Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Oh joy, another lengthy blog post about Scott Pilgrim. BUT WAIT! This is the MOVIE! TOTALLY different!

Quite simply, I loved it. As a fan of the graphic novels, I guess that’s to be expected, but I tried going in with a blanl-slate-perspective and… I still loved. Like the books, the movie will appeal to anyone of the “plugged-in” generation of the 80’s and 90’s. It embodies not only the hard-and-fast changes of pop culture that we’re so would up in, but also how we take it in stride. For instance, in one scene, Scott goes to the bathroom, where a “pee bar” appears and is drained as he… does what people usually do in the bathroom. He steps out into a high school hallway, clearly dreaming. It’s this kind of transition that is at once creative and, oddly enough, easy to follow. I saw this multiple times and none of my companions (Of which there were multiple motley crews of) raised a “WTF.” In a comic book, such a transition is easy, simply being panel-to-panel, but the movie has preserved this sense of quick-change remarkably well. Sometimes it feels like the movie is lampooning itself for this, and text will often appear, reading things like, “Later,” or “And then it was time.”

Another thing I thought was clever was in one of the Evil Ex fights, where Scott is punched in the face and a “WHAM!” sound effect appears (yes, appears) behind him. A second punch sends Scott backward, shattering the sound effect. In fact, immediately after, you can see the shards scattering onto the floor. There’s a lot of these little subtleties throughout the movie. For instance, when Scott tosses aside a “Clash at Demonhead” album, it lands in the “Beck” section. Beck did a lot of the music in the film, Sex Bob-omb in specific. Another time, when evil ex Todd Ingram is using his powers against Scott for the first time, the waves of psychic force radiating outward actually erase The Clash at Demonhead’s drummer from the wall. This is a reference to her ninja-esque ability to teleport. In fact, in that saem part of the book, it mentions that she “wants to blend into the wall like an awesome ninja.”

The filmography as a whole is very impressive. The action is contant and kinetic. Though the sound effects, etc. leap out at you, they never seem obnoxiously in-your-face. The action scenes and cinematography in general were great. Everything was very well-framed and you never got a sense of the focus being to broad or too narrow, which is an easy pitfall for many action movies.

In fact, I was very impressed with the fights. Each one is individual and fun to watch. They could have easily made them repetive and boring. I mean, hey, seven big fight scenes? Seven bosses? Isn’t the audience going to stop caring after the first 3 fisticuff-matches? Of course not. One of the ex’s fights is a cross between a Street Fighter match and a Bollywood musical. Another’s is a brawl between two bands who each spawn beasts made out of sound to fight. One of the ex’s sends in his stunt team. There’s a fast-paced ninja fight. A sword duel. A bass-off. All these fights are memorable and amazing in their own way, from a choreographical, narrative, and technical standpoint.

I’m going to address one of everyone’s biggest worries right off: Michael Cera. Most people I talked to said they liked the look of the film but were hesitant about seeing it because Cera was leading. He’s often lampooned for playing the same character in all his works, which I don’t think is a bad thing as long as the character is written that way, but Scott is very emotive and dynamic, and I too was skeptical about Michael Cera’s ability to pull it off. Luckily, Cera passes the trial with flying colors. Though he is still awkward, he is more expressive and is a perfect fit for Scott’s character.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s Ramona Flowers is heavily defined within the conext of her and Scott’s relationship so I’ll talk about that here. It seems a lot of people were complaining about the relationship; Scott seems to be kind of a douche and Ramona is aloof and a little cold. Many were disappointed when they ended up together.

But maybe that’s the point. Perhaps the point was that he was making a mistake, but that this mistake would help him grow. At the beginning of the film he is… kind of a jerk, emotionally blind, “chronically enfeebled” as Stacey says. But over the course of the movie, he grows up; he matures. Ramona is the same way, she is just running from the past. In one scene that mirrors Scott talking about his and Knives’s relationship, Ramona tells him she was dating him because he was “easy.” This is the same thing that happened between Scott and Knives. Both Scott and Ramona were trying something simple and pleasant, trying to ignore the past, trying not to grow up. If you think about it, Scott’s reasons for dating Ramona are very shallow. He sees her in a dream and at a party. Boom. He thinks she’s “the one” and he two-times Knives.

Ramona, on the other hand, seems cold and distant. She’s trying to stay one step ahead of the game. Scott hits the nail right on the head when he says “I know you act aloof to avoid getting hurt.” What does she do when she’s forced to be in the same presence of Lucas Lee, one of her exes; a reminder of her past? She disappears. This seemed random and pointless at the time; it seemed like an out-of-the-blue basis for emotional tension. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense, and actually made a better case for Ramona’s characterization. If you’ll notice, Ramona usually does try and avoid the Exes whenever possible. During the Lucas Lee fight, she found the chance to slip away and escape her past again. Both Scott and Ramona display different kinds of emotional immaturity. Ramona says “Maybe I’m not the one you should be fighting for.” Scott realizes he needs to find a purpose, something greater than beating the level and getting the princess. Hence, the Power of Self-Respect. So maybe his ending up with Ramona is the best way to end it. Both have matured and grown past what ruined their relationship before. And if hey, maybe they aren’t meant for each other, but they now have the maturity to accept their mistakes and learn from them. This film is all about experiencing life, making mistakes, learning from them, getting up, getting over, and growing up.

CHARACTER STUFF (A.K.A. the movie is really well cast and here’s why):

Knives definitely had a more dominant, overarching role in the story. In the graphic novels, she is largely irrelevant by Volume 6. Which works well, since within the span of this 2-hour flick, her motivations and actions are surprisingly noncompressed. I found some subtle differences in character: in the books, Knives is a normal, relatively unremarkable teenager who is flushed out more after she and Scott break up, which could be attributed to this being one of the first real emotional experiences of her young life (She mentions to Scott that she has never kissed a boy, nor did she “know good music existed” until she met him). In the movie, it seemed like she displayed quite a few of her… more unstable tendancies from the moment we first meet her. I acknowledge that this is important; after all, in a movie, you need a character to grab the viewer’s attention almost immediately. Ellen Wong herself does a great Knives, and despite what I just said above, she’s able to really distinguish Knives as she delves further and further into obssession, and it is hilarious.

Honestly, I don’t think Stephen Stills gets enough credit in this movie. if anything, he’s more neurotic and obsessed with “making it big” than in the graphic novels. I like him in this regard; how many of us started bands in high school/college/out-of-college with aspirations to become the next big thing? If you look closely, Stephen Stills is the only one in the band, in his entire group of friends for that matter, with any real plan/ambition for his life. In the same way that Scott appeals to that driftlessness we all felt at that stage in life, Stephen Stills appeals to all the plans that we had and either flopped on or lost interest in.

Wallace Wells, played by Kieran Culkin, steals the show. I was very skeptical of Culkin at first, even moreso that Cera. He seemed too nerdy-looking and awkward to properly portray Wallace’s pseudo-suave, snarky style. In short, he does. His deadpan responses to Scott, his ahem way with the men-folk, and his overall chameleon-like ability to slip into the role.

Kim Pine didn’t recieve nearly enough attention. Though she is a world-class deadpan snarker, and is the subject of a lot of good jokes. However, their past (Which has much significance) is rarely explored, though frequently brought to attention. There are multiple referrences made to the fact that she and Scott dated in high school, and it is made very clear that there is some emotional tension between them. This is never explored or expanded on. Near the end, Scott says “I’m sorry about everything… I’m sorry about me.” This would be heartwarming and profound… if there was any buildup or grounds for his apology. However, it’s very clear that Scott has hurt her, moreso here than in the books. Every time she looks at him, every time he says “Kim and I are all cool now,” she shoots him “daggers of death” eyes. He says this again in regards to Knives, another person he’s hurt. But he’s unwilling to see it, tying back into his initial emotional immaturity. Another (rather minor) issue I have with Kim is her hair. It looks like a clumsily made wig constructed out of tufts of orange hair that were glued together. Lame, I know, but it bothered me.

Envy was… interesting. Naturally, she’s a super-bitch, but she seems too far on the “antagonist” side to the point where she doesn’t even have a personality outside of… being a bitch. The actress’s performence, while it works in that respect, is still very one-dimensional. Granted, in the movie Envy plays a far lesser role, but I expect some humanity from my soulless pop-divas, thnk you very much! However, one could attribute this to the fact that he’s unwilling to admit the fact that their break-up was somewhat harmful to both sides, hence why she’s so cold. I found it kind of amusing that The Clash at Demonhead’s song features, bass, drums, guitar, and keyboard, but the only instruments being played onstage were bass and drums.

The Evil Exes were all great in their respective performances. I could spend this paragraph gushing about them, but you don’t want to read that. I will say, though, that they are all amazing, over-the-top bosses (ESPECIALLY the large ham that is Satya Bhabha’s Matthew Patel)… with the exception of the infamous Twins. As you may have heard/gleaned from the trailers, they are no longer roboticists, but a Japanese music duo that Sex Bob-omb must take on. My problem is that the twins have no personality; they say nothing. I know it was intentional, but the other exes were all smug jerks you you felt like you would want to punch in real life. The twins just feel like faceless goons. It felt like the movie still wanted a cool scene, but figured, “OK, who cares about these guys? We wanna see Gideon!” I gotta give special props to Jason Schwartzman, who plays Gideon. He does Gideon’s passive-aggressive, pseudo-amicable personality so well. This was a Gideon that I hated. I felt like the book version had better characterization, but the movie version was more villainous and smug (Especially considering certain decisions Ramona makes in the third act of the movie).

Well, those are my thoughts (lame conclusion, I know. Conclusion paragraphs were where I always got stuck in essays in fifth grade. How can you not repeat the opening?). The characters, sub-plots, fight scenes, humor, and surrealism add up to a great experience. It’s easily now one of my favorite movies. Maybe not one of the greatest movies, but one of my favorites. I’m looking forward to watching this film years later and seeing my kids not getting it. Then I will tell them of a magical time, when I would break out into musical fights with my girlfriend’s exes, bands played three second songs, love could transform into swords, and it seemed like there were more blogs than there were computers.

SCOTT PILGRIM'S FINEST HOUR

Rarely have I found works I love as much as Scott Pilgrim. Where to begin? The crazy-ass plot? The quirky-ass characters? The kicking-ass fights? The video game and pop culture parodies? Well, I suppose I’ll start at the end: Volume 6: Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour. I’ve got some PRETTY INTERESTING thoughts (read: lengthy drivel) on the latest installment, but first let me warm you up with some MISADVENTUROUS TALES.

Giddy all throughout meddlesome summer shindiggery, I nabbed my Scott Pilgrim-loving friend with a car and we set off for the nearest Borders. The nearest one turned out to be several miles away, where sales tax is about 10% of the item, BUT I DIGRESS. We arrived and promptly prowled about for the graphic novel section, concluding after going in circles a few times that it was in fact on the second floor. Ascending the Carpetted Staircase, we reached the top to find a colorful display greeting us. And what should be on this display but the Scott Pilgrim series? We took the copies further back on the display (i.e. those less likely to have been manhandled), and did our preliminary flip-through, wherein we we flip through all the pages really fast and try to discern the story.

“Scott got impaled by an angel”

“I think I saw someone with a gun”

“I’m prrrreettttyyyy sure Stephen Stills is in this one.”

And then, like the cool kats we are, we descended the stairs with our copies, reading in unison. We headed back to the car with our trophies of consumer conquest and a toblerone bar (The official Snack of Scott Pilgrim) and had a fantastical ride back home filled with wonderful Swiss delicacies, Reel Big Fish, Dr. Horrible, and me trying to dissuade my companion from reading while she drove (We decided that finishing first would be a competition). I got home, promising to give her a 15-minute head start. After an irking quarter-hour, I plunged into it with my Blade of Literacy.

‘Kay now: thoughts. There gonna be some massive spoilers from here on out, so I must ask ye faint of heart and ye faint of story-spilling to turn away at this time.

I’ll start with Gideon. One of the things I was looking forward to most in Volume 6 was this guy. I was expecting him to be a more aloof character, as he appeared in Volume 3, for instance, and initially that’s what he seems like (Like when he’s having Envy try on outfits). I think this is because, as the Final Boss, the Big Bad, I was expecting him to be more detached, less a character and more a figure of power and antagonism. But I’m glad how, in a single volume, Gideon is developed basically from the ground up into a real character on par with Scott or Ramona. I rather like his surface act of being an ‘okay guy,’ when in actuality, he’s a twisted genius.

I, like a lot of people will, saw Gideon as what Scott might have become, especially when he reveals his stasis-sealed ex-girlfriends. He is clinging to his past, his imagined past, the same way Scott was revealed to be doing at the beginning of the book. When Gideon is forced to confront the fact that his paradigm of the past might be wrong, he refuses, just as Scott was when he was confronting his dark side.


He would have lost, too, if not for Ramona. Or rather, he would have lost if he had simply tried to forget what he had with Ramona. Near the end of Volume 5, Scott and Ramona are both forced to accept their faults. They both deal with it in their own ways: Ramona runs from it, Scott tries to forget it and start over by reverting to his old slacker life. In trying to forget Ramona, he tries to escape even further, going back to his ex-girlfriends with... awkward propositions.

When Scott fights his darker self, there are 2 possible outcomes: Either he forgets all his mistakes, glazing over the past, and invariably screwing up again, or he allows his faults to corrupt him as a person, turning him “evil.” With Ramona, however, he realizes that he can still move forward with all his baggage. She just needs to learn how to do the same thing. This ties into the theme of getting up, getting over, and moving on that is prevailent in this volume.

Scott reverts to and remains trapped in his default ‘slacker’ life, but he remains in the security of the past and forgetting the mistakes he made, while his friends have all moved on without him. Stephen Stills has come out, Julie moves away, Kim is gone, and Knives is, gasp, over him. It seems to me that he regressed this way after he broke up with Envy, as well, and it’s why he has a complete mental shutdown in Volume 2 when she calls him: the past is coming back to face him. Incidentally, previous to Volume 6’s release, I speculated that Scott had become temporarily evil after his breakup with Envy, Negascott being his ‘evil self.’ I guess in the end, I was half-right.

Going back to Gideon, he is Scott’s opposite number: he’s a successful entrepeneur, a genius, a millionare, and he took the path opposite Scott’s in terms of dealing with himself. I thought it interesting that the headglow was, in fact, Gideon’s doing, implying that Scott’s portrayal of himself as the ‘hero’ and forgetting all his misdeeds, was Gideon’s fault too. And since he apparently has the ability to do this to anyone, that makes him the devil; the darkness in everyone’s hearts.


This makes Gideon not only a compelling character, but also a force of nature. This is connected with Gideon himself being ‘trapped in his own head.’ He couldn’t deal with himself and is unreceptive to the needs of others, which is why his past paradigm is different from reality, while Scott’s are implied to be implanted. I guess it goes to show how keeping your problems locked up inside you only damages your ability to deal with change. In fact, it’s possible that one of the reasons Scott’s highschool flashback occurs at the beginning of Volume 2 is that, chronologically, that’s when Gideon put it there.

On a completely different note, I’d like to talk about growth in the series, because that’s what I feel the series is about: Growth. Scott is stuck in a loop, always going back to the easy way of doing things. Ramona is also trapped this way: She runs from herself and tries to adopt a new self. After Scott meets Ramona, he begins turning into a more responsible person and is maturing, like gaining the Power of Love. Ramona sees Scott as something different, something she doesn’t need to run away from. As Scott defeats her evil exes (i.e. overcoming her own personal issues), their relationship grows. However, around Volume 5, they begin reverting back to their old patterns; Scott is complacent and Ramona wants to escape. From here, it’s regression. Ramona disappears and Scott becomes a complete slacker again. From there, they learn how to move on, while at the same time dealing with their issues, not avoiding them. Defeating Gideon is the point where the begin dealing with things together and directly (And with Dual Techs).

I think one of the reasons Scott finds his relationship with Ramona fulfilling is because it’s straightforward: Clear the level, beat the boss, save the princess, rinse, repeat. In Volume 5, he finds that it’s more that. The reason things fall apart is because Ramona isn’t ready for that; she isn’t holding on. She’s ready to change, to run away again. Things have been falling into routine for her, and she can’t handle it. This is why I like the ending: They’ve both learned to deal with themselves; to hold on instead of running. I think this growth cycle makes sense, considering a lot of SP is based of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s own twentysomething-hood.

I enjoyed Scott gaining the Power of Understanding. It takes guts to say “I love you,” but it takes real maturity and character to be able to understand why they say it, how they mean it, and how they express it. Gideon gets the Power of Love, but the Power of Understanding is harder to attain and more… I don’t want to say “important,” but that’s the only word that fits. It’s knowing what drives others, why they do what they do, and most importantly of all, recognizing what you have to do. Love doesn’t necessarily make you a better person. Understanding does.

I had a few predictions about the final volume, of course. I sort of thought that Gideon was going to turn out to be an okay-kinda-guy, which he does pretend to be. Rarely are his words anything but amiable, and surely no one who says “buddy,” “holmes,” and variants thereof can be that bad, right? (The answer is yes, you cheater. F- See me after class) I also thought that Gideon was going to have a super second form, as most final bosses tend to do (Unless you count that crazy-muscled dream form), but as I said before, Gideon’s more than just a “final boss.” When I got my hands on Volume 6, I saw that the back cover showed Scott and Co. fighting all the Evil Exes, so I thought Scott would have to do a “boss rush,” like in the Megaman games before you face Wily. When the ex-girlfriends’ stasis capsules descended, I thought they were ‘regeneration pods’ containing the 6 revived Evil Exes. In hindsight, I guess that would have been pretty tiresome.

I didn’t expect Envy to go with Gideon, though it makes sense. I don’t know what I think about her new design, considering it looks almost nothing like how she appeared earlier, but you know how celebrities get when they go solo.


I know a lot of people (Including my aforementioned friend/driving slave) wanted Scott to end up with Kim Pine, and he does indeed try, but that would just be falling back onto an imagined, idealized past. Scott says that Kim is a “constant” and with her, everything is “uncomplicated,” but it’s the desire for the stable, constant, and uncomplicated that led him to where he is now. I’m a little disappointed that Wallace didn’t appear in the epilogue; he’s one of my favorites. And what about Mobile? Sure, he’s less than a secondary character, and sure he appears, but he gets no intro card, no lines, and his psychic powers never actually… do anything. But whatevs.

You know what else is just weird? How there’s always a videogame-themed band during Scott’s slacker periods. I don’t think ”Shatterband” is a reference to anything, though, so yaaay progress!

I’m happy with what happened to Young Neil. I know BLO doesn’t really like him so much, and writes him as kind of dopey, but I’ve always liked him. I feel he got his own little Moment of Awesome right here.




Hooray for Neil! Also him and Stacey= Totally! They have so much in common! Like, um, the amount of times they’ve each smiled (I think it’s like 3 or 4). I guess it’s weird to be so interested in this minor character, but his whole purpose is to be minor. He’s had his own little arc throughout the series: He was Stephen Stills’ roommate, one of the guys. Then Knives comes and usurps his status as the “young one” and Sex Bob-omb’s biggest fan. He tries dating Knives, but she only wants Scott, and of course, he grows sullen as no one hangs out with him. His own precious little life is in shambles. By Volume 5, he’s kind of a dick. This panel here is his own finale, his own little coming-of-age. Good job, Neil!

Like Volume 5, this book isn’t as quirky and easygoing as the other 4 volumes, it’s a little more serious, but I liked it. I liked how Gideon himself had some great, funny moments, y’know, they ones that weren’t completely twisted and insane. (I mean dude… emotional warfare?)

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