Review: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (2010) - Edgar Wright

          I remember when this film came out in the cinema all my friends that went to go see it kept telling me how amazing it was how original and unique the story was and how I never got to see it in the cinema. So instead I read the comic and fell in love with the beautiful black and white images that Bryan Lee O’Malley had drew and the strange love story presented on the pages. The problem was now I was very emotionally attached to the story and had such high expectations for the film (after all the hype my friends had given it) I was worried how it would turn out, by this stage I had decided to wait for the film to be released on DVD. So were my worries justified? No. Putting it simply this is one of (if not my) favourite films ever.

          So what’s it all about then? Well if you haven’t seen Scott Pilgrim, I suggest you do go see it, but if you’d rather not then I’ll try and not give away to many spoilers. Scott (Michael Cera) is in his early 20’s, he’s a musician and he’s started dating a high schooler (Ellen Wong as Knives Chau), he’s never worked a day in his life and he’s very happy go lucky. His friends don’t approve of him dating her. He then meets another girl Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) who is quiet literally the girl of his dreams and becomes obsessed with her ignoring Knives completely. He starts dating Ramona and knows he has to breakup with Knives but keeps putting it off, there’s also one tiny little catch with dating Ramona. Scott has to defeat her seven evil exes. As you can imagine things don’t play out smoothly for poor Scott and around evil ex 4 he begins to wonder if Ramona is worth it, and Knives now realising Scott had been seeing her as well as Ramona does what everyone in the same situation would do she blames everything on Ramona.

Scott then starts to realise how much Ramona means to him but he might of drove Ramona back into the arms of her seventh evil ex, Gideon Gordon Graves/G-man (Jason Schwartzman) who’s the one responsible for putting together the seven evil exes, he’s also literally inside her head by  a conveniently placed control chip. So Scott goes to win Ramona back and challenges Gideon to a final fight with the power of love and is killed, however following the films gamer logic Scott uses his 1up he got earlier to give the fight another go and this time with the power of self respect he along with help from Knives and Ramona defeats Gideon and walks off into the distance with Ramona.

          Ok so as I mentioned I love this film and comic, I loved the use of gamer, music and general nerdy references and here the film is not only extremely faithful to the comic but takes things one step beyond for example each ex is given a symbol representing their number. I also love the actors, I’d love to be able to pick out a stand out but everyone is so true to their character and represents them so well, the one I’d pick if I had to though would be Kieran Culkin as Wallace Wells, Scott’s roommate and all around scene stealer when he’s on screen and takes some liberties with the character that make him probably my favourite. However there are some things I take issue with the main one being the shortening of the story, in the comics Ramona and Scott’s relationship takes place over the course of a year so it makes sense that the two fall in love with each other and it also makes the ending more believable, where as in the film it takes place over the course of about a week so the ending doesn’t feel deserved, the film makes even thought as much putting in an alternate ending where Scott ends up with Knives, that fits with the film. I also missed certain characters/scenes from the comic but I can see why they were cut.

          I realised I never gave a rating before to any of the films I’ve reviewed, that’s because I think you should be able to tell from how I talk about a film how I feel about it, but I think I’ll start giving ratings on a 10 scale. So Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is a 10/10 for me. I highly recommended you check out this film and hopefully you’ll enjoy it as much as I have.

Review: The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) - Mark Webb

           I remember when I first heard they were planning on rebooting the Spider-Man film franchise, I was completely against is. The only reason to reboot a film franchise is if the previous version has taken the series to far from its original roots or there are no more possible stories that could take place in the already established universe and then there’s the third option that at least ten years has passed and it would be too costly/impractical to bring back the original cast. None of these reasons existed in my opinion in Sam Rami’s Spider-Man universe; different actor’s could have been cast and moved the timeline on a few years with little impact on the story in my opinion. But I can understand why they didn’t do this, I could of even forgiven it, if it wasn’t for the simple fact this would be another origin story, which is a little much to take in seems as we already saw this less than ten years ago, and was still fresh in our minds and was an amazing film and should have been left alone again in my opinion. But despite mine and many other people’s negativity towards the project on initial announcement the film went ahead and I have to admit I did warm to the idea of it especially as we were promised a film more faithful to the comic books origins and ideas fans know from it and the 90’s animated television show (web slingers). So to say the least I wasn’t looking forward to this film, but I wanted to see how it turned out.

          My first impression of the film is it’s the closest we’ll get to seeing Spider-Man in The Avengers at least for a while, people have said it might happen in The Avengers 2 but I won’t hold my breath just yet. Stylistically the film has a similar feel to the films set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as in its very grounded in reality, the characters behave like real people and the choices they make even the ones we know they have to are made for very logical reasons and with one exception are very true to the character and reflect the maturity level of them. So when Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) dicks around with his super powers and in some way’s abuses them it feels natural, like something we all would do if we had superpowers and then when he matures again it doesn’t feel like the script just told him to start acting differently we see the decisions that lead him to step up and become a man. So to talk about plot for a bit, this version of Peter Parker is still in high school and is very much the current everybody, he’s still a good student (but not someone who sits in the front row), he’s still a photographer and he’s still good at science, and I like this change kind of making him an everyman instead of a nerd instantly makes him more relatable and likable as a character and makes his relationships with (eventual girlfriend) Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone) and school bully Flash Thompson (Chris Zylka), very believable.

          It’s nice to see a fresh take on certain aspects of the Spider-Man character, like Sally Field portrayal of  a younger Aunt May but with others it feels quiet distracting and you’d rather they got it over with like Uncle Ben’s (Martin Sheen) infamous “With great power, comes great responsibility” spiel and eventual death. However for the most part I liked the retelling the one main issue I had though was having Dr. Curt Connors/Lizard (Rhys Ifans) as the baddie in this film I feel Rhys Ifans did a great job with the role and was very enjoyable, the only problem was in the previous films we got to know Dr. Connors for two films as a minor background character and got attached to him so if Spider-Man 4 had of been made we would have been more attached to the Lizard and felt some of Peter’s resentment and hurt at having to attack and potentially kill him again I like what they did with the character but would of preferred if they had merely teased at it this film and have him as the baddie in the sequel but that’s personal opinion. And seems as though I’ve mentioned the rest of the main characters how could I leave out Captain George Stacey played brilliantly by Dennis Leary, I felt in many ways the film sets him up as the Commissioner Gordon, to Spider-Man’s Batman, but leaving that aside I feel the character is brilliantly developed as not only a police captain but also as a father, my main problem with him though is the promise he makes Peter take to stay away from Gwen when he’s dying and the fact that Peter does so immediately going so far as to not even attend the funeral of his then girlfriends father (this it the above mentioned character development gone amiss moment as no matter what he should have been there for her in my opinion).

          Ok final thoughts time, would I recommend this film? Yes I would highly. While I might not agree with the decisions behind its development I love the outcome and will defiantly be going to see the sequel when it comes out.