Scott Pilgrim Versus the World Movie Review

Scott Pilgrim Versus the World

If you go to a movie theater today the major of the movies you’ll see advertised are for comic book movies or the same average action movie with a different set of CGI bad guys put on top of it. Based on the idea, you’d think Scott Pilgrim Versus the World was the same thing another movie trying to be a comic book, but you’d be very wrong because this movie is much more than another comic book movie. Watching the movie you can obviously tell that the director, Edgar Wright, has a devotion to comic books and wanted the small things that make them what they are into a movie, without a massive CGI battle of heroes versus hordes of faceless bad guys. He doesn’t take just the plot of a comic book and slap it on screen, it is impossible to not notice the style of this movie. This style is consistent throughout the movie and never feels out of place. Another thing this Scott Pilgrim Versus the World does is it uses the classic rom-com and coming of age styles and plots to use your expectations of those kinds of movies for its own advantage. You could say all these things boil down to Edgar Wright’s style and specifically his editing. Edgar Wright’s editing and cinematography in Scott Pilgrim Versus the World make it stand out as one of the most fun, creative, and energetic movies recently made.

Scott Pilgrim Versus the World is about a 20-year-old awkward guy from Toronto, Canada named Scott, played by Michael Cera (of course). When the movie starts Scott is in a struggling band and dating a high schooler named Knives Chau, in a relationship that isn’t a necessarily serious adult relationship. Scott is taking a passive role in his life, taking on whatever comes his way nonchalantly. Until he meets a girl named Ramona Flowers, he falls in love with her and wants to begin a relationship with her, however, in order to do this he has to defeat her “seven evil exes". Meanwhile, Scott’s band is in a big battle of the bands in which the winner gets a record deal and will theoretically instantly become successful. As he progresses through the seven evil exes, his band progresses through the battle of the bands, ending in a band battle against two of the evil exes. After the battle, Scott finds out that the head of the record company is the final evil ex and that Ramona is still in love with him. Scott and the final evil ex battle and Scott wins, however, he ends up choosing to be with Knives Chau, as she was the one that was supportive of him and loved him unconditionally.

The comic book style with this movie comes out in many ways that all work together to make one cohesive idea. Edgar Wright uses the comic book font and actual writing to make a lot of sounds and visuals spelled out, but he also uses them to further the plot. For example, in the scene where Scott first meets Ramona at a party, there’s writing edited to be on the wall which tells the story of how he embarrassed himself and follows Ramona around the party. The transitions between scenes in this movie, however, are the truly amazing part about it. Every transition is creatively done in a unique way. Each transition is timed so perfectly that you almost barely notice them. Each transition has a visual change or cue and an audio clip with it, these can form of anything as simple as a person walking across the screen with a skateboard sound to transition one sidewalk scene to another, or a very impressive transition in which Scott goes to the bathroom in his band’s house and walks out the door into a high school in a dream state. Overall Scott Pilgrim Versus the World is an amazing movie with a unique voice and style that is very hard to pick up on what exactly makes it so, unless you’re paying a lot of attention to the details Edgar Wright leaves in.