Adaptation Brawl: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (movie)

It's an epic of epic epicness. And did we mention that it's epic?

Out of all the films released this year, none excited me quite as much as Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Based on the series of Scott Pilgrim graphic novels by Brian Lee O'Malley and directed by Edgar Wright of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame, it had all the makings of the most epic thing since Superman and Bruce Lee joined forces and battled Cthulhu with the power of rock.

Of course, it also had a lot working against it. The source material was remarkably obscure, and targeted a very narrow niche audience. Plus, the film was to condense the entire six-volume graphic novel series into one movie, a daunting task sure to reduce the plot to bare bones and crank the tempo up to eleven. Add to that the dilemma of the inevitable adaptation decay, and it's already an uphill battle. Plus, there was something else... some other detail that made me wary... can't quite remember what it was...

Gyah!

Oh yeah. The role of Scott himself was given to Michael Cera. Not exactly the easiest way to win fans. It's not exactly that he's a bad actor, but he's had a hard time living down his previous role, the socially awkward guy trying to win a girl's love, in everything he's ever been in. Seriously, this casting choice has been cited as one of the primary reasons Scott Pilgrim vs. the World did dismally at the box office, and I can sympathize with the people who assumed that this movie would be more of the same from Cera. But it wasn't. Oh sure, he's still a socially awkward guy trying to win a girl's love. But he also headbutts a guy so hard he bursts into a pile of shiny coins. More on that later, but needless to say watching Michael Cera hand people's asses to them was a refreshing and entertaining change of pace.

But how does the movie stand up in general, especially when compared to the original graphic novels? Well, let's dive in.

The saga begins with Scott Pilgrim dating a high-schooler. Her name is Knives Chau (17 years old). And this already brings us to an important point.What kind of an idiot knowingly dates a girl named Knives? Sure, the comic hangs a lampshade on this point (I was actually quoting a line verbatim), but it's still worth asking, especially since no one mentions it in the movie. Is this a name that gives you a sense of security re: your new girlfriend's mental stability? Do you really want to be macking with a chick who makes you think of the omnicidal maniac from Trigun?

Above: Girlfriend material

Knives arrives to be audience to Scott's band practice, since he is the bass player in a band called Sex Bob-Omb. His band-mates are Stephen Stills, the front-man, and Kim Pine, the drummer. Stephen Stills' roommate, "Young Neil", is also a minor player in the story. In the film, he also plays bass and can stand in for Scott when Scott is unavailable. This is not the case in the comics. In fact, the band itself plays a much different role in the film than in the comics. In the comics, Sex Bob-Omb is just a garage band that the characters play in for fun, and is directly stated as being rather sucky. In the film, it's a decent band, and Stephen Stills is honestly hoping to get them signed for a record deal. I get that the band has to be good for the movie, so that it can have good music in it, but all things considered I prefer the comic version. It just doesn't strike me as likely that a band with a corny name and an airhead like Scott Pilgrim on bass would ever have a chance at the big time, especially playing the catchy-yet-generic garage rock they play in the film.

After Scott sees Knives off, he returns to his apartment and we meet the real star of this story, Scott's gay roommate Wallace Wells. Wallace plays no significant role in the plot, but takes care of Scott and gives him advice... some helpful, some not so much.

That night Scott dreams that he's trapped in a cliche, and also an endless desert, when suddenly a girl in goggles roller blades through. When he later sees the same girl in real life he becomes fixated on her. He learns that her name is Ramona Flowers, that she's from America (the story is set in Toronto, Canada, by the way) and that she just broke up with her boyfriend, who we later learn is named Gideon Graves. Scott engineers a meeting with her, at which point she explains that she uses a subspace shortcut through his dreams to deliver packages for her job at amazon.ca. Then subspace apparently folds into itself and disappears, because it is never mentioned again.

Scott asks Ramona out, prompting Wallace to insist that he break up with Knives. Scott fails to do so and goes out with Ramona anyway, culminating in the two of them kissing and... yeah, that's more or less it. Which is good, because insinuating that Michael Cera managed to get laid would stretch the plausibility of this story way too far. He invites Ramona to come see Sex Bob-Omb compete in a Battle of the Bands, which is kind of a dumb-ass move when you put the slightest bit of thought into it, since the only fan Sex Bob-Omb has, who is sure to be at the show, is Knives Chau (17 years old). But Scott doesn't put that together, which makes enough sense because hey, he's Scott Pilgrim. Luckily for Scott, Knives passes out from excitement before either woman learns that Scott's dating both of them. Ah, to live in a movie, where that kind of half-assed writing isn't at all goofy or implausible.

As Sex Bob-Omb performs against a rival band called Crash and the Boys, who have a song that is literally less than five seconds long (not important to the scene; I just think it's funny), a man named Matthew Patel crashes through the ceiling and challenges Scott to a battle to the death. Which apparently you can just do in Toronto, because nobody in the room raises any objections to this. Matthew is the first of Ramona's seven evil exes, who have banded together to challenge anyone trying to date her. Matthew has somehow acquired mystical powers which allow him to throw fireballs and summon "demon hipster chicks". So Scott's pretty much screwed here. He's just an average guy, not too bright, not too intimidating, played by Michael goddamn Cera, and...

Holy shit. Scott Pilgrim is a fucking badass. He proceeds to wipe the floor with Patel, and this is where the film really shows us what it can do: the fight choreography is amazing, and it's complemented perfectly... no, beyond perfectly, by the visual effects, which in some places give the impact of comic book graphics and in other places the sleek coolness of video game effects (the "vs" screen and the combo counter during Scott's opening barrage, for starters). The levels of the effects are amazing; when Matthew lands a punch on Scott, a "SMAK" sound effect appears on screen and shatters, the pieces continuing to fall to the floor in the next shot.

After a bizarre and slightly racist song-and-dance from Patel, Scott defeats him and he bursts into a pile of coins. Sex Bob-Omb is also declared the winner of the Battle of the Bands, since Crash and the Boys were incinerated by one of Patel's fireballs. Wait... wasn't one of the Boys an eight-year-old girl? Dear God, Edgar Wright, you fucking incinerated an eight-year-old girl? Have you no soul? Because I got mine back a few years ago, and it's telling me that there were better ways to handle that scene, like - and this is just off the top of my head, here - not fucking incinerating an eight-year-old girl. Just a thought.

So Scott finally gets around to dumping Knives, leaving her a scarred emotional wreck, and invites Ramona over for another date. After a rocky start they join Wallace at the set of a movie being filmed nearby. Unfortunately, it turns out that the star of the film, Lucas Lee, is the second of Ramona's evil exes. He challenges Scott, and another battle ensues. This one ends when Scott challenges Lucas to show off his skateboarding skills and Lucas wipes out. After the battle, Scott finds that Ramona is gone.

Saddened by Ramona's leaving without saying anything, and frustrated by the prospect of fighting more bad guys, Scott mopes around until Wallace snaps him out of his funk. And also asks him to move out of the apartment, creating a plot point which will never actually be resolved.

Soon after, Stephen Stills announces that Sex Bob-Omb has been invited to open for a wildly successful band called The Clash at Demonhead (in real life, this is the name of an old NES game... video games are kind of a theme, if the visual effects and Legend of Zelda music clips didn't tip you off). Scott isn't happy about this because the lead singer is his ex-girlfriend Envy Adams, but he gives in to Stephen Stills' pleas. Meanwhile, Knives discovers that Scott is dating Ramona and vows to get revenge. She dyes a blue streak in her hair and starts dating Young Neil. Yeah, Knives, that'll show him.

At the show, Ramona realizes that The Clash at Demonhead's bassist, and Envy's boyfriend, is her third evil ex, Todd Ingram. After Todd punches the highlights out of Knives' hair, Scott challenges him, only to discover that he's vegan - which somehow gives him psychic powers. Scott is unable to overcome Todd's psychic attacks, even after making Ramona tell the story of her relationship with him in hopes of discovering a detail of his past that will help to defeat him. Seriously, what is the point of this scene? Scott learns nothing from the story except that Ramona heartlessly dumped all of her exes. Granted, that's an important piece of her character, but it could have been revealed in any number of ways.

Then again, he did punch a hole in the moon, so... never mind, this flashback rules.

After conventional tactics fail, Scott turns to the old standby: the power of rock. He challenges Todd to a bass battle, but he's no match for Todd's skills. This scene was so refreshing to watch in film, because obviously it didn't work too well in the comic. Would it be presumptuous to ask whether the film was made entirely for the purpose of that scene? Yes, yes it would. I retract the question.Anyway, Scott seems boned, but at the last minute he's able to trick Todd into drinking coffee with half-and-half in it. And, out of fucking nowhere, the "Vegan Police" show up to take away Todd's vegan powers. In the comic, this deus-ex-machina at least got a lampshade. In the film, we're left thinking that this was in some way supposed to make sense. But then again, this is a movie in the style of a comic in the style of a video game, so we probably shouldn't dwell on it. After Todd is deveganized, Scott defeats him with a headbutt. Envy berates him for murdering her boyfriend, and he says that it was justified because she broke up with him. That's it! That's his entire reasoning! Breakups justify murder!

Another good reason not to date girls named after deadly weapons. Just sayin'

Scott coldly leaves Envy behind, and she's never mentioned again. Yeah, that's not how closure works, guys. The relationship between Scott and Envy is deep and complex, worth exploring in deeper detail than what the film gives us, which essentially boils down to "Hey, remember when you were nice? Well, see ya!" This is one of the movie's flat points, and unfortunately another is coming up soon.

After defeating Todd, Scott goes to an after-party at a club called 4. This is one of the more obvious bits of the ubiquitous numerical motifs in the movie, ranking just after Todd's awesomely blatant "3" shirt. Ramona questions Scott about his own romantic past, including his breakups with Knives and Kim. Scott insists that those breakups were healthy, but it's clear that wounds remain. Before the issue can be explored further, a ninja girl appears and attacks Scott. The girl turns out to be Roxie Richter, Ramona's fourth evil ex, from her experimental phase in college. Roxie, in the film, is really just kind of annoying, as she lacks the sympathetic angle she gets in the comics and mostly just rambles off cheesy lines in a vaguely Texan accent (I actually do kinda like that touch). Ramona takes on Roxie with a giant hammer, until Roxie protests that Scott has to be the one to defeat her. Oooookay, apparently there are rules to this now.

Rules? In a knife fight?

Scott can't bring himself to hit a girl, which is actually pretty sexist in a situation like this one. I mean, I'm not advocating violence against anyone here, but this is a girl looking for a fight, and she represents a genuine threat. To refuse to fight her, after slugging it out with three guys, shows that he sees women as inherently weak and fragile. This is completely silly after watching his girlfriend doing backflips while swinging around a sledgehammer. You know who comes off looking pretty okay in comparison? Todd.

He's a dick, but he's an equal opportunity dick.

Ramona makes Scott fight Roxie by moving his arms and legs like a puppeteer. This is completely impractical and unrealistic... but it's so freakin' cool I don't care.Roxie manages to separate the two but Ramona tells Scott that her weak point is the back of her knees. Scott pokes her there and she has an orgasm. Damn, that was easy. Maybe I've been doing it wrong. And it's not just an orgasm, it's an orgasm powerful enough to make her burst into coins. So, to recap, Scott Pilgrim has headbutted a guy so hard he exploded and made a girl climax so hard she turned into a pile of money. Yes, clearly Michael Cera was the right actor for this role.

The pressure of fighting battle after battle finally gets to Scott and he gets into an argument with Ramona. He demands a list of all her evil exes... which he probably should have done as soon as this all started but hey, he's Scott Pilgrim. She hands him the list, which she has actually taken the trouble of having laminated at some point, and he sees that the next to on the list are the Katayanagi twins. This essentially makes the list completely unnecessary, since the only other guy on the list he hasn't fought already is Gideon, and we already knew he was the final ex from all the foreshadowing earlier. The Katayanagi twins, as contrivance would have it, are the next band that Sex Bob-Omb must face in the Battle of the Bands. The two bands face off and play at the same time, literally battling with their music. The Katayanagis' music manifests itself as a pair of Chinese dragons, giving them the upper hand until Kim points out that Ramona is in the crowd and Gideon is with her. Scott gets angry, giving Sex Bob-Omb the juice to create a green-eyed, yeti-like monster out of their own music. The green-eyed monster (yes, the symbol of jealousy is wholly deliberate) does battle with the twin dragons and defeats them. This destroys the Katayanagis and earns Scott an extra life. And yes, that's all the Katayanagi twins get to do in the movie. They don't even have a single line of dialogue. But damn that fight was awesome.

Scott runs out to catch Ramona, but she only tells him that she's leaving him to go back to Gideon. Gideon, being a music producer and a total asshole, offers Sex Bob-Omb a record deal right then and there just to piss Scott off. Scott refuses, but Stephen Stills takes the deal immediately and recruits Young Neil to take Scott's place in the band. Scott returns home, defeated, and Wallace tells him to let it go. However, Gideon then calls Scott just to rub it in even more, and Wallace changes his tune and tells Scott to go kick his ass.

Scott heads to Gideon's club, the Chaos Theater, for the final showdown. Sex Bob-Omb is there playing a gig and Ramona is there with Gideon. Scott confronts Gideon, and finally tells Ramona that he loves her. This earns him the Power of Love, which appears out of his chest in the form of a flaming sword. He mows down a mob of hipster mooks and then faces Gideon, who kicks it old school and busts out a bona fide sword cane. As the fight goes on, Knives Chau (17 years old) bursts in and challenges Ramona for Scott. Scott defeats Gideon and tries to end the fight between Ramona and Knives, but Gideon gets back up and stabs Scott with his sword, killing him.

This is an actual, undoctored screenshot from the movie.

Scott finds himself in the same desert landscape from the dream where he first saw Ramona. Ramona appears and tells Scott that Gideon is controlling her with a chip on the back of her neck. She then tells him that it wasn't her that he should have been fighting for. Scott realizes what he should have done, then remembers the extra life he picked up earlier. He uses it to reset everything to the point where he entered the Chaos Theater. This time he takes a moment to tell Stephen Stills that Sex Bob-Omb is better off with Young Neil on bass, and officially rename Young Neil... "Neil". He then apologizes to Kim for the things he did to her when they were dating. What were those things? Well, the movie sure doesn't care enough about it to tell you. Go read the book sometime (or come back for the second half of my review, which will cover the original comics).

Scott challenges Gideon again, this time not for Ramona but for his own satisfaction. This earns him a new, even better flaming sword called the Power of Self-Respect. He takes down Gideon in a single blow and protects Ramona from Knives, coming clean about dating them both at the same time and apologizing to Knives for it. Gideon rises again for the final battle, summoning an amazingly cool pixel sword that multiplies all of his "stats" by 7. Scott can't take him by himself, but then Knives joins in and fights by his side. Ramona... just kind of stands there. Way to be, girlfriend.

Actually, that's not fair. She does step in when Gideon has the upper hand, kneeing him in the crotch to give Scott and Knives a chance to recover. Gideon then pimp-slaps her around a bit and kicks her down the stairs, where she sits for the rest of the fight. Not exactly the best showing from the film's female lead hero. Scott and Knives finish Gideon off by themselves, finally defeating him to earn a whopping $7,000,000,000 prize... in coins. Just when things seem to be wrapped up in a neat little package, one final challenger appears: the Nega-Scott, the physical manifestation of Scott's dark side.

But fear not, this is not an unnecessary tack-on climax breaker. Scott elects not to do battle against Nega-Scott and instead befriends him. They make plans to meet later for brunch and part ways. Ramona decides to leave as well, ending her relationship with Scott. Surprisingly, it's Knives who tells Scott to follow her and keep her from leaving. This is a big moment for Knives, showing that she's finally decided to let Scott go and get on with her own life. There's actually an alternate ending of the movie where Scott goes back to Knives, which blew my mind when I first saw it. I can't tell you how glad I am that that ending got scrapped. It literally would have ruined the entire plot for all three of the main characters. Scott wouldn't have grown up and committed to the serious, complex relationship he needs; Ramona wouldn't have grown up and let someone get emotionally close to her; and Knives wouldn't have grown up and learned to let go of her feelings for a guy who wasn't good for her anyway. There would have been no character growth at all, plus it would have rendered the entire plot of the movie utterly pointless since Scott was fighting for Ramona, not Knives. Thankfully, reason prevailed and the Scott-gets-Ramona ending made it into the final product. Whew.

So, what's the final verdict on the movie? Well, plot-wise, it's a little on the weak side. Characters get little depth, sometimes making no contributions to the story or simply disappearing and never being mentioned again while their plot threads remain dangling. Even Ramona comes across flat, making it somewhat hard to sympathize with her, or with Scott for wanting her. Plus, the story runs at a break-neck speed, jumping awkwardly from one scene to the next with little transition or opportunity for the audience to get their bearings. Those are the weaknesses. But the strengths, good God, the strengths. The dialogue is funny, sometimes brilliantly so. The fight scenes are some of the best I've ever seen. Ever. The visual effects are spectacular. The music was selected and/or composed with expert precision, and the sound effects in and of themselves have a subtle brilliance to them. Plus, the characters who do get enough screen time to build personalities are fantastic. In particular, Kieran Culkin's portrayal of Wallace Wells was not only scene-stealing in its hilarity, but layered enough to create a gay character who actually reminds me of my gay friends, which happens all of almost never.

Simply put, the incredible pros of this movie easily outweigh the cons. It was a brilliant piece of work, and if you haven't seen it, you should. It's the kind of movie you can watch over and over again without getting tired of it (I can say this from personal experience). But what about the original graphic novels? How does the movie stack up against them? Well, all in good time. This review is long enough for now, so I'll be tackling that issue in my next post. Until then, let's recap what we've learned so far.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and all related images and characters are property of Universal Pictures, Oni Press, and Bryan Lee O'Malley. Images used from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Scott Pilgrim graphic novels, Trigun, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.