Scott Pilgrim vs The World Movie Review

Movies and video games have something of a love/hate relationship. The film industry loves to make movies out of videogames, which gamers inevitably hate. But Scott Pilgrim is different. Now, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World isn’t based on a videogame, it’s based on the geek chic comic book series of the same name. But like the comic, director Edgar Wright’s (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and the upcoming Ant-Man) adaptation is steeped both structurally and aesthetically in the videogame tradition that Generation Y (or Millennials, or whatever the hell old people call us these days) grew up with.

Scott Pilgrim (the perpetually awkward Michael Cera) is a twenty-three-year-old bass player in Toronto, and he’s dating a seventeen-year-old Chinese catholic schoolgirl. It’s kind of pathetic, but his friends know that he’s still getting over his ex who left him, signed a record deal, and kicked his heart’s ass. But then a girl with pink hair (wait, blue - or green?) named Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead: Live Free or Die Hard, Death Proof, Black Christmas) rollerblades into his life. If he’s going to date her though, he’ll have to defeat her seven evil exes. And break up with his current girlfriend. And win the battle of the bands.

The plot lends itself to a videogame-style format with a series of increasingly difficult battles in a quest to win the girl’s heart. Much of the humor comes from the rapid-fire videogame references and the creative use of graphics imitating classic videogames’ attempts to quantify the human experience. An example: during the final battle Scott “unlocks the power of love,” boosting his fighting statistics (+2 Charisma, +2 Stamina, etc.). Plus, each of the battles is presented in the classic arcade fighting game format (reminiscent of Street Fighter or Tekken) with highflying kung fu superpowers taken in stride.

Most of the remaining humor can be credited to the film’s incredible supporting cast. Featuring Kieran Culkin (yes, brother to Macauley, but you should also know him from The Mighty and The Cider House Rules), Chris Evans (Fantastic Four, The Losers, and he’ll be picking up Captain America’s shield next summer), Anna Kendrick (Up In The Air), Brandon Routh (Superman Returns), Jason Schwartzman (every Wes Anderson film ever), Alison Pill (Milk), Aubrey Plaza (Funny People, “Parks and Recreation”), and Johnny Simmons (Jennifer’s Body). Culkin, Pill, and Plaza are easily the highlights of the cast. Each of their characters’ recurring jokes are like punctuation, executed beautifully and hilariously, and almost creating an overarching comic rhythm to the film.

The reason why videogame movies generally fail is because they never quite capture what makes the games appealing in the first place. An adaptation may borrow a game’s plot (Tomb Raider) or aesthetic (Street Fighter), but to the current generation of teens and twentysomethings videogames are more than that. They’re a language that we grew up with. Game makers – in creating a digital facsimile of human experience in which characters strive and grow – have developed an entirely new (albeit skewed) worldview in which achievement is measured in points and personal growth in levels. What’s funny and brilliant about Scott Pilgrim is that Edgar Wright has overlaid this worldview back on actual reality, creating an inside joke shared by an entire generation.

Great acting, fantastic humor, a killer soundtrack, and kickass action sequences; there’s nothing about this flick that’s less than incredible. Older audiences may not understand most of the humor, but honestly they’ve been lost since the SNES came out. For anyone under thirty though, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is the zeitgeist of contemporary geek culture.