Kon!

Totally with you on the Patel thing, also on the ninja thing; thought the slut-shaming was an example of negative behavior on his part which the movie corrects him for; didn't find him whiny so much as ironic, but we have different senses of humor.

From:

It was negative behavior in his part, but they added it in. Why did it even have to be an issue? It's like, if there's a gay panic joke, and it's played in such a way that it's clear that guy panicking is being stupid. It would still be introducing the gay panic. And isn't it nice when they don't?

From:

Having blitzed all the comics in the last week so that I would be prepared for the movie, I am superbly qualified to answer your queries!

- No, Scott is not that whiny in the books. What you are observing is what the nation's top whinologists are terming The Michael Cera Effect, which casts a sheen of moist, timid, baby-deer-standing-up-for-the-first-time awkwardness over every part he plays. Scott in the comics has a sort of spacey, moronic certainty to everything he does, which ties into his central character flaw: he is convinced, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that he is totally awesome.

- Matthew Patel always had his Bollywood assault, but in the comics all of Scott's friends lined up behind him to counter with a tightly choreographed dance of their own. Omitted from the movie, Scott just punches his lights out instead. And there's no MYSTIC ORIENTAL DRAGONS in the comics, either -- the Katayanagi Twins weren't even musicians. Instead they uh. They build anime robots to send after Scott. So, yeah.

- In the books it's Ramona who calls Scott out on being kind of a dick, and there's no implication anywhere that she's easy or sleeps around. To be fair, though, she's just about as messed up and immature as Scott -- she just hides it better. By the end of the books the two of them have worked through most of their issues and become better people for it, ready to give it another try as adults. The movie shortcuts this by making the Negascott affably nerdy and putting a chip on the back of Ramona's neck. So... yeah!

- Like the twins, the Roxy fight plays out very differently in the books - it ends with her and Scott leaping at each other for a single decisive slash in midair, which is a frame-for-frame tribute to the opening to Ninja Gaiden on the NES. The movie actually steals Envy's weakness and gives it to Roxy -- Ramona and Envy fight each other to a standstill (with Wallace being a total drunken catty bitch in the background), and ultimately Scott has to break it up by taking advantage of Envy's sensitive Knee-Spot, which leaves her (less obviously orgasmically) aaahn'ing and wibbling on the floor. The whole Envy storyline was one of my favorite parts of the comics, but unfortunately most of it got glossed over in the movie.

Anyway, I'm sorry to hear you were disappointed. The movie does take a lot of shortcuts and cuts out a ton of character development, but at its breakneck pace it would have gotten kind of exhausting if it had gone much further beyond two hours. I think they did an admirable job adapting it, and I had a blast. Just be glad they didn't try to break it into a two- or even three-film series, because this one made about $22.50 all told at the box office and will be out on DVD by Tuesday.

From:

Also, if you want to talk about Unfortunate Implications, the movie seems to put forth the idea that being gay automatically means having promiscuous, anonymous sex! Which made me go "hrmmm" disapprovingly for a moment, but I was having so much fun I gave it a free pass.

From:

Yeah, there was also that.

From:

This is true. *sigh*

I also thought it made having promiscuous, anonymous sex look like a really fun time, but that may be because I totally <3 Kieran Culkin

From:

Eh, I didn't think it really implied that was automatic. It did depict a gay guy having a good deal of sex, but I actually though it was pretty adorable how they pulled it off. Within the cartoony world of the rest of the movie, it was innocuous. They could also have presented him as totally monogamous and that would have been fine too; I don't see anything with either depiction.

Anyway, to say at least from my end, my boyfriend and I both gave big thumbs up to the movie version of Wallace.

From:

The thing is, Scott points out the obvious contradiction of Wallace complaining about Scott's infidelity while they are in bed with Wallace's ever-increasing collection of boyfriends. Wallace's response is something like "Hey, I didn't write the gay rulebook. You have a problem, you take it up with Liberace's ghost." The implication here is that promiscuity is normal and expected for gay men.

No, I wasn't outraged or anything. But it did ping on my concern-dar a little. The image of gay men furtively having sex with strangers every night in public bathrooms is a stereotype that is rapidly fading from the collective consciousness, but it was still a little disappointing to see that view espoused in a movie that is otherwise fairly socially and sexually progressive.

Aside from that though, yes, the awesome of Wallace is eternal and undeniable.

From:

Ehh, but honestly, that would have been my response too. I think there's definitely a danger that straight poeple might misinterpret his quip as implying gay guys furtively hooking up in bathrooms and parks, seeing something seedy and shameful in it. But the reference I got was to the ease with which gay guys hook up these days over the net or at bars. Not furtively, and not even necessarily as one night stands, just a lot more casually than straight people do. And since the expectation is much stronger that the sex will be casual unless ortherwise explicitly stated, whereas I think the opposite holds true among young straight people, it's accurate to say that there's a different 'rulebook.'

What it really comes down to, though, is that Wallace and his behavior resonated for me, so I certainly felt no concern about how his character portrayed gay people in general. For another gay guy who straight ally with entirely different experiences from my own, maybe his characterization would have a different import.

From:

*gay guy OR straight ally

From:

Oh, I'd forgotten it was Envy's weakness! I remembered how the Roxy fight played out, but I didn't remember where the knee thing came from. I didn't actually mind the fast pace or much of the redone storyline stuff, I just thought the redone Roxy battle was really lame, and I didn't like the orientalizing. Or Michael Cera.

I did think that basically all the other casting was pretty much perfect, though.

From:

You thought the entirety of the Roxy fight was lame? I really dug Ramona grabbing Scott's wrists and basically using him as a puppet to fight her, which I suspect was done to get around people's distaste at seeing the hero of the story willingly punch a girl, but also made for some neat stunts.

From:

It did have some neat stunts, but I was hoping for the ninja gaiden-style battle, so I ended up feeling kinda meh about the whole thing overall.

From:

After thinking about it, I've decided that my problem with the rest of the Roxy fight is just that I couldn't buy Michael Cera as the action hero, and I liked the thing in the comics with Scott's "I can't hit a girl!" "We'll, you're going to have to." The stunts were neat.

(the end of that fight was still lame)

From:

I feel slightly less bad about the ethnic essentialism bit knowing that the bollywood scene was in the comics. Also the musical battle thing was one of my favorite bits of the movie, mystical oriental dragons aside, so... yeah, I'll take that over the anime robot.

From:

Yeah, but in the comic, everyone dances. Not just the South Asian guy. And of course there's no background music.

From:

....there's no background music because they have not yet perfected the art of musical paper

I think if there is a bollywood dance number you can consider the music implied

From:

Yes, that was a joke. But I do think there's a difference between "everyone has a dance battle" and "South Asian guy does Bollywood dancing until white guy punches him in the face."

From:

I seem to remember there were also fireballs and cowering from fireballs involved

From:

raidingparty.livejournal.com

Does this make up for it?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMrN3Rh55uM

From:

Thinking some more about the mystical Oriental dragons, I've realized those might not be the disappointing jingoistic symbol we all assumed, but rather another sneaky video game reference. Hear me out:

At one point during the comics, Scott forgets the Katayanagi twins' names, and refers to them as "Randy and Andy, or whatever?" Randy and Andy are the English-localized names of twin bosses from River City Ransom on the NES, a game to which SP owes a huge debt. (The whole "Simon has kidnapped Kim!" flashback at the beginning of volume 2 is a retelling of RCR's story, down to the name of the final boss.)

Randy and Andy, themselves, were villainous stand-ins for a better-known set of twins from another game by the same developer: Billy and Jimmy Lee... the heroes of Double Dragon.

SEE IT ALL MAKES PERFECT SENSE NOW

From: