Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: Lifting Art Into the Real World

​By Emmanuel Gundran

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (Wright, 2010) is the film adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s award-winning graphic novel series - the story of Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera), a twenty-three-year-old who needs to get his life together. He has no job, lives in a small, dirty apartment across the street from his parents’ house, and is dating a seventeen-year old girl named Knives (Ellen Wong). Meanwhile, Scott encounters a girl from his dreams named Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and instantly falls in love with her. However, before Scott can date Ramona, he needs to fight Ramona’s seven evil exes. Thus begins Scott’s journey to defeat all seven exes while learning to confront himself and his past actions.

Scott Pilgrim's awkward first time meeting Ramona after seeing her in a dream.

A major way in which the film tries to adapt the graphic novel is through replicating its stylized, cartoonish tone. Ordinary scenes between two characters talking on the phone become like panels in a comic book, and a character swearing is covered up with a black bar over their mouth that even Scott can see. During action scenes, characters fight each other in a similar style as characters in modern Japanese manga. One scene has Scott and his band playing against Kyle (Keita Saitou) and Ken Katayanagi (Shota Saito), twin Japanese DJ’s who dated Ramona at the same time. Scott’s band and the Katayanagi’s not only play their music, the music also conjures powerful energy spirits that fight each other to decide who wins the battle of the bands. Scott’s band conjures a giant yeti while the Katayanagi’s conjure twin dragons. The abundance of stylization and flair makes the film seem more like an animated film than a live-action film. 

Scott Pilgrim vs. the Katayanagi Twins

While the cartoon-style fights and jokes feel more natural for the graphic novel’s already Japanese-inspired art style, these same fights and jokes do not mesh quite as well with the film’s live action setting. Within the Scott Pilgrim graphic novel, seeing Ramona with brightly-colored hair or Knives having the color of her hair literally punched out of her seemed fitting in a cartoon world. In the live-action Scott Pilgrim film, these same elements don’t translate as well from a two-dimensional page to a three-dimensional world.

One could argue that, because of the film’s overall comedic tone, it would not matter if the animated visual style of the film looks silly compared to the live action elements. However, the film’s themes and subject matter make it seem like it is too comedic. Putting aside the numerous video game references and flashy fight scenes, the essential story of Scott Pilgrim is about confronting one’s past mistakes and maturing as a result. The film, as a result of taking more of a comedic tone, seems to downplay this theme compared to the graphic novel, which spends more time developing Scott’s problems with confronting his past and his failed relationships. ​

Scott running away from himself, literally.

So, accommodate for the change of visual medium would , it would make sense to condense some of the more outlandish elements of the original source material. On the other hand, would condensing these elements too much take away the spirit of the source material?  In the case of Scott Pilgrim, much of what makes the series’ style so unique is its references to video games and comic books through its visuals. Making a more grounded Scott Pilgrim film would deviate from the series’ tone. So the alternate solution to this predicament would be to create an animated Scott Pilgrim film.

One potential problem with that would be alienating younger audiences because of dealing with more mature themes. The Scott Pilgrim graphic novels and the live action film deal with sexual relationships and emotional mind games. For a long time, it seemed like animated films were . Then, Sausage Party (Tiernan and Vernon 2016) recently defied this belief. According to the LA Times, Sony Pictures estimated that the film would make a modest $20 million compared to its $15 million budget. However, opening weekend came and the film made twice its budget with over $34 million in the US and, according to IMDb, made over $97 million by October 2016. Not only was it financially successful, it also had a favorable response from critics. Nick De Semlyen from Empire Online wrote of the film as “the dumbest movie of all time, but it’s actually smart, subversive and packed with famous voices saying wonderfully unspeakable things.” (2016) Roy Bruer, Sony’s distribution chief, theorized about the film’s success saying that, “[people] long for fresh material, things that are creative and innovative, something different. But that’s if you get it right.” (Anderson 2016) ​

Sausage Party, despite its cartoon-like apperance, is a raunchy adult comedy

With Sausage Party and its implications about American film audiences, it seems like an animated Scott Pilgrim could have worked if done right, but does this mean that the film should never have been live action to begin with? With its box office failure aside, it has attained a noticeable cult status online. MTV News noted that despite its critical success on online review sites like IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes and its Blu-Ray release, it still fared poorly in the box office. The writer goes on to praise the film as “a stunning, frenetic, walloping fist of a film that mixes comic books, rock music, video games, and youthful angst into a wonderfully ADD assault on the senses.” (Cargill 2016) Even the film’s director, Edgar Wright, still has positive memories of it, as he tweeted on August 12, 2016 that the film aired on Channel 4 in the UK and praised Mae Whitman and Brie Larson for their involvement in it (Nordine 2016).

Though one can argue that Scott Pilgrim could have done better as an animated film, the film that was made had clearly found an audience despite its financial failure.
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Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is still beloved by many for its high-energy action and video game-like aesthetic.

Sources Cited:

Anderson, Tre’vell. “It’s a ‘Sausage Party’ at the Box Office.” Los Angeles Times, 14 Aug 2016. Accessed 20 Mar 2016.

Cargill, C. Robert. “Blu-Ray Review: Scott Pilgrim Is The Special Edition Blu-Ray We Usually Have To Wait Years For.” MTV News, 9 Nov 2010. Accessed 20 Mar 2016.

De Semlyen. “Sausage Party Review.” Empire Online, 2 Sep 2016. Accessed 20 Mar 2016. 
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Nordine, Michael. “Edgar Wright Live Tweets ‘Scott Pilgrim’ for Fans, Exposing Behind-the-Scenes Secrets.” IndieWire, 14 Aug 2016. Accessed 20 Mar 2016.