A FEW WORDS ABOUT HARRY KNOWLES

The gentleman in question

(Like a lot of bloggers, unencumbered by the professional obligation to churn out immediate responses to the brutal mass murder in Colorado Friday midnight, I'm prefacing this post by saying this was supposed to go up Friday morning. When I woke up and turned on my computer, I saw, yeah, maybe this isn't the best time to rant about Harry Knowles. It was a time for contemplation for many, and for me a full day of sitting around stunned at what that malignant little fuck—I'm not giving him the satisfaction of saying his name; he has no name—did. Anyway, I don't really have anything to contribute to that discussion beyond the anger and sadness so many others share, intensified in this particular case because movie theaters are a place I've felt safe and free my whole life, especially in times when I felt in danger or trapped. I basically co-sign everything my good friend Filmi Girl says in the introduction to this post, so check that out, then come back, and watch the below video to transition back into our completely unrelated regularly scheduled programming.)



So, earlier this week, before anyone other than critics and a few lucky bloggers (and people like me who aren't quite as fancy as the former just yet but still a little fancier than the latter) had had a chance to see The Dark Knight Rises, Harry Knowles, founder of Ain't It Cool News, and for better or worse the ur-Internet movie blogger, spoiled the sweet living fuck out of it. While that's a little shitty, Mr. Knowles did admittedly preface everything with a spoiler alert, so it's not as bad as it could be. What is, and what makes this more notable than just internecine nerd grumping, is the way in which Knowles registers his “[p]rofound disappointment.” It's a stunningly lousy piece of criticism, fodder for everyone who would join Kevin Smith's recent crusade against not only critics themselves, but the entire form.

Whether or not Knowles' piece was meant as a “formal” review or not is a bit beside the point. Ain't It Cool is, by virtue of having been around the Internet practically since before civilians even knew what computers were, an institution. Its editorial perspective is right there on its sleeve, with its heart: ain't movies cool? I'm hardly in a position to disagree. In principle I'm right there with them. I love movies with a fierce intensity. Movies can be about anything and everything, so to love movies is to love life itself, at a certain point. On the other hand, loving cinema does not mean one loves all movies. Some are better than others.

I would submit that if the way in which your love of movies manifests itself is in the desire to write about them, you owe it to yourself and other movie lovers to at least try to get at what a movie is, rather than focusing on your own personal reaction to it to the exclusion of all other things. Criticism is not a simple matter of “I liked it” or “I didn't like it.” A big part of it is considering factors outside the self; while ultimately purely objective observation is always going to be impossible because the observer is part of the observation, it's incumbent on the observer to do the best s/he can. The best parts of oneself—knowledge, wisdom, and empathy—are the best tools of observation.

Where Knowles fucks up in that Dark Knight Rises piece, and the entire experience of watching the movie itself, from the sound of things, is in that inability to step even an inch outside himself and the Dark Knight Rises screenplay he'd already written in his head. (He's no stranger to reading the wrong script, if you'll recall his embarrassing adventures with that fake Prometheus script back in April.) Reading his reaction to the movie (since calling it a “review” is a bit much), everything that pissed him off relates to a choice Christopher (and brother Jonathan) Nolan made either in transposing characters from the comics into the very different realm of cinema, or in the effects of those characters' action in a world they, the Nolan brothers, not Harry Knowles, created.

Among those effects is something that relates to a larger discussion of fandom and sexism that's come to a bit of a boil this year. In the case of both this summer's previous mega-blockbuster superhero movies, The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man, women critics were subjected to shit like “Stick with rom-coms, bitch” for weighing in with anything other than adulation. In gaming there was the whole “getting the player to identify with Lara Croft by her getting almost-raped” crap and that woman's Kickstarter to fund a study of sexism in gaming that led to a deluge of threats of rape and a Flash game where the player could punch her in the face. Given this context, a discussion that has been unavoidable in fandom circles for months, it's a sign of great negligence that Knowles would register the following complaint (bolded emphasis mine, not his; shitty writing his, not mine):

“It is just at this stage that the film loses all sense of urgency. I mean, you have a city with a strange respirator men with an army of thugs and every hardened criminal in the city – and it doesn’t end up looking like Old Detroit from ROBOCOP? I mean – there’s 1000s armed bad guys and the city isn’t being raped and pillaged. Instead they set up courts to make people walk on ice?”

Yes, Harry, there are thousands of armed bad guys and the city isn't being raped and pillaged. Perhaps Christopher and Jonathan Nolan do not share your lazy conflation of rape and pillage with dramatic urgency. Perhaps they also share a frame of reference not entirely derived from other movies with no aesthetic, philosophical, or any other connection other than being movies. If anything, the absence of rape and pillage in this case could be interpreted as a) Bane not being an anarchist, because he's not an anarchist, and b) a sign to pay attention because (pardon the overly literal reading) something's happening, and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Knowles?

I should clarify that accusing Harry Knowles of rape advocacy based on the above quote would be inaccurate. But it's indicative of a fundamental lack of taking a moment to think about other people and how they might think or feel, which is the same fundamental problem with his entire reaction. The near-mantra which the repetitions of “bullshit” become is derived almost entirely from the movie's interpretation of the comics being different from Knowles'. There is, I hate to break it to him, no one set-in-stone interpretation of the comics, which are, as a writer I rather like pointed out in The Atlantic recently, the product of many different authors and the different perspectives each brought to the material. Then, there are things such as Bane being “no longer South American,” which is an assumption based on the absence of it being spelled out, and not something there's any evidentiary basis to state as anything other than an assumption. And, even if he's not, not to be mean or anything, but who gives a fuck? If Knowles had liked the movie (on whatever squishy inarticulately-conveyed basis) he certainly wouldn't have.

While we're in an interrogative mood, another “who gives a fuck?” subject is Harry Knowles himself, as in “why should we give a fuck what he has to say?” His is not an a priori irrelevant voice. However irritating he's become both online and in Austin (and holy shit, if you want to hear invective, just wind Austin critic types up with a question about the guy and watch them go), and however many writers have come along who are better at doing what he does than he is (Ain't It Cool is home to some fine ones, as well as some not so fine), online movie and fandom discourse is what it is to a significant degree due to Harry Knowles' influence. And a lot of people still read Ain't It Cool. So when he hops on his computer the day before one of the biggest geek movies of the year and writes something this stupid, it's irritating.

It's also bad for criticism in general. I haven't had much to say about Kevin Smith's ridiculous and weird anti-critic tirades (in keeping with the “it's not always about me” theme here, Scott Weinberg basically nails the whole thing in this piece), but Smith and Harry Knowles are essentially on the same page on this subject. Their (apparent) weird mix of unquantifiable emotion, dogmatic certitude, and the utter refusal to address either is one of the most annoying things about movie geekery. Asking why something is “awesome” or “sucks,” or having to explain, does not in any way cheapen the experience of a movie, and in a lot of cases enriches it. Getting deeper on a movie you liked and discovering that, in fact, there are some things wrong with it doesn't mean the subjective, emotional experience of liking it is any less valid. All it means is that the movie in question did some things well and other things not so well. One can like a “bad” movie and not enjoy a “good” movie. No matter what the case, understanding is a net good.

Throwing stones at nerds, admittedly, will lead to a lot of shit getting broken in my glass house (which, because I'm a nerd, is a 1:1 scale replica of Dr. Manhattan's Martian palace in Watchmen). But, in terms of the discussion at hand, I find it particularly grating when unexamined feelings are presented as having any kind of relevance, and when the process of examination is dismissed as either boring or the occupation of sour-grapes killjoy assholes. I also think voices with large audiences of listeners should endeavor to say things of meaning and value.

Of, course, that might just be a by-product of my remembering that once upon a time, nerds were supposed to be smart.

NEITHER GOOD NOR IMPORTANT

You gotta hand it to Armond White. He may hate comic books, but he still knows that with great power comes great responsibility, and that when one of the year's most anticipated movies is imminent, it is time to let loose. Behold this review of The Avengers, and bask.

A NOBLE (BUT INCOMPLETE) ATTEMPT TO WATCH GREEN LANTERN

I was home not being a drunk shithead last night, which meant that at about 12:30 I was looking at the channel guide on TV; I was nearing the end of Dazed and Confused, a really fantastic movie that I should someday give a proper rewatch without commercial breaks and censored fucks, and looking for something else. Lo and behold, I found something. And before it even started, I regretted it:

Already feeling like the decision to watch GREEN LANTERN on HBO at 1:25 is a mistake and it hasn't even started yet.

I don't know whether it was morbid curiosity, self-flagellation because all anti-St. Pat's rhetoric aside I could have kind of used a drink, or what, but the die was cast. Despite being determined to go through with my plan, I knew it was probably a bad idea. My friend Jon Hoche, an actor, playwright, and a nerd of far purer heart than I, saw my tweet about watching Green Lantern and immediately started warning me against it; this, for those of you without the privilege of knowing Mr. Hoche, is a really bad sign with any comic book/geek property. But what is St. Patrick's Day if not a day to make bad decisions, and verily to do things that may induce vomiting? This, then, is the record of that horrendously ill-advised decision:

The opening of GREEN LANTERN is reminding me of what the opening of HEAVY METAL would be without a sense of ironic perspective.

Speaking of HEAVY METAL, I just had the horrifying realization that there are no gratuitous nude scenes in this movie.

(This led to me briefly brainstorming, with Isaac Butler, a live-action version of Richard Corben's Den starring Ryan Reynolds. Genius never sleeps, people.)

So all of a sudden Blake Lively is playing Goose in a heterosexual variation on TOP GUN. #GreenLantern

Holy shit, the Loch Nar is looking for Ryan Reynolds! (Ed. Note: the Loch Nar was the little green spherical thing that appeared in various iterations in the Heavy Metal movie that caused a variety of sin and perfidy; the weirdly dark tone of Green Lantern had me thinking the Lanterns were actually the bad guys.)

The military-industrial complex is kinda toothless here. Real evil white guys in suits would STILL be tasering Ryan Reynolds in the nuts. "Oh, you crashed our billion-dollar plane for no reason! Okay, we're not even going to yell at you, we'll let Blake Lively do it." Sure.

I don't wanna say these cats are wasting money, but if you gave me $200 mil and a camera Cecil B. Demille would rise from the fucking dead. (Ed. Note: I want to reinforce this point; the CGI was almost as bad as it was in the Telugu fantasy picture Once Upon A Warrior, which cost like 8% of what Green Lantern did and had cooler swordfighting and a better girl character than Blake Lively. If you gave me $200 mil, you would see that $200 mil on the screen. For better or worse.)

Peter Sarsgaard and Angela Bassett just had a ferocious bad hairstyling duel.

Ryan Reynolds just straight up murked three proles with his fancy Loch Nar ring. Maybe this IS a remake. Maybe Blake Lively WILL get naked! (Ed. Note: this is an important point, that Cracked also made: Ryan Reynolds gets his ass kicked by these three dudes who lost their jobs because he pulled his I-play-by-my-own-rules fucking bullshit and crashing that massively expensive plane, completely unnecessarily. This would be a fine moment for Ryan Reynolds to take a beating as character-building. But no. He whips out his Green Lantern ring . . . and fucking kills the three guys. They're fucking dead, they're not just knocked out. I mean, what the sociopathically self-absorbed fuck. And the movie doesn't dwell on this at all. It's just like, hey, if you fuck with Ryan Reynolds, you get got. Yeah, cool story, bro.)

British aliens were better when they were dudes in metal suits, man, fuck your computers. (Ed. Note: this is when the aliens whisk Ryan Reynolds off to their planet to tell him he's one of them now.)

Though I will say, having the infodump in a British accent was a very smart move. It adds "class."

"What is THAT?" "It's a computer-generated effect, Mr. Reynolds. Now allow me to recite a few non sequiturs in my melodious British accent."

Why's Mark Strong dressed like a hemorrhoid & talking about nuking THE PARALLAX VIEW? What did Warren Beatty ever do to you, motherfucker?

Peter Sarsgaard has a fivehead and is possessed by Something Alien. Gotta say if somebody's gotta do it, might as well be him.

GREEN LANTERN is an evocative movie. It evokes the desire for sleep. I'm out at the hour-ten mark; no idea what's going on & don't care.

One last parting thought: it is truly remarkable how awful everyone's hair looked in that movie.

And that's it. I couldn't make it past the big scene when Tim Robbins (as the Evil White Guy In A Suit, except with the murky moral tone I couldn't tell whether him being evil had anything to do with anything or whether it was just because they noticed how awesome an EWGIS Tim Robbins is now that his hair's gone gray) is getting some thing at a banquet and Blake Lively is made up to look like Jennifer Lopez's younger sister for some reason and some shit or other starts happening. I just had to say fuck it and pull the plug.

All this being said, it's probably an outstanding picture to smoke weed to, so if you're so inclined, knock yourself out. As for me, whose days of blazing are mostly a thing of the past, I couldn't hang. I did try, though.

SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE CIVILIANS

One of the most painful reminders of my own nerd-dom came this August, with the release of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. It seemed like everyone I knew was geekfapping in anticipation for a good month beforehand, to the point where even I (or, um, especially I) addressed the issue. It was a new Edgar Wright picture, and everybody saw Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, right? Michael Cera was the lead, and everybody saw Arrested Development, right? (Ed. Note: bear with me here, I know you're getting suspicious). It's based on a comic . . . and everyone likes comics . . . right? It's in the style of a video game . . . and people . . . like video games . . . right . . .?

As it turned out, of course, Scott Pilgrim tanked at the box office, making back only about half its production budget. And yet . . . everyone I fucking know went to see it and loved it. HOW COULD THIS BE? Obviously, with magazine articles every fucking week about how this is the Age of the Nerd and so forth, Scott Pilgrim should have been a massive coming-out party, a victory lap. Well, obviously, it wasn't. So what gives?

I missed Scott Pilgrim in theaters, as its release pre-dated my lovely arrangement with Tor.com (aside from having the good taste to employ me, they have a lot of better and occasionally famous writers nerding out, so bookmark them if you're into SF and or fantasy). Thanks to Universal's evil white guys making the excellent business decision to release the DVD in time for Christpicuousconsumptionmas season, I finally got to see it. And yes, it is everything I could ever have expected. This is a picture by nerds, of nerds, and for nerds. I absolutely fucking loved it. I mean, wow. That is to say, holy shit. In other words, god DAMN.

On the other hand, I understand exactly why it flopped. First of all, although everyone naturally thinks of their people as being the whole world, I am objectively aware that nerds are a minority. One need look no further than high school: there are more dudes on a football team than a chess team, to be glib and reductive and right. Also, Scott Pilgrim is very specifically about nerds under the age of 30, with cultural references and assumptions it would be very hard to expect someone over 35 to get, leaving our older and grayer comrades potentially feeling left out in the cold (even though A.O. Scott, in one of his finest hours in recent memory, declared, “There are some movies about youth that just make you feel old, even if you aren't . . . Scott Pilgrim vs. the World has the opposite effect. Its speedy, funny, happy-sad spirit is so infectious that the movie makes you feel at home in its world even if the landscape is, at first glance, unfamiliar.” Sláinte, Tony). Then there's the matter of all but those nerds specifically of the cineaste variety preferring not to rub shoulders with the great, loud, candy-unwrapping, cell-phone using unwashed in movie theaters (minor aside: when I saw The Warrior's Way recently, there was a group of mentally challenged people on an outing, and they literally mooed throughout the whole movie. I'm not kidding, exaggerating, or distorting in the slightest. That's the 21st century movie theater experience in a nutshell, folks), instead waiting for the DVD. And hey, I'm totally guilty of that, so I guess I'm part of the problem.

Word of mouth was another problem, as the non-nerds in the critical community and the handful of civilians who went to see Scott Pilgrim for whatever fucking reason (Ed. Note: Movies By Bowes ™ personally apologizes to alla y'all; this movie is just how our people roll) came away crinkling their noses and going “What in the sweet living fuck was that?” The best explanation I can give won't do any good: “It's a video game trapped in a movie's body.” Media eugenics is a difficult thing to pull off (literary tricks, for example, work in literature because they're literary tricks; they don't always read in movies) especially in the—in some ways—very similar media of cinema and video games. Both are audiovisual media, but there's an obvious, fundamental difference: the player controls the video game, where the audience for a movie is, a priori, passive. This is why the video game Heavy Rain, though it aroused the ire of hardcore gamers who didn't give a fuck about other media, worked as a movie trapped in a video game's body; the player could control the “movie.” A video game trapped in a movie's body has the problem of there being fewer movie people who are also gamers than there are gamers who also like movies. I mean, look, I thoroughly enjoyed taking bong hits on the couch and watching my friend Greg beat The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time on Nintendo 64, but I'm fundamentally predisposed to find video games interesting, Ocarina of Time might be the best video game ever made, and I get caught up in the narrative created by the player, even if I'm only watching. I was also high. But that's just me. As you may have gathered, I'm a little weird.

It isn't entirely clear at first that Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is actually a video game masquerading as a movie. Set in a vividly, heroically portrayed Toronto, it starts out in High Indie Twee mode, with protagonist Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) faced with the mildly embarassing task of introducing his new girlfriend Knives Chau (Ellen Wong) to his gay roommate/best friend Kieran Culkin and his bandmates in the gloriously titled garage band Sex Bob-Omb. She is, it transpires, 17 and still in high school. “Yeah, Catholic school, with the uniform and everything,” a facepalming Michael Cera tells disapproving, gossipy sister Anna Kendrick. Knives thinks Scott's the coolest, and she loves Sex Bob-Omb, but Michael Cera is awkward about the whole thing. What? Michael Cera, awkward? The deuce you say! Yes, it's true.
The whole thing feels like the ur-Michael Cera movie, the one where the audience is finally going to rise as one, kidnap the fucker and inject him with megadoses of testosterone, steroids, and PCP (the last because, hey, why the fuck not) and enforce manhood. Look, I like the guy, but seriously. Anyway, some stylish Edgar Wright direction aside, it totally feels like the proverbial Movie Michael Cera Has Made Nine Gajillion Times (even though it's really only like four) . . . UNTIL we have dream sequence. Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) rollerblades through Michael Cera's dream, and then into his life. This is the most non-naturalistic thing yet to happen, even though we've gotten pretty broad hints that this isn't a non-naturalistic picture.

So Michael Cera, a ball-less whiny douche at the picture's outset, does the very ball-less and douche-y thing and fails to actually break up with Knives before wooing the initially reluctant Mary Elizabeth Winstead, a glamorous, mysterious (American!) woman, everything the sincere, guilelessly candid girl Knives isn't. Before Michael Cera is even officially dating MEW (too bad she's not Mary Elizabeth Ophelia Winstead, amirite?) he gets an e-mail from some guy claiming to be a member of a group called the Seven Evil Exes (of Ramona), who intends to fight Michael Cera to death, but Michael Cera is so distracted by thoughts of his new not-yet-even-really girlfriend and the Battle of the Bands that Sex Bob-Omb is entering that he pays it no mind.

Turns out, you should always read your fucking e-mail. A spooky Indian dude in some seriously gay clothes (my friend Steve's pal Satya Bhabha) shows up in the middle of the concert, interrupting the awkward first meeting of Knives and Ramona, and repeats his challenge to Michael Cera (part of which includes a faux-Bollywood number that flunked lovely and talented authority Filmigirl's sniff test so hard it bounced). Michael Cera immediately throws down and—shockingly—kicks ass in the finest video-game fashion. End of Act One, beginning of awesome. Michael Cera beats the shit out of the guy, who turns into a pile of coins as a score appears.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead explains at this point that Michael Cera might have to defeat seven of her Evil Exes. Not only is this a great metaphor for dealing with a new girlfriend's past (which, hey, I know it's ridiculous, but it's not something we're just magically okay with without a little effort) it provides Michael Cera with something to do for the rest of the movie, and it's a wonderfully video-game-y conceit.

In a nice bit of numerological significance, it's in the midst of Michael Cera's awkward second date (he's so nervous anticipating it his gay roommate calls him gay) that he encounters Evil Ex #2: American movie star Lucas Lee (Chris Evans), to whose crappy movies on the Spike Channel the gay roommate has been fapping (hey, the latter half of the phrase “gay guy” is “guy”) in anticipation of his coming to Toronto to shoot a movie. Turns out Mary Elizabeth Winstead dated him in middle school and he never quite got over it. So Michael Cera figures, I outfought the first Evil Ex, piece of cake. Except Chris Evans is an action movie star, which means he has lots of stunt men, all of whom gang up on Michael Cera and stomp the crap out of him (God I love this movie . . .) but Michael Cera prevails. Chris Evans, however, fights him to a standstill, until Michael Cera tricks him into doing a skateboard trick so fuckin dangerous Johnny Knoxville probably wouldn't do it, which leads to Chris Evans' explosive, coin-producing downfall.

Evil Ex #3 is my favorite of the bunch: a bleached-blonde Brandon Routh, who is not only Mary Elizabeth Winstead's ex, he's fucking Michael Cera's ex-who-he's-not-really-100%-over, big indie rock star Envy Adams (Brie Larson), for whom he plays bass. Just like Michael Cera. And, because Brandon Routh is a vegan, he's both telepathic and telekinetic (Ed. Note: FUCK YES) and so, when the two have their “bass battle”, Brandon Routh is able to predict his every move. The deus ex machina that saves Michael Cera's ass made me need to pause the movie for five minutes so I could laugh to the point of tears: the “vegan police” (Thomas Jane and Clifton Collins, Jr., aka the guy Catherine Zeta-Jones tells to “get out of the car and shoot him in the head” in Traffic) bust Brandon Routh for accidentally drinking half and half in a coffee Michael Cera sneakily hands him (“I put the half and half in that cup but I thought really really hard about putting it in this one”), as well as mistakenly eating gelato . . . and chicken parmesan. This last thoroughly disgusts Brie Larson, and is cause for the vegan police to strip him of his superpowers. Wait, hold on, sorry, give me a minute . . . HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA . . . HAHAHAHA . . . oh man, heh heh heh . . . hahaha . . . mmm mmm.

All this getting his ass handed to him left and right is starting to weigh on Michael Cera, who starts getting a bit snippy with Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who following a battle with Evil Ex #4 (Mae Whitman, a product of MEW's “bi-curious” phase) that Michael Cera hilariously wins by exploiting an erogenous zone behind Mae Whitman's knee, takes some time apart. Michael Cera's determined to win her back though, and it turns out that evil exes #5 and 6 (“Did she date them at the same time?”) are a malevolent J-pop duo (Keita and Shota Saito) who Sex Bob-Omb have to defeat with RAWK, and do, winning Michael Cera a 1-up (also known as an extra life).

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is in the audience with her most recent ex, who turns out to be the record company douchebag (Jason Schwartzman, having more fun than is usually allowed within the law) who's sponsored the battle of the bands. He offers to sign Sex Bob-Omb, over Michael Cera's protests, which lead to him being replaced by #1 fan and bass understudy Young Neil. Not only that, but a confused and sad Mary Elizabeth Winstead has helplessly succumbed to Jason Schwartzman's charms (later revealed to be a microchip he's attached to her brainstem, a wonderful metaphor for the hold douchebag exes have over one) once more. He is thus revealed as the last Evil Ex (even if he's no longer an Ex, if she's with him, he's still Evil) . . . THE FINAL BOSS.

Like any boss fight worth half a fuck, Michael Cera dies the first time, after getting Knives and Ramona thoroughly pissed at him for cheating each with the other, and getting his ass banjaxed by the thoroughly evil Jason Schwartzman. However, he still has that extra life, which he uses, and like any good gamer, he learns from the mistakes he made in the first boss fight (fighting for his own self-respect rather than his love for Ramona, which he never even properly expressed, instead using the L-word he thought his gay roommate was hinting at: “lesbians.” ie “I'm in lesbians with you.” Yep, go ahead and facepalm; also manning up and apologizing to Knives and Ramona before they can get pissed and turn on him, thus turning Knives into an ally, and holy fuck has she got martial arts moves) and this time wins.

Seeing the teamwork exhibited by Knives and Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead makes the “noble sacrifice” of letting the two of them be “happy” together and walks off. But, as Knives reminds Michael Cera, he's been fighting for Mary Elizabeth Winstead for the whole movie. She also completely casts aside the doormat role she's been consigned to for so much of the movie by affirming “I'm also way too cool for you,” which is true, and good on her for realizing that. Michael Cera, who has realized how fucked up he is in a lot of ways, deserves the also-fucked-up-in-a-lot-of-ways Mary Elizabeth Winstead. And so they set off to give their relationship another try. Game Over.

The basic plot, by its nature, is a bit repetitive, since it is, after all, a video game trapped in a movie's body. The only place it really starts to sag is after the staggering brilliance of the Brandon Routh battle. No movie, no matter how great, can help but dip a bit after the whole thing about veganism conferring superpowers, which I'm sorry, that's the funniest fucking thing like ever. Even that dip wasn't much of one. The sheer amount of energy this movie has overcomes all, including the imperfect scripting, the occasional partially- or not-fleshed out character, and the fact that it's tilting against the gigantic fucking windmill of being, at its core, an example of a different medium than the one it's presented as. As a member of the choir to whom Edgar Wright is preaching with Scott Pilgrim, I thoroughly enjoyed all the video game stuff, all the keenly observed details of nerd and hipster culture (the passwords to the club in the climactic sequence are “whatever” and a bored shrug), and goddammit, the journey Michael Cera has, gradually growing a legit pair of testicles by the third act, was satisfying. The way he confronts his mirror-image self, “Nega-Scott,” as the final “solo round” challenge in the “game” is particularly great: he sends Knives and Ramona away to confront his apparently evil doppelganger. So we cut to the girls waiting outside, and the doors open, and there's Michael Cera chatting away and making brunch plans with his dark side (“He's a pretty cool guy.”) Congratulations, son, you just became a real man. Well, kind of. In a very Michael Cera kind of way.

The music is goddamn fabulous. When fuzzy indie rock makes you want to get up and dance, you're dealing with some good fuzzy indie rock. The Sex Bob-Omb songs were all written by Beck and played by the actors, all of whom can kind of sort of play, just like their characters, giving them just the right blend of professional songcraft and scruffball enthusiasm that they need. It's the first soundtrack in at least a couple years that I said “I gotta own this,” and I said that about four bars into the first fucking song they play, during the opening credits.

Edgar Wright, in terms of raw filmmaking talent, has few peers. He's got great visual imagination, and increasingly, the control over his talent to realize that imagination. He also, whether from hanging out with Simon Pegg for all those years or on his own merits (almost certainly the latter), has a terrific sense of humor. And he has a nearly-perfect bead on the pop-cultural obsessions of nerds of his generation (which, being that he's only a couple years older than me, is basically mine). In Scott Pilgrim he's made a movie that will surely thrill nerds of almost my exact age for the rest of their lives. His one misstep, which isn't much of one, with this movie is that he is way too specific in who he's aiming to reach. It's certainly a noble gesture to say “I want to make a movie that will give nerds boners.” I certainly appreciate that. But Scott Pilgrim, a few outliers notwithstanding, is pretty much targeted directly at nerds 28-35. What, 27 and 36 year old nerds can't come to the party? It's not an artistic failing—I applaud anyone with the balls to make a $90 million movie this idiosyncratic—but it is the reason the picture flopped.

And, for that reason, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is one of those movies I'd be very cautious about recommending. As much as I, falling squarely within the picture's narrow target demographic, loved it, it appeals to a very specific part of me and it's always hard to tell who else has that shared very specific part. What I do know is that if I'm talking to someone and they mention this movie, and say “God, I loved it,” I know I'm talking to one of my people. And we will be very happy talking about how awesome this movie is, for far longer than is reasonable or tasteful. Because fuck you. We're nerds.

(COMIC) BOOK TO FILM: TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES

I was once described as “the kind of guy who looks like he reads comic books.” (The source was mad that I was dating a girl he liked. Bahahaha!). This may be true. However, I'm a total comic book civilian. What random scattered titles I know though, I love with the enthusiasm and intensity that I love favorite movies, books, and albums. My favorite series, dating from the time my uncle picked up an issue when the name caught his eye and then regifted it to me for my 9th birthday, is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Started in the early 80s exactly the way you expected—two nerds sitting around their apartment, one nerd says to the other “Hey . . . let's do a comic called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” to which the other nerd replied, “That's awesome,” followed by a frantic grab for pencils—TMNT started life as a black and white independent comic, fairly dark in tone and very violent. The turtle protagonists, famously, were named for Renaissance artists. Over the first couple years, the—sporadically published—title took the turtles all over space and time and even teamed up with Dave Sim's legendary Cerebus.

This was around the point my uncle introduced me to the series, though he wisely started me at the beginning. He, my dad, and their younger brother the painter were all very pleased that I was starting off with indie comix at a young and impressionable age. This was around the same time they were nervously nudging me toward the Velvet Underground to make sure I grew up with hip musical taste (I, being wise to their game, trolled the fuck out of them by singing Bobby Brown songs at every opportunity).

But then something weird happened. Some smart, commercially-minded person looked at the phrase “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and went, hey, let's make a cartoon aimed at little kids. This, of course, meant that certain of my favorite things about the original comic—the cursing (which was only “damn” and “hell”), the beer drinking, the cutting people to bloody shreds with swords—had to be chucked, in favor of a junkie-like fixation on pizza, kid-friendly catchphrases like “cowabunga” (another great opportunity to troll my dad; he was so pissed off that I didn't care “cowabunga” was ganked from Howdy Doody that he used to turn purple) and a general lowering of the dramatic stakes. The turtles' first and most memorable nemesis, The Shredder, was turned from a vengeance-seeking younger brother of a guy the turtles' master killed into a bumbling fucko with an alien brain sidekick (himself inspired by these weird aliens in the original comic who accidentally beamed the turtles across the universe, who were good guys). Master Splinter wasn't changed much, but he was cuted up a bit. Most disappointingly, the turtles' human friend, April O'Neil, was forced to abandon her decorative cleavage tops for this nasty-ass yellow jumpsuit that she apparently never took off.

Don't get me wrong. I watched the cartoon. I was young enough that being a little kid won out over being an indie comix purist. I was, however, just enough of a douchebag to haughtily tell my classmates “Yeah, the show's cool and all, but you should read the original comics, they're much better.” And as much as the absence of bad language, violence, and cleavage was disappointing, I rather liked the cartoon, but not so much that when they announced that a movie was being made that I didn't go, “Man, I hope they base it on the original comic, not the cartoon . . .”

To my pleasant surprise, the movie splits the difference fairly elegantly. The introduction blends the origin story from the comic with the pilot episode of the TV show, as the turtles become friends with TV reporter April by rescuing her from marauding ninjas a couple times. They introduce her to Splinter, who tells her how a rat and four turtles mutated into anthropomorphic form in an almost direct quote from the debut issue of the comic. Later on, other plot elements are taken directly from the original comic. The tone, for a kids' movie, is quite dark in places, and the violence doesn't fuck around, though stopping short of spouting blood and severed limbs and shit, because I mean, come on, it is a kids' movie.

The movie begins with a crime wave sweeping “New York” (it's clearly shot somewhere else; just cuz you put a cat in the oven, that don't make it a biscuit), which intrepid TV reporter April O'Neil hears may have something to do with something called “The Foot Clan.” The pigs are pissed off that she's running at the mouth on TV about the crime wave, because it makes them look bad, but she kind of has a point, to wit: take the fuckin donut outta your mouth and get to work, fucknugget.

One night some creeps mug April, but before anybody knows what the hell happened, the lights go out, and when the fuzz turns up, the muggers are subdued, disarmed, and tied up. The only clue as to what the fuck happened is a sai, dropped by Raphael, ninja turtle, which April grabs and puts in her bag.

Introducing Leonardo, Donatello, and Michelangelo celebrating their triumphant victory over the muggers. Their cranky brother brings up the rear, pissed off at having lost his sai. Splinter, their rat teacher/father figure, tries to calm Raphael down, but the hijinks of the other three piss Raphael off to the point where he says fuck it, grabs a trench coat and hat and goes out to the movies. (The fact that all their “going incognito” outfit consists of is a trench coat and hat, when their skin is green and they have gigantic fucking shells on their backs, is a wonderful joke on New York in the 80s, and it's accurate, too—I wouldn't look twice at someone with green legs, bare feet, and three toes south of 14th St.)

On his travels, Raphael meets a guy who looks even stranger than he does, some Canadian guy in a hockey mask who carries around a golf bag full of sporting goods (baseball bats, golf clubs, even a cricket bat). They have philosophical differences and beat the shit out of each other, with the Canadian winning the battle, further pissing Raphael off.

April runs afoul of the Foot Clan, and they set upon her in a train station (which, surprisingly, looks like it was shot in New York, on the unused platform at Hoyt-Schermerhorn that's been every subway station in the city at some point or other), whereupon April shows moxie by whipping out the sai. The Foot Clan, however, scoff at such feeble gestures of bravery, and show them how real men treat a lady: in parties of thirty, masked, and heavily armed.

But the turtles are there to kick ass and rescue the fair maiden, who is initially a little freaked out by them and Splinter, but eventually conquers her racism and they become friends. The turtles accompany April home, where they quickly have to hide because her boss and his fuckup petty criminal son drop by for some weird reason, and the kid rips off $20 from April. This whole scene makes no sense in a kids' movie, because in a grownup movie, they'd have dropped by because April was fucking her boss and the kid was a junkie, but stripped of those necessary bits of context it's like, huh?

After eating all April's pizza, the turtles head back home, only to find their lair trashed and Splinter gone (presumed dead). So they go back to April's to hide out. April's boss' kid gets arrested for boosting a car stereo (again, what the fuck? WHAT MOTIVATION DO PEOPLE WHO AREN'T ON DRUGS HAVE TO DO THIS?) and he has a talk with his asshole dad (oh wait, right, some people's dads aren't agreeably trollable like mine, some people's dads eat cock) which leads to him running out in traffic and running away to this massive den of criminality which I guess is supposed to be on Randall's Island or something (so hard to keep NYC geography straight when we're not in NYC) whereupon we're introduced to the Shredder, who is a pretty bad motherfucker like he's supposed to be, and his army of juvenile delinquents (They smoke cigarettes! They ride skateboards! They play the video games!) with whom he terrorizes New York to no apparent end other than the sheer fuck of it. The baddies are holding a bedraggled—but alive—Splinter hostage.

And, because they're bad, they lure Raphael away from the strength of the pack and ambush the sweet green Jesus out of him, throwing him through the skylight of April's place. A massive battle ensues, wherein the turtles fight the Foot basically to a stalemate, until the Shredder decides to torch the junk store downstairs, at which point our heroes, joined by the Canadian weirdo (who just happened to see the Foot fucking up his “friend,” and boy are you weird if some green motherfucker with a shell you smacked with a cricket bat in Central Park one night qualifies as a friend) beat a hasty retreat.

In a sequence lifted straight from one of the best issues of the original comic, they head to the Canadian's mom's place in Massachussetts (hmm . . . maybe the character isn't supposed to be Canadian . . . Elias Koteas, you're lucky you're awesome, dude, your accent is thick as a fuck) and the turtles all do a bit of soul-searching as they nurse Raphael back to health. The humans flirt, in an amusingly chaste we-pretend-to-hate-each-other-even-though-we're-crushing-like-mad way that the older kids will recognize and their parents will find hilarious.

Eventually, the turtles find their strength again and have a vision of the still-alive Splinter, and it's back to New York, to take the fight to the enemy. April's boss' kid, having had a crisis of conscience (aided and abetted by a couple conversations with Splinter where the sneaky little fucker guilt trips the kid into being good) inadvertently leads the Foot to try and ambush the turtles at their pad, but the turtles fuck shit up to the point where they end up in a rooftop Final Boss Battle with the Shredder, who is each turtle's clear superior in one-on-one combat, but they start getting to him as a team, though it does take Splinter to save their ass. The Shredder ends up hanging off the roof, and falls into a garbage truck. The Canadian throws the lever “by accident” (a rather callous maneuver, and not very sporting, I say) and adios Shredder. Fin de pelicula.

What I find impressive about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is that it manages to be a faithful adaptation of both the original comic and the TV show. The fact that a lot of the dialogue is stupid and a lot of the acting sucks is an element of this fidelity to the original subject matter. Certain kinds of movie are supposed to have stupid dialogue and shitty acting, and in the days when only DC comics got made into movies with movie stars in them, comic book movies certainly fit the bill (though there's plenty of stupid dialogue and shitty acting in Richard Donner's Superman and Tim Burton's Batman). In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the pace is brisk, the tone agreeable, the protagonists compelling, the bad guys bad (and for borderline Goldfinger-esque evil for evil's sake raised to the level of an aesthetic principle motivations; if you can parse that sentence, I'll give you a cookie) and really what the fuck more do you want from a movie?

So that's the cake. This is the icing:

(1) Golden Harvest produced this movie. Golden Fucking Harvest! RAYMOND CHOW IS AN EXECUTIVE PRODUCER. This fucking rules. For further explication, see this.
(2) Corey Feldman did the voice of Donatello, which is funny because Michelangelo was the one who sounded stoned in the cartoon, and because in this day and age, the name Corey Feldman itself is tantamount to a punchline (see the episode of Greg The Bunny where he takes Greg hostage or some fucking thing mid-nervous breakdown). Even then, in 1990, he had already kind of gotten to that point.
(3) When Johnny Law and the Blue Revue show up to bust the remaining Foot Clan and juvenile delinquent associates, one of the juvenile delinquents turns snitch and tells the coppers that all the evidence they're looking for is in “The East warehouse on Lairdman island.” Because Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird created the comic.
(4) Elias Koteas provides a timely reminder, like Tony Hendra in Spinal Tap, that a cricket bat is one of the best things in the universe to fuck someone up with.
(5) A number of not-half-bad pop culture jokes, a few years before every single fucking movie devolved into a bunch of dickheads making cracks about the Partridge Family to each other.
(6) The sequence where Michelangelo haggles with the Dominos guy over the price of delivering a pizza to an address that doesn't exist is both funny and kind of existentially poignant . . . . not that I would have ever watched this movie high enough to have that insight . . . ahem . . .
(7) The fight scenes, especially the ones involving the turtles, are pretty impressive, and while I am grading on the curve because some poor bastard had to do the whole fucking thing in a giant, heavy rubber suit, they're still well-filmed and edited, especially for such a low-budget picture.

Overall, would I recommend Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to someone without a nostalgic attachment to the comics or the cartoon? Hell no. One's ability to appreciate the finer points of the adaptation process are entirely contingent on one's patience for the material, and the kids these days who know this weird, newfangled TMNT are gonna look back on this old pre-CGI bullshit and say “lol wut iz dis sh!t” or however those warped, jaded, ADHD-addled cockmongers talk to each other. However, those of us with a little gray in our hair and a little light in our souls can look back fondly on what really is a hell of an entertaining movie.

Stay tuned in a few days for my Lost postmortem!