Top 25 Favourite Films: #14 Scott Pilgrim vs the World (Dir. Edgar Wright, 2010)

#14. Scott Pilgrim Vs the World. Directed by Edgar Wright, 2010

By now, 160 columns in and counting, you're probably assuming that I prefer to watch films solitary, and without distraction. Not the case. Heck, I do like to see films with people occasionally. And thus it is that we come to Edgar Wright's 2010 adaption of Bryan Lee-O'Malley's popular comic book, Scott Pilgrim vs the World, a cult film that nobody saw that I saw with my friends one summer's evening in 2010, and have loved ever since, in all its millenial turn of the decade retro-nerdy glory. 

Pilgrim's plot is deceptively simple. Boy (Michael Cera) meets girl (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), girl has legion of seven evil exes (not, as Scott is constantly reminded, ex-boyfriends), boy must defeat them to date girl in style of retro videogames, from dance-off to beat-em-up to rhythm action to the final boss, in the form of Gideon (Jason Schwartzman). Of course, these seven exes have their own unique visual style, from Bollywood to Hollywood to manga influenced, their own backstories intertwined with the girl, Ramona Flowers. Meanwhile, the boy, Scott Pilgrim is a messy, arrogant millenial brought up on comic books, badly played lo-fi garage rock, himself in danger of turning into just another of Ramona's League of Exes.

Along for the ride are a veritable legion of sidecharacters, from Scott's housemate, the droll Wallace, his band, the childishly named Sex Bob-Bomb (one of a jawdroppingly large number of videogame references) of long-suffering drummer, Kim, and guitarist Stephen Stills and hanger-on Young Neil (did i mention this was set in Canada, and written by a Canadian?) This is of course not to mention Scott's former girlfriends, Envy Adams and Knives Chau, Scott's foul-mouthed sister, and a rogue's gallery of minor characters, from a punk rock band called Crash and the Boys, complete with young girl drummer, to the Vegan Police.

Certainly, for all its hipster kudos then and all its cult success now, it's not difficult to see why Scott Pilgrim struggled, a comic book movie before comic book movies had truly regained their cool-ironic given the presence of both Chris Evans and Brie Larsson as major characters-aimed at a difficult demograph of gamers, hipsters, indie comic book fans, and fans of Wright's previous work in the Cornetto Trilogy and beyond. But every decade seems to get a film like that, that captures the zeitgeist, the imagination of its youth. The 80s has everything from Withnail and I to the aformentioned Labrynth, the 90s everything from Hocus Pocus to Clerks, whilst the 2000s boasts everything from The Room to Repo! The Genetic Opera

Scott Pilgrim is cult for two reasons. One, it's one of the most lovingly created films of all time, and one gets the sense throughout that the motley crew of geeks in front of the camera are just as present behind the camera. It gets as close as any film will ever get to feeling like a live action videogame in the best possible way, from mere sight gags and some of the funniest internal narration ever put in a comedy to writing to Nintendo to ask them for permission to use one piece of music, which is perfectly reintepreted by Nigel Godrich, the film's composer. Nothing looks like this film, a full decade on from its release, and even as an aesthetic oddity it's worth checking out.

Of course this love of videogames in Lee-O'Malley's original work spills over into the film itself, and the attention to detail even in minor scenes is incredible, from the costuming of each Ex to match their pecking order-and the order they will face Scott-in the group, and indeed the environment around them, to the neat escalation, as fighting videogames often do, in their toughness, to the incorporation of videogame aesthetics and mechanics integral to the film's plot, not to mention homages, references, and full on visually re-created moments from both comics and geek culture in general. Hell, for months after this, I yearned after this cool-as-hell simulatneously retro and fantastical sense to my life, and, ironically, it feels now like Scott Pilgrim was, for better or worse, a gateway to my own idiosyncratic creativity

The key, I feel, to its enduring legacy, is, however, its humour. Together with the Star Wars prequels, badly translated early 90s RPGS and, inevitably, Monty Python, this film practically makes up half the quotes my extended friendgroup at the time, and now, quote at each other. Practically every single line in this film is pitch-perfect and a good half of them are endlessly quotable. At the height of the worst of my depression, a few years ago, this film would, without fail, cheer me up. It is impossible if you were born between the end of the 80s to the end of the 90s not to enjoy this film, not to see, for better or ill, yourself in at least one of the characters.

If Pilgrim has one achilles heel, one fault, it is in the film's general tone when it comes to relationships, and in particular, Scott. And here, I feel I need to talk about the general concept of "characters you're not supposed to admire". The Joker. Patrick Bateman. Scott Pilgrim. And so on. Scott is an arrogant asshole who starts the film dating a seventeen-year-old, who he promptly dumps when he comes into contact with Ramona, promptly stalks her, eventually ends up in a relationship with her only by becoming basically her bodyguard/defender against equally problematic exes, and promptly screws that up too.

Here, then, is the moment Lee-O'Malley's Six-volume comic works where the film doesn't. Volume Five ends at a low point that the film never quite pulls off. Much of the first half of volume six is thus Scott...realising he's an asshole, realising that he's the one who's made mistakes, and attempting to reconcile and feel responsible for them. The film rushes through this, turning Scott's understanding and contriteness...into self-respect. Whilst Volume 6 was not released until after the film had been, it still feels like a richer, more mature ending to the story, albeit one that has longer to tell it in.

But perhaps Scott Pilgrim's most important element, the utter key to its longevity, is that it's practically a time-capsule of geek culture from Lee-O'Malley's childhood, existing in a world that evokes the simple plots and graphics and concepts of the 16-and-32 bit era, a film already looking back with nostalgia to two decades before. Pilgrim's triumph is that it reminds us, better than practically any film made, of our childhood in front of a glowing console or handheld screen, or in a band as a teenager, or reading comics in our room, or even our first loves. It is a film about nostalgia, in all its blocky, rough bleeping and blooping glory.