Profound.

Rating: 9/10 (4 August 2015)

If there's one franchise that's been hanging over me for the last five years, it's Scott Pilgrim. I'd always taken a liking to the art style of the books, and I vowed that I'd get to reading them one day. Since the last colourised book came out in May this year, I don't think I could've come up with a more appropriate time to get started. I bought the first volume, read it - couldn't put it down! It was a real page-turner! So I bought the rest, and thoroughly enjoyed it. For those unaware, Scott Pilgrim is a guy who has to fight his girlfriend's seven evil exes over the course of a year in a Toronto where RPG and video game elements are the most prevalent aspects of those who live in it, what with levelling systems and extra lives and save points and what have you. It's an epic in its own right, very well written - but I'm not going to deny that it has flaws, too. In spite of them though, it's at heart a story set in late-80s early-90s pop culture, with Bryan Lee O'Malley's distinctive style defining it. The movie came out a mere month after the last volume, in August 2010, which probably would have meant that the ending of the books was still being written when it was being filmed, I guess? The director is Edgar Wright, who also directed those movies with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, so I think we're in good hands.
So... wow, is this movie deep. Particularly toward the beginning, it follows the books particularly closely, while still allowing room to deviate into its own plot line. It does start to derail toward the end, to the point where there are TWO endings to the film! (I've only seen the theatrical one at the time of this writing.) Also, instead of playing out over a year, it plays out within only a month, which is kind of a shame since I think to take anything from the Scott Pilgrim books would hurt them, but what're you gonna do. For what we have though, I'm happy with how faithful it is to the source material.
Edgar Wright really brings the conventions of comic books to the screen what with experimental camera movement and the interplay between fore and background, and as a nod to the multitudinous Easter eggs to be found in the books, the movie has a multitude of his own. You know how each evil ex are assigned a number? Their scenes have that number in the background somewhere. On top of that, the letter X is played among them (you know - X, ex?) See how many you can spot! Even if the RPG elements are abandoned, the video game elements are not, carrying over from the comics and scattered in spades, turning up in even the most mundane of situations. Which also leads into its use of typography, invoking onomatopoeia every which way where and when suitably evocative.
As with the books, the story follows Scott and his battle with the League of Evil Exes. He's willing to go through with it, accept it as inevitability on his path to a relationship with Ramona Flowers. Having watched David Chen's video essay on this movie before watching it, I understand that the battles are metaphoric of the battles we go through in our own lives, attempting to overcome obstacles and emotional baggage, which seems daunting and sometimes feels just not worth going to the trouble of. Something like that. Anyway, each battle has their own distinctive vision, and Scott uses various methods to conquer them, including assistance from Ramona, and his own ex, Knives Chau. Speaking of which... I think her story's switched around a bit, she doesn't use hair dye as part of her battle costume - she uses it to mimic Ramona's when she's trying to hook up with Young Neil. I... am not sure how this works, but I'm not going to question it. The Katayanagi brothers really don't get much of a part either, unfortunately. They just come and go. Which, unfortunately, is what comes of having to cram six books' worth of material into 112 minutes. To that end, if you're expecting characters like Lisa Miller, Joseph, Mobile, and Gideon the cat, you won't find them. They're not here.
While we're on the subject of subtractions... the Subspace doors are only ever used twice in the film, even though it was a concrete element in the books. This causes a few truncations to some scenes which, while not having a major effect on the story, still do give rise to some unfortunate implications. Ramona also mentions a computer chip on the back of her neck, which I don't remember from the books, but that has some meaning too. Gideon represents how a significant other's most recent ex still has a hold on them, and still has a possibility of reclaiming them (which probably explains the sub-dom fantasy thing seen in Subspace/the Chaos Theatre).
So, after all that, where does this whole thing leave Scott? He realises he needs much more than love and infatuation: he needs humility, contrition, self respect... and apparently, Balls +8. But by now I'm probably giving away too much detail, so I'm just going to wrap things up.
This movie speaks a truth - and David's essay pointed me towards it: when you intertwine your life with someone else's, you share their burdens, struggles, and the ghosts of their past - and when you emerge from the battle with the past, the best thing you can anticipate is the doorway to an uncertain future, with the reassurance that we can walk through that door together. That's what makes Scott Pilgrim - both the books AND this movie - so sublime.