by Nick Taylor
I first saw Scott Pilgrim vs The World with my mom at an advanced screening, the benefit of a summer-long stint in 2010 where my parent’s work received passes for secret audience test runs of upcoming blockbusters. The theater was decently sized and completely packed, mainly crowded with teenage boys escorted by parents, grandparents, and other miscellaneous chaperones, plus a good number of twenty- and thirtysomethings who likely read Bryan Lee O’Malley’s recently concluded graphic novel series. You can imagine any number of reasons why this movie would’ve played well to the teen boys in the audience, though it still amazes me how much everyone in the theater seemed to be having a good time with it. Ten years later and it’s still a reliable hit with my immediate family, and someone referring to it as Edgar Wright’s best film can get me on their side real quick...
There are a couple ways you could summarize the many story and character threads of Scott Pilgrim vs The World. At its core, the film is focused on the romance between the hopelessly Canadian Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) and the very cool American Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who’s recently moved to Canada and is now delivering for amazon.ca. Scott first sees her rollerblading through a subspace highway in his subconscious, and even though their first irl interaction is a bit rough, their first date goes super well.
Trouble is there’s two major roadblocks to their relationship working out. One is that Scott is already dating a 17 year old high schooler named Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), at least in part because he’s still not over getting his heart kicked in the ass over a year ago by former bandmate and current rock superstar Envy Adams (Brie Larson). Knives is head over heels for Scott, and the thought of breaking her heart is a major impediment to Scott’s highly ambivalent ass pulling the plug. The other, more dangerous threat is the League of Evil Exes (comprised of Satya Bhabha, Chris Evans, Brandon Routh, Mae Whitman, Keita and Shota Seito, and Jason Schwartzman), an organization of seven of Ramona’s former partners who’ve banded together to control her love life by beating the shit out of anyone who’s interested in her. Sounds like fun, right? I still don’t get how this became a box office bomb, though its current cult status feels inevitable and justly earned.
For as big an impact as Scott Pilgrim had on me - particularly via Wallace Wells, who was a key component to my sense of humor and to Realizing Things - I wouldn’t say it was hugely influential to what I looked for in movies. But then again, how many films can you think of that successfully managed to incorporate comic book and video game aesthetics with such spritely enthusiasm? With its cleverly integrated visual effects, whipsmart editing, versatile sound design, and perfectly curated soundtrack, Scott Pilgrim keys into the best, most distinct impulses of its source material while remaining broadly accessible to viewers who didn’t read the books. Wright’s sense of humor and audiovisual creativity fits well with O’Malley’s witty dialogue and captivating imagery, recreating whole passages of the graphic novel while staying true to his own sensibilities. Compare even the best scenes of Sin City or Watchmen, two films that mostly exist as fetishistic recreations of their original texts, and it becomes even more obvious how much work Wright and his artists have put into honoring Scott Pilgrim’s 2-D idiosyncracies while re-interpreting it as cinema.
All of these aspects are at their best in the first hour. Wright and co-writer Michael Bacall capably interweave the various plot threads between Scott, Knives, Ramona, and the League while still leaving room to show what day-to-day life is like for these characters. The use of video game and comic book grammars from the out helps to delineate which effects we see are part of Scott's POV and which one seem woven into the fabric of this world. Scott, when not an ass-kicking fighter, is sort of a loser, and the film walks a fond line of indulging his nerdy tendencies even as it diagnoses his immaturity and dating of high schoolers as unhealthy. He needs to grow up, get a job, maybe stop relying on his cool gay roommate Wallace Wells (Kieran Culkin) for almost everything. You can see why this guy might be attracted to a woman who seems as self-possessed and tough and hot as Ramona does, and he’s just charming enough that we can understand why she’d date him back. What ultimately makes the movie work is the amount of time we get watching everyone interact with each other, not just worldbuilding but establishing the lives of these characters as related to Scott but also independent of him. Maybe they story don't "need" a scene of Wallace flirting with the new boyfriend of Scott's sister Stacey (Anna Kendrick), but it reveals character and is very funny.
It’s not that Scott Pilgrim fails to maintain its energy and creativity, at least on the levels of craft and performance. But somewhere between the third and fourth ex the film starts moving faster through its narrative beats and boss battles. You can feel it trying to fit itself underneath a two hour time limit, which seems counterintuitive to how much personality Wright has evoked by not winnowing his focus so dramatically. The critiquing of Scott’s behavior towards the women in his life is replaced by a “respect others by respecting yourself” meme, and Ramona’s caginess about her history starts to read as a lack of character development. The extra dimensions afforded to the supporting cast is basically taken out at the knees. I don’t know why Wright’s films always implode to some degree in the last third, though his condensing of the third act into a familiar Hollywood shape is hardly an unforgivable sin. I’ll happily take the flattening of theme and short-shrifting of character here over Baby Driver’s increasingly gross attitude towards everyone who’s not Baby. I’d also take any footage that got left on the cutting room floor due to time constraints, if you got some.
Still, what makes Scott Pilgrim vs The World less satisfying as a whole does nothing to diminish how great most of the individual parts are. Beyond the unimpeachable craft, it’s also - to an absurd degree - a hilarious acting showcase for a cast stacked with folks that I’m normally not crazy about. Michael Cera’s comic timing and dorky appeal is unexpectedly effective at highlighting what’s needy and indecisive about Scott. Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s aloofness is a great fit for Ramona’s cool-girl intrigue. Diamond-hard turns from Kieran Culkin, Anna Kendrick, Satya Bhabha, Chris Evans, Allison Pill, and Mae Whitman, (to name a few) are endlessly rewatchable. To an one, almost every single role is scarily well-cast, and even if the script could stand to give some of these characters more to do, their actors remain delightfully fun.
And, since I’ve made my bread and butter on The Film Experience discussing supporting actresses, I’d be remiss not to end this article on Ellen Wong, whose performance as Knives is very easily my favorite piece of acting in any Edgar Wright movie. I love how uncondescending Wong is as putting over Knives’ love for Scott, not just in “bigger” displays cheering him on at a concert but when they’re just hanging out at the thrift store and gossiping about the torrid romances of her yearbook club. Her energy is almost infectious, and she’s such a sympathetic character that we feel genuinely sorry for her when Scott dumps her (though she could obviously do better). More than anyone, I wish the screenplay spent more time with her in the second half - I'd have loved a scene detailing what changed from her sad encounter with Scott after the battle of the bands to her actions afterwards. More than that, I am deeply confused how she’s like, the only cast member who didn’t watch their career go supernova within three years. Who else could nail a role that’s equal parts romantic lead, bubbly comedienne, and kickass action hero only to get zero major film offers in any of those genres? All I could do after watching her near-perfect performance was imagine her take on Ingrid Thorburn and Helena Bertinelli, among so many other roles she should've gotten the chance to play. I hope she gets more chances to strut her stuff soon, but if the only way to see her excel any time soon is to watch Scott Pilgrim again, I think I can live with that.
