While San Diego Comic-Con is obviously the closest comic book fans can get to absolute nirvana this week, a strong second place contender came with the release of the final volume (Volume Six for those counting) of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s schizophrenic tale of love lost and found, thanks to a healthy dose of self-realization: Scott Pilgrim. For those comic book geeks fortunate enough, they found those elements brought to life at the premiere of Edgar Wright’s film adaptation “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” last night at Comic-Con. Members of Generation Y seduced by O’Malley’s blend of kung-fu, video games, music, and manga will not be disappointed.
Edgar Wright and his co-screenwriter Michael Bacall were faced with the intimidating challenge of cramming over 1,000 pages of material into just under two hours, but the question the comic’s most rabid fans will find themselves asking is the inevitable: “Is it faithful?” While this question of fidelity has always struck me as odd and misguided, as each medium has its own stylistic blessings and curses, the simple answer is yes, it is faithful. Young adult and occasional bass player for the band Sex Bob-Omb Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) begins the film an aimless slacker, dating seventeen year old Knives Chau (Ellen Wong). What draws him to Knives? Well, Scott really isn’t sure. After being dumped by Envy Adams (Brie Larson), former band mate turned pop star, Scott’s love life is, like Scott in a more general sense, rudderless. He knows he wants to be held and understood, but that’s difficult considering he doesn’t even really understand himself.
Scott’s journey to self-discovery begins when he literally meets the girl of his dreams: Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a pixie-ish delivery girl who recently immigrated from American to the cold, white north of Canada. The two share a few awkward dates until Scott ends up in Ramona’s bed. Scott, it seems, has forgotten about Knives, something both his friends (Alison Pill and Mark Webber) and sister (Anna Kendrick) won’t let him brush under the rug. When Scott tells his roommate Wallace (Kieran Culkin) that he plans on bringing Ramona home for dinner, Wallace offers up advice in the form of an ultimatum. According to Wallace, in order for Scott to begin his relationship with Ramona with a clean slate, he needs to do the right thing and dump Knives, who deserves as much. Scott reluctantly agrees, severing his ties with the young girl, but complications quickly ensue. While Scott may have been willing to deal with his own emotional-romantic baggage of Knives, he also needs to deal with Ramona’s, which has manifested itself in the form of her seven evil exes (Satya Bhabha, Chris Evans, Brandon Routh, Shota and Keita Saito, Jason Schwartzman, and Mae Whitman).
What follows, for those of you unfamiliar with the books, is a long series of duels equally inspired by video games (Scott collects coins and power-ups after defeating his foes), kung-fu (his fight with Ramona’s ex-girlfriend), and pop music (one fight literally takes on the form of a battle of the bands) that all stand as a metaphor: in order to make for a meaningful relationship, two people have to deal with one another’s flaws and the emotional scars they wear from previous relationships. Yet, the beauty of O’Malley’s work, and Wright’s adaptation by proxy, is that the only way to completely cope with those flaws, both Scott and Ramona must acknowledge their own. This leads me to the one criticism that will undoubtedly be leveled at the film: the lack of characterization. Scott pursues Ramona not because of her personality, but because she appears in his dream. Their relationship develops not because they have a lot in common, but because they’re attracted to one another. As Ramona notes towards the end of the film, “I don’t even know what I’m like anymore” and the risk the film runs is that, partially due to the fluidity of Scott and Ramona’s identities and partially because a lot of material has been transposed onto film, it all feels a bit vague and rushed.
This aspect of the film, which is also a characteristic of the comics for those keeping track on the fidelity scorecard, tends to leave me conflicted. While watching the film, we were filled with the desire for Wright to provide us a moment to catch our breaths and to really think about why we want these two characters to be together. At the same time, despite our rather conventional desires, that’s not really the point of the story. The thrust of “Scott Pilgrim” is that we get to know the characters as they get to know themselves. If the result of that is the inevitable but conditional union, c’est la vie. Much like “The Graduate,” “Scott Pilgrim” is a document of the fragility of love in the early stages of adulthood. We all take a leap when we transition from the point of trying lovers on like (as our 8th grade teacher once told us) pairs of socks towards something with more permanence. Sometimes that leap is glorious and, more often than not, it hurts like hell. The question we’re faced with is how can we love someone else and expect them to reciprocate that affection when we don’t truly know, at that stage in life, where we are.
More often than not, today’s youth begin to define themselves through popular culture, making O’Malley’s manic oscillation between artistic styles relevant. Wright, one of the keenest filmmakers when it comes to knowledge of genre style (his spoofs, “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz,” show an awareness of composition and montage that is intoxicating) nails O’Malley’s aesthetic impeccably. The film — beginning with a 16-bit image of the Universal Logo complete with MIDI soundtrack — is one of the most visually stimulating of the year. We’re given visualizations of sound (comics, after all, are a silent medium), transitions between shots that lack spatial and temporal continuity but are nonetheless held together by dialogue and visuals that evoke emotional stimulation, fight sequences that alternate aspect ratio framing (most comic book artists do not tie themselves to a specific dimension of a panel), and animated flashbacks rendered in the minimalist style of O’Malley’s compositions. Like “Dick Tracy,” “Sin City” and “300” before it, Wright has, in the words of French film theorist André Bazin, the ability to capture the unique essence of one medium (comics) within another (film) and his stylistic remediations are stunning adaptations of the source material.
Yet, all the style, fight sequences, and romance would be meaningless without Cera and Winstead’s ability to provide their vaguely fluid characters with a sense of humanity. Cera has run the danger of being typecast in recent years thanks to his portrayals of young men uncomfortable with their masculinity, yet “Scott Pilgrim” is a film exactly about discomfort in one’s own skin, making him the perfect lead. Winstead, her doe eyes illuminated by neon colored hair that changes hue every other week, is given a bit more complexity. She may look like a sexy, tough as nails delivery girl, but we slowly realize it’s a façade. Unlike most romantic comedies, she does not merely define herself by providing a vessel for Scott to solve his problems and move on. The beauty of “Scott Pilgrim” is that they work in tandem as one another’s lover and therapist, just like our own ideal lovers. [A-] — Drew Morton
