Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World arrived in 2010 with a tagline promising “An epic of epic epicness.” It is not that. It is something more interesting and more uneven: a romantic action comedy that runs 113 minutes, bends Toronto into a video game level, and asks Michael Cera to fight seven people for a girl.
The film is based on Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novel series. Wright wrote the screenplay with Michael Bacall. Universal Pictures released it in the United States on August 13, 2010, and in the United Kingdom on August 25.
Trailer, via Universal Pictures.
Seven Evil Exes and a Garage Band
Cera plays Scott Pilgrim, a 22-year-old bassist for Sex Bob-Omb, an unsuccessful indie garage band in Toronto. He dates Knives Chau, a 17-year-old high school student, which his bandmates, his sister Stacey and his roommate Wallace Wells all disapprove of.
Then Ramona Flowers skates into his life. Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays her: an American Amazon delivery girl Scott first sees in a dream before meeting her at Julie Powers’ party.
Scott loses interest in Knives but does not break up with her before pursuing Ramona. That cowardice is the film’s engine, and it never quite gets the reckoning it deserves.
When Sex Bob-Omb plays a battle of the bands sponsored by record executive Gideon Graves, Ramona’s ex-boyfriend Matthew Patel attacks Scott. Patel incinerates the competition with fireball attacks. Scott beats him, then learns the terms: he must defeat Ramona’s remaining six evil exes to date her.
So the film becomes a fighting game with a dating plot bolted on.
Lucas Lee, Todd Ingram, Roxy Richter
The exes arrive as genre parodies. Chris Evans plays Lucas Lee, an actor and skateboard junkie. Scott defeats him by tricking him into a grind on a 200-plus step icy railing, which ends in an explosive crash.
Next is Todd Ingram, a super-powered vegan bassist dating Scott’s ex, Envy Adams, the lead singer of Clash at Demonhead. Scott deceives Todd into drinking half and half. The vegan police confront Todd and strip his powers. Scott delivers the final blow.
Then Roxy Richter, a bisexual ninja, whom Scott beats with Ramona’s help.
Scott’s frustration boils over. He has an outburst about Ramona’s dating history. She breaks up with him and leaves him a list of her exes.
The cast around Cera is the film’s real argument:
- Kieran Culkin as Wallace Wells
- Anna Kendrick as Stacey Pilgrim
- Alison Pill as Kim Pine
- Aubrey Plaza as Julie Powers
- Jason Schwartzman as Gideon Graves
Wright has said the mix was deliberate. “Like with Hot Fuzz [when they] had great people in every single tiny part, it’s the same with this,” he said, naming Cera and Schwartzman alongside “people who are up and coming, like Anna Kendrick, Aubrey Plaza and Brie Larson, and then there’s complete unknowns as well.”
Toronto as a Level
Filming ran from March to August 2009 in Toronto. The film uses the city’s famous features and matches the style of video game and comic book imagery. It used real musical artists, including Beck and Metric, as the basis for each fictional group in the battle of the bands plot, with some actors also performing. Nigel Godrich composed the score. Digital and physical methods combined for the extensive VFX.
Casting ran from 2008 to 2010, handled by Wright with casting directors Jennifer Euston, Allison Jones and Robin D. Cook. Cera was cast in March 2008, Winstead in May. By the end of 2008, Whitman, Wong and Kendrick were in. In January 2009, Routh, Evans and Larson were announced together, with Webber, Pill, Simmons and Bhabha added around the same time. Extras casting in Toronto began in February 2009.
The film premiered at San Diego Comic-Con on July 22, 2010, then at the Fantasia Festival on July 27.
What the Film Actually Wins
The years since have been kind to the casting in a way the film itself did not earn. Commenters have noted that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World features an all-star roster of actors from comic book and superhero films.
One critic wrote that the film “may have the best of comic book movie actors, ever.” Another argued that “notable actors [having starred] in comic book adaptations before and after their roles in Scott Pilgrim [injects] a meta quality to the film’s already genre-busting style.”
That is a real thing. It is also a thing that happened to the movie rather than in it.
An epic of epic epicness.
The tagline is the problem in miniature. Wright’s direction is genuinely inventive — the video game grammar, the comic book cuts, the Toronto streets turned into stages. The humor lands more often than it misses. Winstead gives Ramona a cool that the script does not bother to explain.
But Scott is not a protagonist the film is willing to judge. He strings along Knives, pursues Ramona, and the exes exist so he can punch his way past his own behavior. The fighting-game structure is a joke about dating baggage. It is also a way to avoid the conversation the movie keeps circling.
The ensemble is the reason to watch. Culkin, Kendrick, Pill and Plaza do more with small parts than the plot does with its leads. The record-deal competition and the battle of the bands give the film a spine that the romance does not.
It received positive reviews from critics, who noted its visual style and humor, though it was a box-office disappointment. That split is honest. The style is the achievement. The box office is the verdict on whether any of it connected.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a film that looks like nothing else from 2010 and thinks less than it looks. Worth seeing for Wright’s construction and a cast that is deeper than the material. Not worth defending as the epic its tagline promised.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
