Scott Pilgrim and the Seven Deadly Metaphors

So I just got back from seeing Scott Pilgrim, and my sides are still hurting a little. This was honestly the best movie I’ve seen in the last couple of years.

For the unaware, the basic premise of Scott Pilgrim Vs The Word is as follows: Scott Pilgrim is an unemployed hipster living in Canada with his gay roommate who pretty much carries his sorry ass financially. He has recently started dating a Japanese school girl, is in a band that nobody likes or has heard of, and his life is going nowhere. Then he meets Ramona. Ramona is the physical embodiment of nerdy chic. Funky anime style hair that changes colors on a weekly basis, an outfit that captures the aesthetic that Hot Topic was always going for but never quite reached, a general lack of insipidness, and an inexplicable willingness to let Scott mope his way into a date with her. However, now that he is dating her, he must defeat her Seven Evil Exes in a variety of duels to the death.

The movie takes place in a sort of alternate reality, where life regularly imitates video games: people will randomly acquire superpowers, health bars and power-ups are commonplace, and Scott actually acquires visible points as he progresses through the story. Everybody seems to find this perfectly natural; in fact, when the first evil ex is defeated and explodes in a shower of coins, the only shock that Scott Pilgrim exhibits regarding this phenomenon is that it’s not enough to cover his bus fare home. The movie is full of 8-bit sound effects, needlessly intense voiceovers, and enough arcade style lights and noises to… man, I swear I had something for this… well, it’s a lot of lights and noises, OK? Basically, the movie is wrapped in a glossy coat of exactly what its target audience of underdeveloped manchildren want to see: an environment in which the cartoonish preoccupations of our youth are not only accepted but commonplace in adult society, but are now mixed with the kind of mature themes that we weren’t allowed to know about back in those days. In other words, it’s a world where nobody had to grow up, get a job, or actually mature as a person, but still got to move out of their parents’ houses, get girlfriends, and do all that awesome stuff that the big people get to do.

There’s one gigantic twist to all of this, however: the entire core concept of the movie is that people who honestly want to see all that need to grow the fuck up. Just in case this wasn’t glaringly obvious by the constant use of the video-game style boss fights as a metaphor for Scott dealing with his own emotional baggage, the movie literally spells it out for us in big flashing letters more than once. Despite the fact that there’s a lot going on in this movie, they spend the first twenty minutes or so getting you to absolutely despise the main character, so that the next hour and a half can be spent developing him from a hopeless, self-conscious loser into a remotely likable human being.

The video-game aesthetic, while being an absolute blast to watch, in is in fact an extended metaphor for how a lot of the target audience needs to get over themselves and grow up a little. It’s like I went to a strip club, and a gorgeous naked woman stepped out and delivered a truly compelling dissertation on how objectification of women was harmful for my sexual development.

Scott Pilgrim is a movie that works on several different levels. As a simple, mindless comedy, there is more than enough good humor to make it a satisfactory comedy. The fight scenes are surprisingly well-choreographed, so long as the arcade-style aesthetic isn’t a turn-off for you. That aesthetic itself is a hilarious non-sequitor, made all the funnier by the fact that the movie is kind of making fun of your for liking it so readily. But on top of all of that, the movie is telling the story of a shy, emotionally stunted nerd finally getting over his own BS and becoming an adult nerd with a girlfriend. And just to remind the audience that this bit of mockery is all in good fun, he levels up when he does so.