Short Take: As entertaining and well-crafted as anything out this year, short of "Inception"

Director: Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead)

Screenwriters: Michael Bacall (Manic), Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead)

Cast: Michael Cera (Youth in Revolt, Superbad), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Live Free or Die Hard), Chris Evans (The Losers, Sunshine), Jason Schwartzman (TV’s Bored to Death, Fantastic Mr. Fox), Alison Pill (Milk), Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air), Kieran Culkin (The Cider House Rules), Ellen Wong, Brandon Routh (Superman Returns), Mark Webber, Johnny Simmons

Length: 1h 52m

Synopsis: Scott Pilgrim (Cera) is a 23 year old who shares a small apartment with his gay roommate Wallace (Culkin) and is the bassist for the garage band Sex Bob-omb. Also in this band are his friends Stephen (Webber) and Neil (Simmons), and one ex-girlfriend named Kim (Pill), all of whom don’t really approve of the fact that Scott has begun dating a 17 year old girl named Knives Chau (Wong) (though they have yet to even hold hands). One day Scott sees a girl at the library that he only saw previously in his dreams – Ramona Flowers (Winstead). After meeting her face to face at a party and working what charm he has, Scott and Ramona start becoming a couple. Upon this development, however, Scott proceeds to be challenged by each of Ramona’s Seven Evil Exes. In order for the two to keep dating Scott must defeat each evil ex he encounters, all of whom combat him in an arcade-like manner. Will Scott survive the tremendous onslaught of enemies? And more importantly, will he eventually be able to date the girl of his dreams?

Analysis: Based on the graphic novel series Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O’Malley, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is in blissful reverence towards manga-style comics, anime, and videogames. There are way too many homages and references to mention here, but suffice it to say that the ones pertaining to the Mario, Zelda, and Mortal Combat games appear to be given the most affection. The artistic style of O’Malley’s comics lives on in the movie through fourth wall labels, graphics, and onomatopoeia, as well as anime-style fighting choreography. The periodic fight sequences themselves temporarily blend the normal with outrageous fantasy, ostensibly in order to allow them to emulate the videogames and animation the material admires. These provisional bends in logic help to permit and justify some of director Edgar Wright’s more subtle personal touches, such as his abundant usage of ellipses (gaps in editing that cut out unnecessary sequences in the story) which A) allow the film to flow at a faster pace than what we might consider normal, and B) might be a way of filmically imitating how one’s eyes flow lithely across the box-framed pages of a comic book or graphic novel. Altogether, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World seems adamant about getting our attention and holding it as we are subjected to bizarre dramatic turns that otherwise might have caused more confusion than amazement.

Although the Scott Pilgrim comic series extends over six full books, and some hardcore fans will no doubt be disappointed that it was all condensed to fit into a two hour movie, the story’s compression serves the film very well. Some believe that when a movie omits certain minor characters and happenings that the bigger picture suffers, and this may be true, but in the case of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World the biggest benefit to doing this is it streamlines the narrative and gives it more focus. The medium of feature films demands this anytime an adaptation is made. Because of it we are able to avoid long tangents, allowing the basic story to fit into the Hollywood narrative mold that we’ve all become so familiar with. This new format requires that we hardly ever leave Scott’s side as he takes his curious journey, which helps us organize and digest the causality within the plot and, as a result, better identify with Scott himself. Interestingly enough, what the film seems to model because of this streamlining is the narrative structure of a typical videogame (incidentally, a Scott Pilgrim videogame was also recently released). Many critics have considered this type of structure as a detractor for most, if not all movie adaptations of videogames, but because this film’s structure was a result of a different medium-to-medium transfer (in which the comic attempted to adhere to the typical Hollywood narrative structure and not the other way around) it should be seen as both fitting and palatable.

Another thing that helps justify this structure is a writing gadget that is used throughout the story (in both the comics and the movie) called “deus ex machina,” which is a Latin term translated as “God by machine” that describes a plot device that involves the unforeseen and contrived intervention of some new object, ability, or character in order for a seemingly irresolvable problem to be suddenly and unexpectedly overcome. One example of this would be when Scott encounters the first of the Seven Evil Exes, Matthew (Satya Bhabha). When Matthew challenges Scott to a battle and displays magical powers, it is only when the battle ensues that we are made aware that Scott has impressive fighting skills himself (which come as a shock given his timid demeanor and total lack of muscle). Deus ex machina can be easily found in the videogames the story admires as well, such as when Mario serendipitously finds special hats that allow him to fly, turn invisible, or be encased in metal for the appropriate occasion in Super Mario 64. While in a “normal” film an implementation of deus ex machina may be considered a cheat (Transformers: Rise of the Fallen anyone?) it arguably isn’t so in a film like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. The biggest reason for this is because of the material’s penchant for humor. The basic story itself is a parody of how two sides of a new couple must learn how to deal with each others’ past (that the girl’s is much harder to get over might say something about O’Malley), and augmenting this parodiable attitude is the presence of irony, both in small and large capacities. And so through the film’s aesthetics (fourth wall graphics, onomatopoeia, etc.) and narrative structure (which we recognize as being similar to a videogame) we are able to readily identify displays of deus ex machina and extreme irony as humorous episodes instead of cheap ploys. For all of these reasons Scott Pilgrim vs. the World stands as an extremely cohesive movie, with each of its layers building off of each other to create a world both painfully familiar and wonderfully unique. It is indeed an epic of epic epicness.

Rating: 8.5

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