Mt Fuji Fun Hour

Okay so let’s start off with the obvious. Scott Pilgrim is a great movie. Fantastic. One of the best I’ve seen all year, and its sheer visual inventiveness stamps it as an important development in film. I went in after never shutting up about this movie for a year straight and I was not disappointed. So, let this serve as prologue: I am not saying Scott Pilgrim is in any way a bad movie and what follows is just some high-level meta-textual shooting the shit over the internet.

Scott Pilgrim is not a perfect film.

Which in itself is not even a criticism except that, like Wright’s last two films, it’s so close to perfect that the flaws become distinct. Here Wright has made a film with a slightly weaker second act, finally closing out a loose structural trilogy that began with Shaun of the Dead and its slightly manic-depressive third act and Hot Fuzz with its slightly-too-slow slow build out of its first act. I could write a whole article for you on how third act problems to first act problems to second act problems is sort of the crawl, walk, run of narrative hiccups but, honestly, I’ve got enough to talk about here, and besides, none of these structural problems derailed any of the films in question. Suffice it to say, like the one funny joke in a terrible romantic comedy you tend to notice any moment that drags in a film this well paced.

Since Scott Pilgrim basically is an 80’s videogame it’s natural that it would suffer the same plot problems as one, coming dangerously close to jogging in place once it’s established its premise but hasn’t quite reached its final boss. There was always the danger inherent within the premise that the evil-exes would start to feel a little interchangeable, but Brian Lee O’Malley’s original graphic novels had the advantage of six total volumes to flesh out enough of Scott’s world outside of the exes to make sure you didn’t feel locked into a pattern. While the film manages to make each battle feel admirably fresh and different, a lot of the little side-plots and character back-stories that kept Scott’s relationship with Ramona from feeling like an endless series of battles naturally had to fall by the wayside.

And the main thing cut seems to be the womenfolk.

As Lauren pointed out over in her initial thoughts on the movie for io9 Ramona and Kim, two of the three big female protagonists of the books, both get short shrift in different ways. Kim’s just plain not in the movie much, her pretty involved backstory with Scott is cut down to just enough to establish that, yes they did date, and yes he is kinda a dick. Ramona on the other hand is still in the film pretty heavily but much of her complex emotional baggage has been cut out or replaced with a few high points. Since the movie’s time frame is a lot shorter this was probably to avoid making her seem like an emotional train-wreck.

It’s a testament to Allison Pill and Mary Elizabeth Winstead that neither of their characters feel one dimensional. Kim does a lot with a little, suggesting almost everything you love about her in the comic and leaving you wanting more. Ramona meanwhile is never quite the second lead she is in the comics, but she still manages to escape from just being another manic pixie dreamgirl waiting to fix some poor shlub’s life.

The real victim here though is poor ol’ Envy Adams, Scott’s ex and the lead singer of breakout band The Clash at Demonhead. In the comics, Envy has a lot going on and I mean A LOT easily out distancing every other antagonist, including Gideon, for page-count. If Gideon Graves is the final boss (and he is, I mean it even flashes FINAL BOSS for you) then the Envy of the comics is certainly the annoying as hell mini-boss it takes forever to beat. She’s a constant presence torturing Scott in the first few volumes and even appears later after her initial “defeat” with Todd to add some more depth.

But in the film I’m almost left wondering why we bothered with her. She shows up alongside the third evil ex, establishes that she’s a terrible ex-girlfriend, and then kinda mopes and slinks away. Perhaps the strangest pacing mistake of the film is the time spent setting up so many things about Envy and Scott’s relationship that never really pay-off. Despite never getting the reveal that (SPOILERS FOR THE COMIC AHOY) the break-up was not quite as one sided as Scott remembers it or that Envy is, in many ways still a stupid kid getting played by Todd Ingram, we still do most of the legwork to set those moments up. And most of the pay-off we do get feels shallow. Scott calling Envy by her real name seemed more like a headfake to that moment in the comics (hey! Remember Envy’s weird stuff about showing weakness from the comic?! She’s vulnerable! Emotionally!) than a resolution for the character, and it’s by far the film’s weakest moment.

But enough boring adaptation inside baseball. The real point is that the loss of Envy’s story arc, in conjunction with Ramona and Kim, means that the film lacks a lot of the insight into being a girl in her 20’s that O’Malley showed in the comics and really makes the film more about the part of growing up encapsulated by Scott Pilgrim’s journey rather than the sort of catch-all ethos of that period of life you get from the books.

I’m not saying there’s nothing for the ladies in this film, or going a full on Jezebel and declaring that Edgar Wright can’t or won’t write women characters well. I certainly think that critics who accuse Scott Pilgrim of treating women as power-ups to be won totally miss the point of the movie and it’s video game aesthetic. If nothing else, Knives Chau’s role is still there and perhaps even slighty expanded in the film. That you still feel that crushing weight of her being dumped by a guy she worships proves that Wright giving the other girls less to do was a problem of structure and not ability.

What I am saying is that Edgar Wright could have made a perfect film here by giving the girls a little more to do. Perhaps the problem could have been ironed out if he chose to work once again with one of his former collaborators. Not Simon Pegg or Nick Frost who nobody will stop asking him about, but Jessica Hynes, who managed to both write and act one of the most believable female characters on TV with Spaced’s Daisy Steiner. Or maybe we’ll just have to wait until his fourth film for him to finally create his flawless masterpiece. Scott Pilgrim is certainly a strong enough film to earn him that chance.

…Also Keiren Culkin is goddamn amazing as Wallace Wells. Just saying.