionable casting choices with Mary Elizabeth Winstead and with who they got to play Cassandra Cain. But other than that, it was a pretty enjoyable movie. I mean, Margot Roby's always pretty much enjoyable as Harley Quinn.
00:44:15
Speaker
yeah she was fun i enjoyed watching her performance i think it fit like when when harley quinn first debuted in like the batman animated series and you're wondering like who who is this they're pulling out this like brand new character and i always hated that back in the day when you have the
00:44:33
Speaker
the animation for a popular comic book series. And they put in like this original character there to drive him, for whatever degree, whatever reason, you had like more than the X-Men one. And you have Harley Quinn here, like, why? Why are they doing that? Why did Joker have that? But you know, you love the character. I mean, she's great. And I think that Margot Robbie really translates that energy so well on screen. So I don't have any complaints about her.
00:45:03
Speaker
And the other characters in, going back to Scott Pilgrim, like Karen Culkin is one who I appreciate a lot more, especially because, you know, I don't know, have you ever, have you seen succession? No. Okay. So it's a great show and he's in that too. And it's funny watching this after scene, just seeing, finishing the third season of succession, because there are so many similarities between his two characters and those two properties, but they're, and it's so eerie. Like I can almost feel like,
00:45:33
Speaker
Wallace and Scott Pilgrim seems almost kind of like the PG-13 version of Roman from Succession.
00:45:41
Speaker
That's interesting because I liked his performance. So a comment like that makes me interested to see Succession because I would like to see what a non PG-13 version of all this. He is one of the most entertaining characters on that show. I mean, all the characters are pretty good, but he's definitely one of the most entertaining and you've got, oh, what's his name? I'm blanking on his name.
00:46:07
Speaker
I'm gonna think about it. And he played Stryker in X2. Brian Cox, that's, he's also, he's one of those actors in this show that just like completely devours all the scenery and just commands the screen every time he's on it. Like the show is, like everyone's good on that show, but it is worth watching just for those two performances alone.
00:46:31
Speaker
I will keep them. I'm going to have to do a few YouTube searches for the scenes and get a taste of what it is. Yeah. But also Aubrey Plaza in this, like her playing like the foul mouth best friend type role. Like that, I just, I love watching her in this. And I'd seen this before I'd ever seen Parks and Recreation. So going back in this after watching all of Parks and Rec is really interesting to go back and see her in this. I mean, it's not,
00:47:02
Speaker
It's not like they're that vastly different, the two characters. I mean, just the way she portrays them with that kind of like cold, deadpan delivery style. But I mean, I loved her in this movie too, because like you, I really didn't know who she was before this.
00:47:23
Speaker
I love the fact they're bleeping out everything that she's saying. It's just like going bleep, bleep, bleep. But she's this sniveling stuck up, like she wants to brown nose with everyone. She wants to be popular, but she really is like the linchpin that's connecting everyone in this Scott Pilgrim universe together. But she's still constantly brown nosing as if like she needs to build up her social circle even more.
00:47:52
Speaker
It's interesting to see how she's so similar and yet so different from her character on Parks and Rec in that way. Because April in Parks and Rec didn't give a damn what anybody thought of her. Whereas she's so much more concerned about what everybody else is thinking in some degree. And you're right, like the brown nosing stuff is really funny to see.
00:48:10
Speaker
Yeah, especially when Envy Adams and Todd and their backstage, and she's trying to be the one that knows everything to chime in, like, oh, well, this and this and this and this. As if anybody cared what she had to add, but she wants to keep herself relevant throughout the whole conversation as if she's the most important thing. But again, she kind of is the most important thing because she's really who everyone in the Scott Pilgrim universe knows.
00:48:39
Speaker
So I don't think, but I think she doesn't realize that, the character. She doesn't realize she is the center. The other thing I really want to talk about was Ellen Wong. One of the interesting things about this that I was, cause I was watching this last night and I was wondering to myself, I'm like, I wonder what the age difference really is between Ellen Wong and Michael Cera in real life. And it turns out she is actually like,
00:49:07
Speaker
three or four years older than Michael Cera. Older than Michael, how old were they when they made this movie? So she, I don't know exactly, but she was born in, just double checking now the dates. Three years older than him, wow. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, Cera was born in 1988 and Ellen was born in 85. So there's a three year difference between them. Oh, wow. Okay.
00:49:36
Speaker
So yeah, that was an interesting thing. What did you think of Knives in this movie? Because I think she's one of those characters that, I think she, Ellen Wong does a really good job of conveying that. I mean, plus she looks the part, right? But not only that, but she does a good job of capturing that kind of like teenage enthusiasm. Oh yeah. I mean, she seemed a hundred percent genuine as this fanatical,
00:50:05
Speaker
teenage high school girlfriend, not even just girlfriend, but who is a fan of like a band groupie and just really into her boyfriend and her boyfriend's in the band. So she's really into the band and she just goes all out. And then the
00:50:22
Speaker
how she reacts when she's betrayed by him because he cheats on her. Yeah. And how she then shifts that to, okay, well, she's now in, in love with, uh, what's in it? Young Neil. Yeah. So now she just goes right to him and she's all about him. And it's just all about, you know, on the rebound, but like, I'm going to make you jealous. Scott has absolutely no interest in that at all.
Complex Dynamics in Scott Pilgrim Relationships
00:50:47
Speaker
She was one of the,
00:50:50
Speaker
best supporting characters in the movie. I liked her character more than I liked Ramona. Yeah, same here. Yeah. Now, in fact, when originally when this movie came out and there's that brief moment when it seems like her and Scott are going to get back together and then which was actually the original ending, her and Scott getting back together. And when I had seen that original ending, the first time I saw the DVD, I'm like, oh, that's much better. They should have gone with that.
00:51:20
Speaker
Now, looking at this movie again, I'm thinking, I'm like, well, no, I'm glad that she didn't get back together with Scott because she deserves better than Scott. She deserves a lot better than Scott. And I think that's one of the things I like the most about the whole movie. Scott is not a hero. Scott, he's not even really an anti-hero. He's just a dude. And he's not even a really
00:51:44
Speaker
good dude okay he's not a bad guy either he's just an average guy he messes up he's not great he's put in a strange situation and he just deals with it sometimes successfully sometimes not but he's just an average person that there's nothing about him that really needs to or should be celebrated yeah but
00:52:09
Speaker
It's an enjoyable story. It's an enjoyable adventure that he's on. So for someone like Knives, yeah, it's...
00:52:15
Speaker
I think she won at the end of the day by not being with him in the end because, well, first of all, they should have been together in the first place, but second of all, he's not a great guy. You don't want to be with that. I remember fairly recently, this may have been like a few months ago, but I remember seeing some chatter on Twitter or something about how
00:52:41
Speaker
the problematic aspects of this movie because he's a 22 year old dating a 17 year old. And in principle, I understand that, but looking back on it, I'm thinking that
00:52:53
Speaker
you know, he doesn't really, he's not doing anything with her really. No. Like he even says at the beginning, like we almost held hands once. Yeah. I mean, he's not, it's not that he's dating her because he's exploiting her. It's that creepy hole. Okay. I'm the, I'm the out of high school for a few years, but I'm going to perv on the younger girl. So she is his rebound from envy.
00:53:19
Speaker
yeah and it was probably just because of her enthusiasm and like oh my god there's a band playing boyfriend yeah that drew her to him but again she's still a child she doesn't she's not really interested in
00:53:38
Speaker
any of that sexual stuff and he is still a man child who is also not interested in any of that stuff either. So I've known people like that before where they really
00:53:55
Speaker
They're not at that, I'm not even sure what kind, if it's emotional or psychological maturity level, where they are maybe 20 something, but the way they live their lives, the way they don't realize they are an adult. Right.
00:54:11
Speaker
And they don't think about adult things. They're not really thinking like, I need to have a girlfriend. I need to have a family. I need to have a job. I want to have sex. It's just all, I'm playing video games. I'm playing my music. I'm going out and doing that. And they find the girlfriend and they still don't do anything with the girlfriend, just somebody that they chill with to play their games with.
00:54:32
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. It's only when you might realize a situation like this like you know she's still in high school, like there's a five year different like, yeah, it's kind of weird isn't it. Well yeah it's, it's interesting, you say that now and I realized something, I realized something to the click for me is that
00:54:48
Speaker
neither of them is in the relationship because they're actually interested in the other person. For Knives, it's just like, you know, it's the idea of having a boyfriend, someone that she could talk to about all the school drama and stuff like that. And then later, being able to say like, my boyfriend's in the band type of thing.
00:55:05
Speaker
Yeah. And for Scott, it just seems like, you know, just like, you know, to be able to say I have a girlfriend and that's it. And somebody played games with like the whole time they're playing games in the arcade. He's just running his mouth about stupid things like stupid video game trivia. It just this is his gaming buddy. That's his girlfriend. So now he's not alone. He's safe. He has a girlfriend, but he doesn't really want her as a girlfriend. That's why he ends up cheating on her.
00:55:32
Speaker
Well, I mean, even like the way they talk too, like they don't talk to each other. They just talk at each other. Like when he's going through the whole Pac-Man spiel, she doesn't react at all. She doesn't say anything. She's just busy playing the game. Whereas Ramona is like, why are you telling me this shit? Yeah.
00:55:50
Speaker
She's, Ramona is actually listening to him, even though she doesn't give a damn about what those words mean. Whereas like you say, I think that's, that's a great thing. They are talking at each other. She's talking about her school drama, all the thing about like,
00:56:06
Speaker
growing up with her friends. He's talking about all these stupid video game things that she doesn't care about. The only thing yet, yeah, that you've mentioned that they have in common is they both are excited that they have a boyfriend or a girlfriend and they can say they have that.
00:56:22
Speaker
Well, even that moment when they were in the record store and she's talking about Envy and she's like, don't you just love her? And Scott's like, no. And he starts hinting about their past together and Knives doesn't react at all to what he's saying. She just keeps gushing over Envy.
00:56:42
Speaker
Yeah, because she's more about the music. She's more about her interest, her own interest. And that's why my boyfriend's a bass player in the band. So, woo! My boyfriend kissed Envy Adam, so I kissed a lipstick. That's the stuff that's registering for her. It's not any sort of care or love for Scott himself. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I think
00:57:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think that narrative that it's, I mean, there are problematic aspects of it, but it's such a weird situation that it's not a good situation, but it's not quite what I think people are interpreting it as.
00:57:22
Speaker
No, I think if you just look at it from the outside, it seems really off-putting and disgusting. But when you see how it's depicted in there, it's like, oh, they're just like a couple of goobers that really know what the heck is even going on in their own lives. Well, I think what you said too about Scott not just being kind of a regular guy, I think one of the things that I think that in retrospect, now that I've seen this movie a few times and why I now like the fact that him and Ramona get together,
00:57:52
Speaker
is the fact that they're both so careless with other people. Like you see that with all the stories of her exes that she's really kind of the bad one in a lot of those situations. She just kind of like, you know, tosses them away as soon as she loses interest. And Scott does the exact same thing to knives. Like the second he's got the potential for something more interesting, he loses complete interest in knives.
00:58:18
Speaker
completely I mean like a shocking I think his response to knives how he treats knives is far more disgusting than the fact that he's a 22 year old dating a 17 year old absolutely like that is the far worse personality trait
00:58:36
Speaker
of his yeah because he and yeah you're right she doesn't care Ramona she doesn't really care about her ex-boyfriends the moment that she gets what she needs from that relationship she's ready to move on it's like she said she changes her hair like what every 10 days or whatever yeah yeah changes the color or something else so she seems to do the same with her exes yeah
00:59:01
Speaker
Yeah, you're right because she does like every single one of them. It was like, yeah, it was like two weeks and then I moved on. Yeah. It's like it lasts as long as her hair color. Yeah.
Millennial Culture Reflected in Scott Pilgrim
00:59:10
Speaker
Also, I thought Jason Swartzman was a good choice for Gideon in this because it's kind of like if, especially at this time, if you were to make me think of who would be like the ultimate hipster actor, I think Jason Swartzman would definitely be on that list. So it makes sense that he plays like the big bad hipster in this movie.
00:59:30
Speaker
Yeah, I really loved him as the final villain Gideon that that was like, because he has that he's has that kind of jackass Marmy quality that he can pull off so well, but also delivering his lines with such
00:59:48
Speaker
the ridiculous lines, but delivered with such conviction as if there's any weight behind it that completely reflects that character, that the character really has no substance at all. It's all flash, it's all image. There's really nothing of value to him. It's all about maintaining this image of superiority. I love his line where he,
01:00:16
Speaker
when he's being defeated and he's he's just angry because do you know how long it took him to put together this group two hours but he's saying it as if like oh my god you actually spent two hours on that but it's like you only put two hours into this grand master plan of yours like i i love that line and yeah his performance he
01:00:45
Speaker
It, it almost does feel like a parallel universe Wes Anderson movie. So it makes sense for him to be in there. Yeah, yeah. Well I think that's a good point you made about the, the two hours thing because I realized something else I'm remembering when he when
01:01:03
Speaker
Scott is reading the email from from Matthew Patel and he's just like this is so boring delete. It's just like that. There's something to be said about this. I think this movie has got something to say about the attention spans of millennials. Yeah, I think so. You know that that reminds me there was
01:01:22
Speaker
Oh, it was probably 10 years ago when the film came out there was a review for the film I read because again I had no idea what this thing was so after I watched it. I'm like, where was this my whole life. I've never heard of this. I remember a review. I don't remember who said but
01:01:39
Speaker
really the review was the reviewer he seems like kind of kind of almost like a Gideon type um film critic where where it's all about he has a much higher sense of who he is as a film critic but he doesn't really want to let on that he doesn't have the substance to back it up but but the review what it got to me was
01:02:06
Speaker
It seemed like the reviewer was saying he liked the movie. He would talk about like, Oh, it has fine moment. This, this, this, but every other sentence would be woven with like a snarky backhanded comment about today's generation society. And like, Oh, it would probably keep the, hold the attention span of the iPhone. Oh yeah. I remember, I remember seeing that review as well. So yeah, you know what I'm talking about. So yeah.
01:02:32
Speaker
I think he's right, but he's wrong. As you said, it's really a reflection of this generation of society where time really is meaningless to them as they don't really appreciate what time is about. They don't put the time in.
01:02:53
Speaker
to really get anything out. He doesn't, Scott doesn't put the time in to read the email alerting him that he's about to come under attack. Ramona doesn't put the time in to appreciate the boyfriends and the exes, not even boyfriends that she's had in the past. Scott doesn't put the time in to listen to knives and even pay attention to her as a girl. They're just jumping from one flashy thing to another. Right. But
01:03:19
Speaker
Whereas that's kind of what the characters are about the world they live in and why this has such a video game theme to it. It's flashy, it's exciting, it's on the spot, but then you're going to the next stage and the next stage. That reviewer is kind of missing the point and using it as an old man shaking his fists at the clouds moment.
01:03:43
Speaker
Yeah, because even though Edgar Wright himself isn't a millennial, he was born in 74, millennials start their different definitions. Some say 81, some say like, but then some say there's like the in between zennial generation. I've heard between 79 and 81. Yeah, yeah. As like the common thing, but nobody
01:04:05
Speaker
But so he was born in like, he was born in 74 and he seems to have, even though he's not part of that generation, he seems close enough where he can kind of understand it a little bit more. And I think that's definitely reflected in this because this isn't like those millennials are killing ex articles that were flying all over the place a few years ago, right? It's more like it's both critical and appreciative of millennials, I think.
01:04:32
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's the perfect way of saying it because it's not mocking them like that reviewer was doing mocking them. It's basically just shining a flashlight on them or maybe shining the glowing screen of their smartphones on them in the spotlight. Like you're seeing them for who they are, but it's not
01:04:55
Speaker
It's not being done in a way to take them down the peg. It's being done the way like this is who they are. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is a movie that if you're not part of that generation or close to it, you're not going to get it. Probably not. No.
01:05:14
Speaker
And I just want to add one little comment here that reminds me of not getting
Scott Pilgrim's Absurd World and Conclusion
01:05:22
Speaker
it. I think I mentioned to you before, maybe when we were talking about doing this episode, but I watched this with my girlfriend who became my wife.
01:05:34
Speaker
So I wanted to show her this movie too, because it was like my favorite comedy back then. Like, you gotta see this. But of course, I have to, like we talked about with everything everywhere all at once, you want to get with the subtitles, so she could like get the full appreciation. So I got it with the Japanese subtitles, though I had the DVD in my house, I rented it. And I showed it to her. And
01:06:01
Speaker
Again, I was laughing my ass off next to her sitting in a stoic silence through the entire film. And there's two reasons. There are two main reasons for it. Number one was the subtitles really could not translate this humor correctly. And in a lot of the scenes, the Japanese translator
01:06:26
Speaker
honestly tried to make the scene make logical sense, even when there was no logical sense to be made. So the subtitles was almost creating a brand new story for certain scenes, just to try to explain what you're seeing on screen and why it would be happening. And so when I was looking at the subtitles, I'm like, that is not what this scene is about at all. Like, wow, there's like no humor in it. And the second thing is that she's not part of that
01:06:55
Speaker
that generation from the West that any of this would be resonating with her in any way. So yeah, you really have to be inside that window or at least have a nice connection with that part of the culture to really get a lot of the humor and a lot of the message that the film was trying to say, I think at least.
01:07:21
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's true, because I had a similar situation with Coltenau. Because last night, I put it on to prepare for this. And she's like, what are you watching? Like Scott Pilgrim. And she was like, oh, yeah. And she reminded me that I'd showed it to her once before. And either she was too drunk or she fell asleep, because she doesn't really remember it. And I'm like, OK. And I use Plex. So if there's not subtitles on it, it lets you search for subtitles.
01:07:47
Speaker
We searched for subtitles and there were two Japanese results and I tried them both. First one we tried, had it on for a little bit, and she's like, these subtitles are really strange. And I wasn't paying attention to them, so I wasn't sure. So I just thought, oh, maybe it was a fan translation or something like that. So we tried the other subtitle file and she just kind of lost interest and just eventually got up and went to bed.
01:08:08
Speaker
Yeah. It's, I mean, those might both be official sometimes because the one we watched from the official rental DVD from Tsutaya was so boring and tried to make the world of Scott Pilgrim a logical, explainable place. And it's like, wow, like how can you kill the, it would be like trying to rationally explain the events of the movie airplane.
01:08:35
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's like it's you're not supposed to it's supposed to be absurd. Yeah. Yeah, they did not get that. So whoever did the translation as well was probably not part of that Western millennial. I think so. Cultural bubble. So yeah, they lost it there. Yeah. So yeah, I think
01:08:54
Speaker
One of the things too, and you had mentioned this early on and I also love like how just none of this stuff is explained, right? Just the whole thing. The fact that all of a sudden Scott goes from just being this, you know, unassuming, slightly dickish, awkward young adult to suddenly being able to do all this video game shit out of nowhere. And you have, you know,
01:09:20
Speaker
All these different characters who are have superpowers based on whatever they're doing. Yeah. Right. Like, you know, Matthew Patel has the whole magic and old Bollywood song and dance thing. Todd has the whole vegan telekinesis superpowers. You know, the standard vegan telekinesis that they all have. Yeah. Yeah. Which I love, too, that they
01:09:45
Speaker
Again, poking fun at stuff, like poking fun at, you know, over righteous vegans, where he's like, oh, well, obviously, it's like, I'm just better than you. That's why I have superpowers. And then when you start- Because no being vegan makes you better. Yeah. And he's like, look, it's just like the whole thing, like, if you knew the science, then I would listen to what you have to say type of thing. That line, I think that line is,
01:10:12
Speaker
far more hard hitting these days than 10 years ago because like that is used in various forms so much now where just like Todd, the people who are saying it are the ones who know the least about it. Yeah, yeah. He's like a walking example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Yeah, it's great. That's why I get Todd and Lucas Lee in two top moments of a great fun film
01:10:39
Speaker
But I think those two really highlight the strengths of this movie, those two moments there. And even that the rest of the movie was a flop, it would be worth watching for those two scenes alone. Absolutely, yeah. OK, anything else you wanted to mention about Scott Pilgrim? I think I've said everything that I really have to say about it. No, I think we covered
01:11:03
Speaker
I mean, we could keep talking for hours about the cool little things here and there, but I mean, yeah, I think we covered what should be said about the film. Yeah, I think so too. So yeah, in summary, it's a film that...
01:11:17
Speaker
Again, if you're of that generation, it's definitely, and you haven't watched it, which I don't think there's anyone of our generation who hasn't watched it yet. But if for some reason you haven't, then it is worth checking out again. It still does hold up in a lot of ways. Like the humor may not be as funny as it was back then, but overall the movie is still really entertaining. Definitely.
01:11:41
Speaker
Okay, Bill, do you have anything you wanted to plug, anything you want to promote before we close up? Yeah, sure. I mean, it's nothing spectacular, but as I said, pretty much into Star Trek and role-playing and have a very, very small YouTube channel, a very small, very casual YouTube channel where we do a lot of Star Trek discussion
01:12:10
Speaker
Star Trek Adventures role-playing game. The channel's name is The Final Frontiersman. So if you search on YouTube and you're interested in anything Star Trek or the role-playing game, please check us out. Okay. And we'll have the link for that in the show notes. Oh, thanks for coming on the show. It was fun having this discussion with you on mic for once instead of just got anybody else listening in.
01:12:36
Speaker
Yeah, it was fun. Thank you for inviting me. I hope to be back on sometime in the future. Absolutely. You're welcome anytime you want to come back on. And that does it for this episode of Superhero Cinephile. Superherocinephiles.com is the website, SuperCinemapod on Twitter and Instagram.
01:12:52
Speaker
And if you subscribe to the Patreon for as little as a dollar a month, then you get access to these episodes a week in advance. Plus you also get access to the Patreon only subscriber episodes where we talk about comic books and graphic novels. Thanks so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.
01:13:12
Speaker
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01:13:33
Speaker
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01:14:16
Speaker
Thank you for listening. And as always, good night. Good evening. God bless.