It happened: the Veronica Mars movie came out. A large percentage of SportsAlcohol.com staff and contributors saw it together in Manhattan on Friday night. We were not able to record and transcribe the many conversations that followed. But we thought it might be nice to open a discussion thread on here for virtual reactions, however belated. I’ll kick in a few of my major comments below, and I hope others will respond and/or throw in their own.
Obviously, this thread will have spoilers.
Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
Latest posts by Jesse (see all)
- The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: The Biggest Holiday Movies of 1995 - December 22, 2025
- The Long-Awaited SportsAlcohol.com Anniversary Podcast Double Feature: 1985 and 2005 - November 30, 2025
- The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Oscars Special 2025! - February 25, 2025
The question that has stuck the most with me: why do we not learn ANYTHING about the tenure of Sheriff Vinnie Van Lowe?
Last we saw on the TV series, Keith Mars was running a probably-doomed-by-Veronica campaign to become sheriff again, against Vinnie Van Lowe. It’s pretty clear from the movie that Keith indeed lost that election. This means Vinnie won, right? But when we see him in the movie, he’s a high-tech/low-class TMZ-style sleaze merchant. This makes sense; no one expects Vinnie Van Lowe to get elected sheriff, let alone stay sheriff for nine years. But I want to know SO MUCH about him being sheriff such as:
–How long was it before his administration was overtaken by scandal? A year? Two years? Six months? Three weeks?
–What was the PARTICULAR scandal that brought him down? Or was it a perfect storm of multiple scandals?
–Or did he just find out the sheriff job doesn’t actually pay as much as he had assumed?
–Was the Van Lowe administration so short and/or reviled that literally no one in Neptune will ever speak of it, as they all consider one of the darkest chapters in their already noirish town history?!
–What were the (multiple, I presume) steps between Sheriff Van Lowe and Sleazy Van Van Lowe? Basically, I want a “How Your Mother Met Me”-style thirty minutes that takes us through all of this in continuity-heavy detail. Or for you guys to fan-fiction the hell out of this immediately.
Also, the end of the movie shows it’s not really going in this direction, but for a second there Anne and I both thought: SHERIFF VERONICA. She’d still have to deal with corruption within the powers that be in Neptune, but I’d like to see her struggles to clean up the town from within, without the protective shield of her outsider status.
I think Veronica becoming sheriff is something that happens when they are truly ready to either move on from Veronica Mars or do something very different from the show. It would have a very series finale feel.
I think Veronica could be sheriff and keep the stories going. I imagine her being Raylan Givens-style LEO: basically never doing her job except when it intersects with her personal life.
I would also like to say that Rob and I were both pretty convinced initially that Logan in his Navy uniform was some kind of dream sequence or hallucination. Not least because his uniform didn’t fit. The movie reveals that Logan really is a military man now, and I have mega-mixed feelings about that (wouldn’t the movie work a little better if Logan was a credible suspect for even a short period of time?!), but I also kept thinking: well, isn’t Veronica the only one who actually sees him in said uniform? AND the uniform doesn’t fit. So it’s possible that this is a long-con, right? I would be way more into that than Military Hero Logan.
This messed me up a few different ways. The generally pro-Logan crowd laughed at Logan in uniform and I couldn’t hear him saying that he met with JAG, I thought he was saying he was a member of JAG. The former makes way more sense.
The other thing is how the hell does a convicted felon get into the armed forces? Then it dawned on me that Logan has committed a lot of felonies, but never been convicted?
Though my Film Racket review calls the V-Mars movie kind of not really a movie, I don’t necessarily mean that as an insult. I actually think there’s something really amazing about watching something you’ve probably mostly watched alone or with a handful of other people with a huge crowd. I saw an episode of Buffy at my college movie theater with a packed crowd and it was electric. Similarly, the Veronica Mars big screen experience was fantastic, not so much because the movie is more cinematic than the show (in fact, I wish they had pushed that a little further for the movie) but because it played like a raucous comedy and thrilling action-romance movie all rolled into one. It was basically the ideal Summer Movie crowd foisted upon a $6 million shoestring character drama. In other words, an amazing experience. Did others have similarly transformative experiences with Veronica in the big screen?
Possibly my favorite part of the movie-going experience was at the end when “We Used to Be Friends” played over the end credits and people started clap-clapping along.
(spoilers follow)
I enjoyed the movie a lot, and got what I hoped for. Even the smallest b-players brought there A-game. The way the audience erupted at Leo D’Amato and the busted out pizza was fan service at it’s best (and likely confusing to the significant other’s Jesse mentions above)
In choosing to focus on the detectives and friends rather than the plot (and having a full B-plot too), I thought the rough Natalie Wood-style intrigue plot was cool, and it well unravelled by V. but also fell apart when revealed. I suppose the fact that none of the characters on the boat were too bright explains it a little, but the notion that people would allow themselves to be so thoroughly blackmailed over what was basically an accidental OD by the person who provided the drugs that caused said OD seems, well, thin.
I was actually more intrigued by the b-plot of corrupt police folks basically lazily framing minorities and brutalizing suspects which went back to the class issues most seen in V-mars’ early season. Hopefully there will be a V-mars two that looks into this a little more.
What did law school ruin for you?
A law firm would never have a law graduate start before taking the bar exam. They want you fully-focused on the passing the exam, and not distracted by studying. Also the hiring would have more than likely come a year before graduation and would not have been rescinded for a brief start delay. Also, how is it that V-mars is grilled over whether she could be blackmailed over an already public sex tape (how would that blackmail even work?) but JAG does not screen Logan over things he actually did do (cough, bum fighting) let alone legitimately suspected of.
I understand that was needed for narrative purposes, and to make it easier for V-Mars to sink back into the Hellmouth, but I would preferred to see V. have the agency of choosing not to have the job, rather than losing it this way. Same with Piz’s break up. Supposedly the stable and good guy, it seems a bit unstable and not understanding for him to break up an almost decade (?) relationship because V. has taken a few days to help an ex out of a murder charge. Maybe he sensed that he had lost her already, but this is almost seems too easy in allowing V. not to be cheating a few scenes later when she gives is to Logan’s brooding ways.
What did your mom think?
From her: “I think I would have liked the ending of the movie better if Veronica wasn’t with Logan or Piz. It just didn’t feel right to me.”
So one thing was covered very briefly in the movie but it was easy to miss: she wasn’t with Piz since college. She transferred out of Hearst and into Stanford her sophomore year, and then ran into Piz again in NYC a year or so before the events of the movie. They reconnected and resumed dating, so it was a yearlong relationship that she was neglecting and he was ending. Still kind of a big thing, but not quite as crazy as almost ten years together.
But I do agree: it was way too easy an out to have Piz break up with her before she actually has to decide whether to stay in Neptune and/or hook up with Logan. That — and the insistence that Logan couldn’t be an actual suspect in the murder (I thought of Natalie Wood too, by the way! Really nice touch on that, I thought) — were the biggest instances of sopping to L/V shipping. I’m sure the next movie (if it happens) won’t take place during Logan’s six-month Navy term but I’d love it if it did.
I see the point, but it does make sense that she loses all these things by virtue of becoming too focused on the case.
Random outpouring of thoughts:
-Overall, immensely enjoyable.
-At first was kind of shocked to see Logan in uniform, but it kind of makes sense.
-Really, really wish that Logan & Veronica could just have moved on, with acceptance and closure this time.
-I don’t LOVE Piz, but he deserved better than a phone-break up and not even a pre-credits, “Stosh ‘Piz’ Piznarski went on to receive a Pulitzer Prize for his series of articles on how slow walkers are bad people. He is divorced and lives in DUMBO. He sees his three children every weekend. He regularly punctuates his news-related predictions by declaring ‘I’ll stake my Pulitzer on it!'”
-The script could have used some work. “Our love is epic…” Also, “Eenie, meenie, minie..”
-How come Keith and Wallace’s mom never got back together?
-Did I invent this or wasn’t Dick the one who encouraged Beaver to rape Veronica? Why has he never had to take any shit for this?
-I’ve never watched “Don’t Trust the B in Apt 23,” but may have to in order to see Krysten Ritter NOT die a horrible death.
-Weevil picking up Huggies on the way home.
“Our love is epic” is a callback to that line from (I think) the end of season two. Which I agree should not have seen the light of day, either in the series or the movie.
But I will say that the Words with Friends joke might be the best-written joke ever in Veronicaverse.
It is odd how much Dick has been softened (tee hee) in the ensuing years but it sort of fits with the events of season two and how fucked up he must be deep down after what happened with his brother. Who I think he did encourage to rape Veronica? But I don’t remember how, uh, serious he was about it, but yeah, regardless he’s actually kind of a disgusting person… who was nonetheless kind of insanely delightful in the movie.
Oh, I got that it was a call back. It was just even more grown-worthy now that I’m no longer in my early 20s.
And yeah, even I was glad to see Dick. No idea why.
I think Ryan Hansen is to Rob Thomas as the cast of Freaks and Geeks is to Judd Apatow.
Upon rewatching the series. the original story is epic speech works better for me. Nice choice of song and it makes sense for Logan to over-romanticize his time with Veronica during a low point. And Veronica basically no-sirs him.
The call back in the movie was annoying. They both remember this thing he drunkenly said 9-10 years ago? And Veronica finishes the quote?
I feel to think that that was cool is to forget 2 things:
1. Veronica’s initial response to the speech: “Come on. Ruined lives? Bloodshed? You really think a relationship should be that hard?”
2. Logan’s immediate response to Veronica’s tentative rejection is to sleep with his friend’s stepmom again.
Why did Logan start a fistfight at the reunion? Did he think that if he concussed enough bros the projector would magically stop?