By Brandon Nowalk
I thought I was so over Michael Cera. My video game skills are only up to the early levels of NES Super Mario Bros. And I have as much desire to watch hipsters fall in and out of “relationships” for a couple of hours as I do to sit through Inception again and see if I’m missing anything. But Edgar Wright’s follow-up to Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz is as dazzling as it is heartfelt. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is one of the sharpest portraits of millennial culture yet put to film.
First and foremost–and desperately in need of some Ritalin–is the visual style. Pop-up graphics introduce us to characters (Name: Scott Pilgrim, Rating: Awesome), witty scene transitions unfold like comic book panels, and sounds get the full Adam West Batman: fap, plok, whump! The film is mixed media culling such disparate elements as Seinfeld and The Sims for its visual cues, but nothing older than the ‘80s. (Was there even culture before MTV?)
That’s to say nothing of the fight sequences. See, Scott falls in love at first sight (or so he’s convinced himself) with a fuchsia-haired girl named Ramona Flowers. But in order to date her, he has to physically defeat her seven evil exes in combat. Which is only absurd in our universe, but “in the mysterious land of Toronto,” where the film takes place, characters inventively bleep their curse words and even the highlights can be punched out of your hair. The seven-plus fights are crammed into the final hour, which dips into overkill but is saved by the twists that distinguish each fight and the video game style of one-ups, coin rewards, cool combos, and superpowers.
Repeat viewings may take a toll on my reaction to the constant inundation of graphic elements (amusing -10, obnoxious +200), but the passive-aggressive need for attention is actually a clever gambit: it’s one motif in the film’s tapestry of millennial culture, where enthusiasm is oh so lame. Notice the passwords to get into the super-hip club are “whatever” and “eh,”–funny fly-bys, but equally biting.
Scott Pilgrim’s central argument is much more damning, though it’s told with a disappointed dad’s gentle hand. In short, the casual approach to everything from relationships to life makes us all monsters, and we can’t even see it. Casual (emotional, social, sexual) betrayals turn us into Street Fighters and our loved ones into mere pixels. You don’t think about Chun-Li’s feelings when you deliver the KO any more than you think about your girlfriend you’ve been meaning to dump for the new hottie. We’re the “me generation,” after all.
Pilgrim celebrates the great strides of our generation, too—diversity, technological acuity—and mocks us when we need it—indie snobbery, vegan righteousness—but it’s ultimately a hopeful, coming-of-age tale. We may be in extended adolescence, the film reckons, but we’re just getting started.