Musical Wednesdays: We Are Sex Bob-Omb!

The bands that populate Brian Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim books, like all great fictional bands, are so well realized that you can hear them through their lyrics, through the way the sound is drawn coming out of their instruments, through the way the other characters react to the music.  Sex Bob-Omb is a noisy garage rock band, Crash and the Boys are an even noisier, surlier band (their songs are only seconds long). Every band has its own personality, and the music is essential to the story.

For a film adaptation, translating the experience of "reading the band" into hearing it can be a tough trick to pull off.  The worst reaction, I would imagine, would be for the fans to say "that doesn't sound like Sex Bob-Omb." Luckily, Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs. the World sounds exactly like Scott Pilgrim, with the help of Beck and Broken Social Scene.  The soundtrack is pretty exuberant (much like the movie--full review coming Friday), and the songs written specifically for the movie are the strongest parts.  I particularly love Sex Bob-Omb's Garbage Truck.

If there's one criticism I have, it's that the soundtrack is missing some songs, like a few Legend of Zelda themes that are only in the movie (at one point, when Scott sees Ramona in the subspace highway inside his head, the Zelda "Great Fairy" music plays.  There, that's the geekiest sentence you will ever see on this blog.  At least until Friday).  But the songs that are on here more than make up for what's not.  This is one of those soundtracks that is much, much more than a collection of songs featured in the movie: it's a stand-alone album, like Karen O's soundtrack for Where the Wild Things Are, or one of Wes Anderson's. 

The one song I really wish they had included (and this is true for both the movie and the soundtrack) is one of my favorite jokes in the first comic book, when Crash and the Boys introduce a song: "This song is called 'Last Song Kills Audience,' and it'll be our last song tonight."  But as a whole, this album is so carefully put-together, and so much fun to listen to, that it's hard to dwell on any complaints.

Friday Films: Why Not a Black Spider-Man?

I saw something on Twitter this week about the campaign for Donald Glover (Troy on NBC's "Community") to play Spider-Man, and I have to say: I really hope he gets to audition. The whole discussion started out with this post on io9, and ignoring the Twitter and Facebook campaign for a minute, I think the article raises some great points about adaptation and long-running characters shifting to reflect their eras and cultural values.

I mean, the last forty years in comic books is a story of reinvention and revision to remain relevant about society, from the X-Men commenting on racial prejudice to the movie The Dark Knight being, at its core, about terrorism and the potential for a "protector" to overstep boundaries in pursuit of justice. There have been plot lines in comics dealing with AIDS, with civil liberties. And those are just the superhero comics.

The version of the Green Lantern on the television show "Justice League of America" is black; the part of Kingpin, depicted in the comics as a fat white guy, was played by Michael Clarke Duncan in the movie Daredevil. And then there's Nick Fury, a character played by Samuel L. Jackson in the recent Iron Man movies. He isn't an African-American character in the comic books, but he is a badass, and that's Samuel L. Jackson's brand. The casting is determined by what would best represent the character's personality, rather than hewing too close to what's on the page.

So what I'm saying is, this switch would not be unprecedented, and it might actually be a way to enliven the franchise. And honestly, I think Donald Glover would emphasize the characteristics that make the Peter Parker of the comics so memorable: funny, self-depreciating, trying to navigate both real life and the powers that he has been given. And more than anything, I think these aspects of the character (yes, along with the spider powers) are what make him an enduring and popular hero several decades after his creation, and they define him much more than his race.