Evil Overlord’s List #71 If I decide to test a lieutenant's loyalty and see if he/she should be made a trusted lieutenant, I will have a crack squad of marksmen standing by in case the answer is no.
I’ll admit it; I had absolutely no desire to see Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. This is probably mostly due to the fact that I hate Michael Cera’s face. I don’t know why, it‘s just true. I was dragged to the theater kicking and screaming, but when the lights went down and the 8-bit Universal Studios theme started blaring, I fell in love. In a summer bereft of good films Scott Pilgrim stands out as a shining beacon of snappy dialogue, intriguing characters and epic cinematography. It is quirky and weird and fun and awesome and completely and totally flawed. I also take issue with the villains. There were, you see, far too many of them: seven to be exact.
Here there be spoilers.
Scott Pilgrim is a twenty-three-year-old lazy dude who likes to play videogames and bass guitar. Enter, Ramona Flowers. Scott falls instantly in love only to learn that to be with her, he must defeat her seven evil exes. Now, I do in fact; realize that Scott Pilgrim based on a comic series. (No, I’ve never read it, I’m nerdy, but not that nerdy). And in the comics, there are indeed seven villains, these seven personages forming the League of Evil Exes. This is fine for a series of comic books where you have one or two villains per volume, but in a two-hour film, cramming in all seven exes is a bit of an issue. For it has the effect of completely destroying the film’s hierarchy of villainy.
To begin with, there are virtually no henchmen. With the exception of a few who are attached to various villains and a couple that Scott dispatches at the very end of the film in G-Man’s lair there is basically zilch in the henchman department. This is not generally an issue other than that it casts a glaring on the fact that there are six villains. Count’em SIX. Okay, maybe five and a half. (Even with their dragons the Katayanagi twins are kind of a let down).
Skip the fact that these villains have virtually no motivation for doing as they do and making Scott’s life a mess. They’re not fighting for Ramona, they are simply battling to make sure no one other than the uber villain can have her. It’s made even more ridiculous by the fact that half of them were dated back in grade school and the other half were dated for a grand total of like 9.2 second. So, these presumably successful rock stars, movie stars and music moguls should be long over their infatuation with the girl with rainbow hair. But, no apparently they cannot rip themselves away from Ramona’s gravitational pull and so these villains zip on and off the screen with bright colors, crashes and bangs, but little emotional motivation.
As for the uber villain, he was to be quite frank, not nearly uber enough. A smarmy, smirking, charmer who himself had little enough motivation to go after Ramona when she was obsessed with him, but who has now formed the League of Evil Exes in order to brow beat Ramona back to him in order to slake his own obsession. He is not a compelling character and frankly, having him played by Jason Schwartzman did not help matters at all. When you have the future Captain America in Chris Evans, and the former Man of Steel in Brandon Routh as mere precursors to your uber villain, you seriously need to step up your game. In short, though charming, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World just can’t get over the suck of its villains.
Despite of all this and over my strenuous objections, I still love this film. Go figure.
When writing your villains, please, please, please! Make sure your villains and uber villain have sound emotional reasons for making your hero’s life a living hell, or else it all just seems silly. Also, be sure that your hierarchy of villainy is sound. Don’t make your villains more intriguing than your uber villain and leave some henchmen lying about for the hero to beat up on, it does so boost his ego.
Yes, me and Michael Cera have still got beef. It’s his face.
Good points ;) stored for later, thanks xx
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