Scott Pilgrim Vs The World - The L Word
I often think of Scott Pilgrim as Wright's most impressive film from a technical standpoint but I often forget how it is a downright masterpiece in every single way. It is fascinatingly perfect and there is just so much going on in this bizarre romantic-comedy video-game inspired kind of sci-fi character study of a dirtbag confronting his past and transitioning to actual adulthood. This film holds such a special place in my heart because I remember watching it around the time I was getting into film and I was completely being blown away because of how just technically impressive this film is. It is the film that most people have that made me think "wow films can really do this" and I rewatch it every few months just because it is that much fun to revel in.
Scott Pilgrim is an absolute mess of a human being and it is the thing that puts most people off this film but it is entirely intentional. You are never meant to enjoy the time we spend with Scott as he consistently makes terrible selfish and stupid decisions as he is stuck in this deadbeat path of nothing in his life. Scott is an absolute mess of a human being, he doesn't have a job, lives across from his parents in an apartment that he hardly owns and he is still in the mourning phase after being brutally dumped a year earlier resulting in him dating a high-schooler as a pathetic way to prove he is over it. There is nothing likeable about Scott Pilgrim and the film kind of takes pleasure in that. Wright is drawn to having his protagonists be clearly broken and messy people but still managing to somehow make us root for them like crazy. With Pilgrim, there is this brilliant sense of heightened stakes because we want Scott to defeat the '7 evil exes' as if it was a video game but we don't really understand why we want him to do this. There are so many moments in this film where Scott makes a selfish and stupid decision but we totally understand why he is doing his from his own perspective, this is Wright's bread and butter when it comes to him writing protagonist's and I feel like Scott is his best-written protagonist because of these factors. It is a film about confronting your past and your mistakes and Scott's journey feels natural, compelling and really satisfying due to it being played like a video-game as he progresses through each level to fill maturity.
Up until about 20 minutes in this is a film about a bassist in a messy love triangle with a high schooler and this woman that he saw in his dreams but then suddenly the film takes a turn and out of nowhere the film becomes this masterclass of how to have confidence in your world. Casting Michael Cera was a stroke of genius as we are convinced he is this kind of a feeble idiot and then out of nowhere, he becomes this sudden action star Kung fu master and Wright gets to have so much fun with this ridiculous world. Logic doesn't matter and this is why I adore his writing style because he doesn't waste time with realism and proves that making individual unique tonal choices can have the same thematic impact as grim reality obsessed films. I love how the film keeps revealing new details about it's worlds and it's characters that never feels out of place due to the metatextual references Wright drops in. Of course, people explode into coins when they are defeated because the film includes so many stylistic video game references, the style builds on the world Wright is creating which makes the film feel real no matter how ridiculous it gets. In any other director's hands these elements would come off as forced and inconsistent but Wright leans into it and revels in creating this bizarre video-game Toronto. I have no idea how he does this but so many elements just feel natural and add pace and excitement to each action scene.
This is my favourite technical Wright film as every scene includes this wonderful attention to detail in its visual style. He just puts so much time into everything and never holds back, it is diverse and consistently reinventing itself. He knows exactly when to use his signature fast-paced editing but also knows how to contrast this for comedic effect or to let an action scene breathe. There are so many hilarious cuts in this film, I love how Wright can create both hilarious dialogue and hilarious visual jokes sometimes within the same ten seconds. The action scenes are still some of the best-heightened style actions scenes ever put to film, each battle with the exes has its own personality and style to it with new and interesting elements consistently being brought in. A film that combines a set of messy relatable characters with a video game aesthetic and incredible indie-rock soundtrack is bound to be right up my street which is why I would say I'm almost biased when it comes to this film. The soundtrack is probably one of my favourite original soundtracks ever made, I genuinely listen to Sex-Bob-Omb's tracks and Metric's Black Sheep all the time and of course Beck's Ramona but it is how they are included in the film that makes them so noticing. I get chills at the fantastic title sequence music, the introduction to Clash at Demonhead and that amazing battle of the bands with 'Threshold'. The film is almost completely dependent on its music, action scenes revolve around them and I adore how the style feels like it comes from Scott's brain. The use of sound effects completely fit how he feels about every scene and are all drawn from his interests and personality quirks, even the fourth wall breaks are all dependent on how Scott feels. I really love this attention to detail as it plays us right into being inherently drawn to Scott, allowing his flaws to come through more relatable because we never leave his side through every element.
I have so much love for this film and basically, there isn't an element that lets it down. It is surprisingly thematically complicated and that becomes a bit of a point of contention as Wright tries to sum up this abstract concept of growth in his own stylistic way which can seem oversimplified when taken on its own. I feel like his writing is so strong that these kind of blatant references in the third act (such as the Nega Scott, The power of love and self-respect) are just there to punctuate the character moment he is showing. I like how there is a lot going on under the surface and occasionally his style makes it feel natural for it to come through to the surface. It doesn't hold back at any point with what it is trying to say and that is essential to its success in my opinion. Michael Cera is an actor that I feel is criminally underrated, he gets shoehorned into dumb comedy roles a lot but he is incredible as Pilgrim, bringing just the right level of relatability and unlikability and a lot of comedic charm. Mary Elizabeth Winstead kills it as Ramona, making her this archetypal cool hipster with clearing a lot of vulnerability and regret bubbling underneath. And the cast is filled out with a set of incredible supporting comedic roles, Ellen Wong is hilarious as Knives making a character that is dealt a bad hand turn into a hilarious and sympathetic character. Kieran Culkin, Anna Kendrick, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Evans, Brandon Routh, Alison Pill, Mark Webber, Brie Larson, Mae Whitman and Jason Shwartzman make this film as hilarious and compelling as it could be, this has to be one of the greatest collection of 20-something supporting cast members.
'Scott Pilgrim Vs The World' underperformed by about 30million when it was first released which I think classes it as a cult classic of a film. It has this dedicated loving fanbase that are probably the only group of fans that don't spend half the time arguing if the film or the books are better. It deserves this place in history as I feel like so many people share memories and quotes of this incredible film on a daily basis. I've had several people share their favourite detail or hidden joke in the film with me and it has built this reputation of being a film that deserves much more attention than it originally got. I can't say enough good things about Pilgrim and I love every second of it. Thanks for reading.