Film Friday: Scott Pilgrim v. The World (2010)

When I first saw Scott Pilgrim, I did not enjoy it. The film lost me right away and never recovered. But I gave it another chance after realizing I had looked at the film in the wrong way. I thought it was a comic book film, but it really isn’t -- it’s a videogame brought to life. I am now of two minds regarding this film. If you have no affinity for videogames, then this movie is not for you. It stinks. BUT, if you enjoy videogaming, then this movie is a brilliant parody.

** spoiler alert **

Plot

Scott Pilgrim is the story of Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera), a Toronto youth who fronts a band (Sex Bob-omb) with some friends and happens to be dating a high school girl named Knives Chau. His friends are all deeply-depressed slackers. As the film begins, he meets delivery girl Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and convinces her to go out with him on a date. Because of this, Scott soon finds himself under attack from each of her evil exes. In fact, they have formed the League of Evil Exes, and they attack anyone she dates. The rest of the movie involves Scott fighting each of these exes, while being stalked by Knives as his band tries to win a record contract.

You Will Not Like This Film

If you have no affinity for video- games, you will dislike this film. . . a lot. The film itself is nonsense. Its plot is an excuse for a series of fight scenes and little holds these scenes together. The characters are completely without depth and are hard to like because they are all angry, depressed slackers. Michael Cera is even harder to like because he’s lifeless and simply has no charisma -- he comes across as someone you would go out of your way to avoid in real life, and that makes him hard to watch on film. He’s also so whiny and so full of self-pity that you pretty much want to see him get hurt. Finally, the film loses touch with reality repeatedly as videogame elements suddenly appear, such as money raining from the sky whenever Scott beats a bad guy. For most people, these elements will make this an unbearable film.

You Will Love This Film

But let us assume you have an affinity for gaming. Then this film is something else entirely. What Scott Pilgrim really is at its core is a satire of a videogame tropes. It is the kind of film which points out things gamers laugh about.

Turning videogames into films has proven to be a challenge for Hollywood. This is because videogame characters tend to be two-dimensional and because gaming elements don’t translate well to film. So Hollywood has tried several different routes. Films like Prince of Persia and Laura Croft took the characters and turned them into generic action heroes. But these films ended up flat because neither the characters nor the plot offered much depth and fans complained they didn’t capture the spirit of the game. Films like Resident Evil and Hitman tried to include game-like dialog at points and game-like tasks to transfer “the feel” of the game. Unfortunately, “game feel” isn’t what most audiences are after, and these moments felt stiff. Doom actually gave the audience a first-person shooter view for a couple minutes, which seems pretty stupid in hindsight. Super Mario Bros. was made as a comedy with Bob Hoskins and Jon Leguizamo asked to breathe life into the characters. Final Fantasy came close to capturing the game feel, except it didn’t use any of the game characters. Nevertheless, it scored the highest of any videogame film at Rotten Tomatoes with a pathetic 43% (most of these films didn’t get out of the teens). To put a point on this, no one has really been able to adapt a videogame to the big screen yet because no one is quite sure what audiences want from a game adaptation.

Scott Pilgrim tried something unique -- it decided to be unapologetic about being a videogame. Hence, it follows the structure of a videogame and its characters are never phased by the game elements, like when people have strange superpowers, or when people explode into coins when they lose fights, or when scores and instructions appear on screen. Interestingly, this unique approach gives the film a neat vibe which easily allows the viewer to suspend their disbelief, something which is much more difficult in the films like Doom, which pretend they aren’t videogames.

At the same time, Scott Pilgrim mercilessly mocks videogames. For example, after an intro which feels like a slacker film shot on a budget not large enough to buy the crew lunch at the McDonald’s Dollar Menu, Scott engages in a series of what are called “boss battles” in videogame parlance. A boss is simply a named villain the hero must defeat to move on to the next level. Each boss is meant to have a unique power and is more powerful than the last. And that’s where the seven exes come in -- each has their own theme. For example, the first ex conjures Indian Bollywood dancers and tries to defeat Scott using a musical number. Another fights him with a skateboard. Another comes after him in a battle of the bands, and so on. In each instance, the powers they use are like the sorts of things you find in videogames, only these powers are utterly ridiculous. And therein lies the parody.

Further, the way the characters react also is parody. Indeed, all videogame characters are intensely earnest. Yet the characters here are downright blasé about everything. . . “Scott might die? Ok, we’ll be at the coffee shop.” Moreover, these characters constantly wonder why they are doing this. In effect, they marvel at the pointlessness of the game in which they reside. No videogame character would ever do that, but gamers laugh about it.

The conclusion of the film also completely mocks the idea that character’s lives can be relived with different choices made as Scott is able to come back from the dead and “try again,” a common occurrence in video- games. When he does, he rather hilariously rushes through the pre-boss challenges he faced on that level so he can get back to where he was when he died. . . just like every real gamer has done a million times -- right down to forcing their way through the henchmen without waiting for them to deliver their lines. And then he make a different choice and is awarded different powers to use against the boss, something which make no sense in a film, but makes total sense in a game.

What this film does, which no other film has done to date, is translate a videogame directly into a film without removing the ridiculous game elements. To the contrary, it embraces those elements, exaggerates them and mocks them. And in so doing, it creates a fantastic parody of the silliness of videogames. But it also makes this a niche movie. That’s why Scott Pilgrim will appeal to video gamers but probably no one else.

Finally, as an interesting aside, Scott Pilgrim doesn’t actually come from a videogame. . . it comes from a comic book, which makes its success even more intriguing. What’s more, this film received an 81% at Rotten Tomatoes -- almost double the next best videogame-to-film translation. Fascinating.