Scott Pilgrim vs the World

Scott Pilgrim was a comic book style graphic novel series created by Canadian author and artist Bryan Lee O’Malley. The story of the young slacking part-time musician Scott Pilgrim who was forced to battle several of his new girlfriend Ramon’s exes in order to date her was a creative enough idea to get the series incredibly high praise from both fans and critics, even resulting in Publisher Weekly ranking one of its volumes as one of the best comic books of 2006. With such a great concept and plenty of visual eye candy to chew on, a film adaptation was the logical next step and getting still relative newcomer but cult favourite director Edgar Wright to work on the film was a perfect match for the film’s style. Scott Pilgrim (played by Michael Cera) finds himself enamoured by a new girl in his part of town, the mysterious Ramona (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Upon getting together with her after breaking up with his past girlfriend, Knives (played by Ellen Wong), he discovers that he will be forced to fight the league of her seven exes in order to officially be able to date her. Stuck in a life-threatening situation all while struggling to keep his band popular within Toronto, Scott Pilgrim must use his world’s video game logic and rules in order to survive Ramona’s exes and get the chance to be with her, while also discovering along the way the things he has to change about himself. Though the film was a box office flop, it did critically well and eventually earned a cult following, proving that it did reach an audience and more than likely satisfied those who were connected with the source material. Much like the graphic novels, there is a lot of great stuff to work with through this material and the people behind this film did a pretty spot-on job. Though the film’s positive are really strong and make this a creative funny visual interesting experience, the film’s main character drags this film down BIG time.

The story for the movie is practically beat for beat what the graphic novel was, taking this world of cartoon-shaded people living in a fantastical video game-esque environment and placing it with a semi-realistic presentation without completing losing its audience. The concept for the film is a ton of fun and very fresh; mixing a video game layout and structure with a real-world battle-of-the-bands type of narrative is strangely a nice fit and allows both elements to blend together without clashing which comes from the impressive pacing and directing. Edgar Wright is often pretty good at these kind of films that balance wild and surreal components with characters and an environment that often looks at it with blind indifference, and you can feel how his style matches the comic’s attitude and personality pretty nicely. The process of beating evil exes to win the hand of a loved one is strange but also straightforward and allows for a lot of fun visuals and unique characters. While the direction is pretty solid, the writing for the film is a little messy, with a screenplay written by Wright and Michael Bacall that often gets lost in what it trying to focus on or what the main direction of the narrative is supposed to be. When it gets engrossed in the crazy side and has fun with itself, it’s okay, but the more subdued moments where development needs to happen can be a little weak. The world building for the film could also have been a bit stronger; having the real world feature video game aspects like 1-ups, superpowers, magical weapons and crazy flashy puffs of color and smoke are nice touches and give the movie a great aesthetic, but it’s never really determined how or why any of it is happening and ironically it’s a film where some sort of explanation would’ve been appreciated even if it wasn’t a completely logical explanation (it could’ve said that it was just in the main characters head and that would’ve been okay). Without at least an explanation, it becomes difficult to judge what is natural and what is normal in this world and that leads to certain instances where some of the characters, mainly with the lead, do things that do not match up with the rest of the film and it can be a little jarring.

A majority of the film’s characters are in many respect better than many of them should be considering that some only get a few lines of dialogue and a majority of them don’t even need to be in the film. The side characters in this movie are very memorable and a lot of fun to watch; Ramona’s a pretty cool character and Mary Elizabeth Winstead helps bring an aloof and distant, but still decently likeable shade to the role, Knives is a very sympathetic character with Ellen Wong bringing a lot of innocent charm and even legit cool swagger later in the film, the gay best friend played by Kieran Culkin is a lot of fun, Scott Pilgrim’s band members played by Mark Webber and Alison Pill are pretty likeable, Scott’s sister is performed well by Anna Kendrick,  a jealous ex-girlfriend of Scott’s played by Brie Larson is pretty fun and all of Ramona’s exes have a lot of great funny scenes and have some really eye-catching and memorable powers, bringing some absurdly strange moments to the film, amping up the conflict but even the humor in a goofy but still fitting manner, and all are portrayed by great actors like Chris Evans, Brandon Routh, Jason Schwartzman, Mae Whitman, Satya Bhabha, Shoto Saito and Keita Saito. With a line-up of characters like this, it would seem that this would be incredibly stellar to spend a film with, but unfortunately one giant problem sticks out like a sore thumb; the main character is pretty much intolerable in absolutely every sense. Even though its named after him, Scott Pilgrim is a truly awful character in every sense of the word; he’s not funny, he’s not cool, he’s miles away from anything resembling likeable, Michael Cera’s acting is awkward and stilted, his character is bland, his actions are terrible, his ‘’turn’’ towards the end has no impact or satisfaction involved whatsoever, and though the movie tries to play him off as this ‘’lady killer that every woman is in love with’’, it doesn’t work for a single second. With unlikeable characters, there’s at least something to hold onto that people can gravitate towards; the personality is intriguing or complex, they may have a level of charm that can win people over (like most of the exes in this film) or there’s a good reason for their awfulness, something needs to be human about them in order to make people like them. Scott Pilgrim hasn’t got a single redeeming thing about him; he is a horrible main character and takes this pretty good movie and gives it a giant disadvantage. Even if that was the intent and the movie wanted its audience to be stuck with this scum of an individual through some trollish action or as a means of properly showing a sense of growth from point A to B, but the film doesn’t do that well and is ironically not clever enough in that sense to make this character intentionally hateable, so he’s just awful to sit through.

The film does a good job shooting a regular looking Toronto and making it look like a video game environment without going too overboard with altering the location. There’s a nice simplicity to a lot of the locations, where every place is nice and basic, but also feels very down-to-earth and homely which mainly comes from the crew actually shooting in Toronto (as it was where the comics took place).  It does this through clever editing by Jonathan Amos and Paul Machliss, comic book like aspect ratios and word bubbles, a nice touch of vibrant colors in and out of fight sequences, and with cinematography by Bill Pope that manages to capture shots that look straight out of a graphic novel. The video game elements may not fully work due to having little explanation, but it’s smart how they are used for more than just a visual design, it feels more purposeful and also comes through in the progression of the story, the goal of the entire film which is very ‘’save the princess’’ like, and the over-the-top extremes and gimmicks that come with the action scenes. The fight scenes between the exes all are very unique and all feel very unique between the other, with the various quirks that each ex possesses leading to some really memorable moments (probably helped out by having Brad Allen and Peng Zhang from the Jackie Chan Stunt Team acting as trainers for the actors)The film contains extensive visual effects, using a combination of digital and physical methods to create the image, which are showcased during the opening sequence and the fight scenes. Most of them look pretty good and don’t try too hard to be realistic as the tone of the film allows the effects to more colorful and creative rather than authentic. The use of music is pretty effective in the film too; not just in incorporating it into the story through the bands having a huge part in the story, but also in the background score composed by Nigel Godrich which is important to the scenes they are used in but doesn’t overcrowd the space and is mainly just used for atmosphere. The humor in the movie is just the right amount of physical, visual, and verbal, each element getting a good laugh out of each, with the visual gags allowing for some great fast shots and edits and the verbal ones being a bit blunter and in your face.

Scott Pilgrim vs the World is a film that many people are skeptical about. With the tone of the movie as well as a majority of its humor looking pretty silly and more garnered towards comic book fans, it explains the not-so-great reception it got from the box office. But with a watch, there’s a lot for people to get into, showing off a lot of the great elements that Edgar Wright would use in his other work and even introduces people to a graphic novel that also has a lot of great stuff to it. If it wasn’t for how detestable and horrible the main character truly was and some of the other issues holding it back like its weak world building and a few scripting issues here and there, this movie would be even stronger than it is: featuring a nice creative story, great side characters, a lot of fun acting, colorful visuals and some good funny moments throughout. For fans of the novel, fans of comic books and video games, or just people who like crazy films with a crazy visual style, this is a pretty fun movie to jam out to.