Tweet

Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is unlike anything you’ve seen before. It’s not only incredibly brilliant, but a complete original. This summer hasn’t been the greatest season for wide releases, but with the summer coming to a close, it’ll end with a bang.

Wright has made a film both sweet and full of spectacle. Many are unfairly pegging this as something that won’t reach an audience outside of the gaming/comic-book/movie nerd world, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Just like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, it’s a film that has a heart big enough to win over non-nerds alike. Wright hits the right amount of gray areas, has its hero being selfish and reckless and, most importantly, has a yeti fighting a dragon – where else have we seen all of this in one film? Unless I’m mistaken, nowhere.

Thankfully, Wright (a film school reject himself) had plenty to say about his latest and best film thus far:

(Note: This interview contains spoilers)

One thing I really took from the film is that it still had your sensibility that you’re known for, but taken to another level. Some may find that surprising since it is a big studio movie. How did this happen?

The ironic thing about it is that: a lot of people have commented on that this is really crazy for a studio movie and have said, “How on earth did you pitch this to Universal?” The truth of the matter is they kind of brought it to me. In 2004, right after Shaun of the Dead, Marc Platt Productions – who works with Universal – bought the rights to the first book before it even hit bookstores. So I was given it maybe a couple of weeks after it first came out. Six years later we have a film, because basically we’d been working on the script for that long and Bryan [Lee O'Malley] has been writing the books.

Wouldn’t you label it as a film that’s a bit crazier than your others? It’s definitely something we haven’t seen before.

You know, that’s what attracted me to the source material and the idea of doing it. There’s been a lot of comic book movies in this wave since Tim Burton’s Batman. That sort of started a 20-year wave of comic book movies. It was nice to do a comic book movie a little different and something that straddles the sort of indie comics rather than the big Marvel and DC films. It was really nice to do something that was essentially a comedy, but with this insane action.

Since Scott Pilgrim’s universe is so different, how did you want to go about introducing it? It’s tricky to introduce a world so different to some people without it being jarring.

I feel like all of the separate elements of the film people have seen before. Maybe nobody has seen a fight between a yeti fighting a dragon, maybe not yet. All of the elements like the music, the teen drama, the comedy, the romantic aspects and even the action are all genres we are well aware of, but I think it’s the fact that they’re all thrown together. It’s like having all different flavors of ice cream in the same shake.

How would you label the world they’re in?

I feel like it’s basically the real world. The apartments, the streets and coffee shops that you see in the film are all very real and mundane even. It’s really essentially that Scott Pilgrim is a day-dreamer and he’s a kid that is lost in his own day-dream bubble of Saturday morning cartoons, anime, video games and comic-books. In a way, what you’re seeing is his very fantastical version of events. That’s kind of the joke of the film: in real relationships when you’re going out with a girl and she has an ex-boyfriend, you tend to do everything to think of this ex as a bad person (laughs). In your head this ex-boyfriend, who’s probably not that much different than you, has become this bond villain. It’s really an extension of that kind of fantasy and these type of battles of love taken very literally on a crazy level.

That definitely makes sense. Considering Scott is pretty immature and doesn’t think realistically, the world itself should project that.

I think that’s what is fun about it. You know, it’s just presenting the world through the character’s eyes. This is kind of a pop culture and a media that we’ve seen for like, thirty years. That was apart of the appeal to me. The characters are around twenty-two, they’re post-college and high school, but they really don’t have any direction in life.

It’s really about that state of perpetual adolescence. You don’t really know what to do with your life and I think Scott Pilgrim is in this little bubble of his own making. What the film is essentially about is him growing up. As much as it is about him trying to win the heart of this fair maiden, it’s really about him growing up and taking responsibility for his own actions and doing what he should do and ought to do.

The great thing about Scott is how flawed he is. Would you label him as selfish at the beginning of the film?

Yeah. I think he is. I don’t think he’s a bad person and there’s been a lot of debate about whether Scott Pilgrim is a jerk or not, but he certainly does some jerky things. He’s even described as a jerky-jerk in the film (laughs). What I think it’s really about is that, when you’re young you make plenty of mistakes along the way and I think Scott Pilgrim is as flawed as any of us are. So as your hero, he definitely makes a lot of mistakes and even him being a gamer makes him necessarily not think about the world around him. He treats some of the people as bit players in this adventure rather than real people and certainly the way he treats Knives comes back to haunt him at the end of the film.

I think that’s what it’s really about is that your hero isn’t perfect himself. Almost the irony of the premise is that he bemoans the trials of fighting the evil exes and yet he has exes himself and baggage. He has as much baggage as Ramona. She’s a character that’s caused a lot of chaos and heartbreak along her way, but so has he. I think it’s people coming to terms with their past before they can move on.

He tries to live in a world without consequence like video games, but it ends up haunting him later on.

See, you said it much better than me and you said it in about ten seconds. Next time you’re going to pitch the film for me at the studio.

But I do think that’s what is so gratifying about the final battle. It’s not the action scene, but him finally owning up to his own mistakes.

Yeah. I think so. I think that’s what is really nice about it and seemingly it’s just as simple as cheating, even though what he does is relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, it’s still treated as something punishable by death (laughs). You don’t do that to a person and you’ll pay for your sins.

I love along the way that you get to continue to see Scott making mistakes and not growing up while others around him, like the band, are moving forward. Was that an idea from the books, or an idea of your own?

The band’s arc is slightly different from the books. In the books, Sex Bob-omb sort of breakup by book four. I like this idea that their rise through the ranks is mirrored by his pass through the exes.

For the narrative itself, since you’re riffing on video games, how do you make sure it doesn’t become that episodic type of storytelling? Where it just becomes Scott fighting ex after ex.

Well, it’s definitely a tricky balance of something like that. Once you set-up there’s going to be seven evil exes it’s definitely difficult to avoid being slightly episodic. I tried to make it so that his emotional story is consistent throughout and even the way he fights the exes is, in some ways, a reflection of his emotions.

In some cases he defeats the foe very easily because he’s powered by this insane puppy dog crush and that humming bird tune where you feel like you have the strength of ten. Once he gets to ex number four he doesn’t really even want to play anymore and tries to opt out of fighting because he’s just had it. I think it’s less about fighting for the girl, but more for making a relationship work.

The puppy dog analogy is definitely a perfect one. Scott seems to have a somewhat childish outlook on love.

He’s twenty-two, but sometimes he acts like a twelve year old. I’ve certainly been that guy, and I still might be that guy at thirty-six (laughs). I read something where somebody said, “Well, we don’t know that much about Ramona. So why would Scott Pilgrim fall for her?” And I was thinking, man, I’ve told girls I’ve loved them without knowing anything about them (laughs). I think Scott Pilgrim, sometimes, acts like a bird seeing a shiny object. He’s attracted by the surface level beauty of Ramona and then he has to come to terms with who she really is. Ultimately, he does fight for her, but it’s like an immature person having to deal with somebody having a history. And whether or not you’re going to man up and sort of let love conquer all. It’s about whether or not he can turn a blind eye to somebody’s baggage.

I think Mary Elizaebth Winstead does such an incredible job with Ramona making her come off as hurt and resistant, while also making sure she doesn’t come off like a bitch. Can you talk about working with her on that?

She’s a very guarded character and I think that’s what is interesting about her. What’s funny about that is how different that is to Mary herself. Mary is, as a person, is very sunny in her deposition. And Ramona is somebody who’s been out with seven douchebags (laughs). She’s completely got this forcefield around here where she doesn’t really want to hurt or get hurt, again. One of the ironies of the story is the way Scott Pilgrim treats Knives Chau in the opening of the film. He likes her, but he’s not in love with her and her keeps her around to sort of…

He likes the idea of being idolized.

Yeah. And also, he says at the start of the film when someone asks him about why he’s going out with Knives and he just says, “Oh, it’s nice. It’s simple.” It’s a relationship he doesn’t have to worry about. In a weird way, that’s what Ramona does to him. Even though she likes Scott, she does say out loud that he’s a break from the bad guys. One of my favorite lines of dialogue is when she says, “You’re the nicest guy I’ve ever dated,” and Scott says, “Wait, is that good?” Nobody wants to be the nice guy. I think there’s a lot of interesting gray areas in it. Especially with young love, the path of a relationship is never smooth and it’s usually fought with obstacles, and in this case, seven big obstacles. Despite the external battles he has to have, he has to figure out what’s going on in his own head and heart.