With the release of “Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World” imminent (it’s tomorrow!), Techland’s staff has been chatting pretty much constantly about how totally into it we are. Here’s what Steve Snyder, Lev Grossman, Douglas Wolk, Graeme McMillan and Evan Narcisse have to say about it.
STEVE: Am I the only one taken aback by the critical debate that’s been swirling around Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World? Almost all of us saw this back at Comic-Con, and we walked away raving. And then the snipes started, one reviewer saying that the whole thing played indulgent and juvenile. I remember reading the magazine, nodding my head right along with everything that critic was saying, wondering how this was possibly a bad thing.
So I need your assistance here, chaps – can someone help me make heads or tails out of what’s going on with this film in critical circles? I remember Lev tweeting about how much he loved living in the Scott Pilgrim universe, and that’s the same thing that struck me. This film veers so wildly between pathetic Scott and heroic Scott, between lust and loss and longing, that what I connected with was its utter, glorious dysfunction. It reminded me of what it’s like to be a teenager, grappling with all these emotions, starring as the hero of your own little home movie. Each breakup a tragedy, each new love interest a sweeping Shakespearean romance.
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I’ve read a couple reviews that said these stylized segues were a large part of the film’s failing, that in being so jumpy and jittery and ADD, the movie is actually rendered inconsequential. Well, I’ve always been someone – with movies like 2001, The Fountain, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Inception – who has savored stylistic devices that take us someplace new and novel. And what I loved about this movie is that you can jump almost immediately from a mopey, sighing Michael Cera to a high-flying duel with a vegan ex-boyfriend. The camera can suddenly switch from a passive observer to a whip cracking, high-flying player in the action, every jump cut or zoom accented by director Edgar Wright’s on-screen text.
It’s completely insane, and in such a wonderful way. Almost as if we are seeing this action through Scott’s eyes, that this entire movie has been cribbed from his daydreams. It felt very visual to me, very inventive, very immersive. And it reminded me of all the euphoria, agony, angst, apprehension, heartache, triumph and confusion that reigns supreme when you’re a young person trying to figure out this chaotic jigsaw puzzle called life.
Um, yeah, so I’m a big advocate for this movie. Even a little pretentious about my love. But I’m so sick of critics complaining about predictable plots and then not basking in the inventiveness of something like Scott Pilgrim. I’ve never seen a movie quite like this, which puts us in the front seat of the emotional roller coaster video game…
LEV: I read Anthony Lane’s New Yorker review today.
I like Lane, and I was all stoked to see the first mainstream rave of Scott Pilgrim unleashed upon the world. Instead, he dismissed the movie with the back of his hand.
Look, I see the weaknesses of the story. They were there in the comic too. Scott can be an insipid little twat, and Ramona isn’t, you know, Jane Eyre or anything, characterization-wise, and the main narrative conceit — the ex-boyfriends — is pretty slight.
But the richness — tenderness even — of the world-building, and the sheer storytelling energy, I’m really surprised anybody can resist that.
(More on Techland: Techland Reviews Scott Pilgrim)
Look: The very first time that Sex Bob-omb starts rocking out. Wright (the director) starts drawing in the lightning-bolts, and the camera backs away so that their shabby little rehearsal room becomes an infinite corridor (I thought of “it’s never done that before!” from Time Bandits!), and Cera starts doing his weird floppy Pilgrim-dance, and the air itself goes all heat-shimmery from the sheer sonic awesomeness of it all … THAT is a little filmic universe I want to hang out in.
During the first boyfriend fight, when Matthew Patel materializes those spectral Bollywood dancers with the fighting-fish teeth, I turned to Peter and said, all Knives-Chau-style, “Oh my god, this is the greatest movie ever made!” I was kidding, but only sort of.
STEVE: And I can’t stress this enough: Scott is not presented in this movie as an infallible conquering hero. Many reviews I have read have zeroed in on the movie’s one-note structure. But I don’t see merely one note. In fact, I hear a lot of different, jumbled, contradictory notes in search of a symphony.
I interviewed Wright last week and he said much the same thing. He said that there are two camps of Pilgrim fans: those who think he’s a rock solid hero and those who think he’s somewhat delusional and profoundly flawed.
He says that he buys into the latter line of thought, and that would be seen in the movie through Scott’s ex-girlfriend Kim, a constant reminder of the pain HE has wrought. After all, he’s an evil ex too.
So here’s the thing: the movie is not one-dimensional, and all these critics are willfully misreading the story. But what disturbs me even more: what if this movie was indeed about one egomaniacal and arrogant young man? What’s so wrong with a movie about that? Have we decided such a main character is off limits?
The movie is not a singular tribute to epicness; it’s a dizzying character study that invites scrutiny, consideration and even criticism. Scott’s a living, breathing, flawed creation; that’s what makes him, and his movie, so engaging.
