Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World Review

My first exposure to Scott Pilgrim was a trailer I saw on one of the video game blogs I frequent, (Kotaku). This was several months ago, so I had never head of the graphic novels or the characters. The trailer was intriguing, as was the subsequent breakdown of all of the pop culture references crammed into that minute and a half. I was intrigued, but not overly so. Anyway, time passed and the hype about Scott Pilgrim grew. So when I was given a chance to read the graphic novels, I jumped on it (thanks Allison!).

The Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series is an interesting thing. At its core it seems to be a simple love story. Boy meets girl, falls in love, must overcome obstacles to be with girl, and eventually succeeds. No surprises there. But the interesting part is how its wrapped in a generous helping of blatant metaphors, the actuality of fighting Ramona's ex-es, the pop-culture and Canadian references, and perhaps most importantly the complete non-existence of the 4th wall. This is a graphic novel about making graphic novels. The characters frequently reference the fact that there are still multiple chapters or books left in the series, and the book is almost mocking you for attempting to take its story seriously. It is an exercise in pushing us to suspend our disbelief and seeing how much we will actually buy into. Actually fighting the ex-es? Sure, we can take that at face value. Leveling up? Yea, thats just a metaphor for character development right? But its not. Thats the entire point of the book. These aspects exist simply to exist. It is a remarkably self-aware parody of the entire genre. And it even goes beyond other genre parody to the point where it understands that it is within the genre it is parodying, it becomes self-parody. After finishing the final book, one thought occurred to me. How the hell were they going to make this into a movie? How could you even attempt to do the types of things that were accomplished in the movie without making it flat and trite?

Another major concern of transforming the graphic novels into a workable movie was the casting choice. The decision to cast Michael Cera as the lead was a decision almost universally mocked. Would he take this interesting, brash, willfully-ignorant, asshole-ish character and turn him into the bumbling socially-award George Michael that seemed to befall every single other role that Cera portrays?
Luckily for the viewer, Cera's performance is great. His portrayal of Scott Pilgrim is spot on. No worries there. (Whew)

However the big issue was, how can all of the details I talked about earlier transform into a movie without it losing its entire soul? It would be easy to just take the core story of Scott Pilgrim and make a movie about that, but it would be defeating the point as the graphic novels were so much more than that. So what did they do?

They took the idea of self-parody and applied it to the movie. There I said it. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is a parody of every movie ever, AND itself. And its brilliant.

It is the Anti-Inception and gloriously so. Here's why; a common dissection of Inception is that it is a look at the way action movies are made. Large action set-pieces are delicately crafted and weaved together to create something believable for the person experiencing the movie. So much so that the individual doesn't even recognize that they are watching a movie. The word bandied around to describe this is immersion, although that seems to be technically incorrect.
But anyway, it seems like the creators of Scott Pilgrim saw all of this, and simply went, “Well, fuck that. Lets just throw things together. Fuck immersion. Fuck character introductions, fuck drawing the viewer in. Lets just made a goddamn movie.”

Then they went and smoked large amounts of weed, drank 4 cups of coffee and played Street Fighter for 12 hours straight. Then wrote a script.

You never forget you are watching a movie while sitting through Scott Pilgrim. The movie doesn't let you. But thats not the point. It makes you look at yourself and laugh and go, “Am I really going to let this level of disbelief slide?” And you don't. But thats what makes it funny. You are laughing at your inability to accept the actions of the characters. They don't care. They don't tell jokes. They just interact within this insane world they inhabit. You, the viewer, can't understand this world, and you don't want to. So you laugh, because why would vegans have physic powers? And why would ANYONE accept that as justification? But they do. Its fine. Thats just how it works. You don't need explanations. Scott Pilgrim doesn't need to have a training montage to show how he learns how to fight. He just does. You don't need to have an establishing shot to understand whats going on. You just need a quick cut to a black screen, or to another background. When two characters are having a conversation, you don't pay attention to the background, so why have it? Cut it out! Its gloriously minimalistic, all extraneous, artful pretenses are thrown out the window. Movies are about being entertained by the absurd. So Here is a giant pile of absurd. Be Entertained!