Review
Pop Culture Happy Hour
Review
Pop Culture Happy Hour
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD")
ALISON PILL: (As Kim Pine) We are Sex Bob-Omb - one, two, three, four.
(SOUNDBITE OF SEX BOB-OMB SONG, "WE ARE SEX BOB-OMB")
GLEN WELDON, HOST:
The 2010 film "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" starred Michael Cera as a directionless, kind of selfish, not-terribly-bright 22-year-old living in Toronto. It was directed and co-written by Edgar Wright. And despite its amazing cast and its kinetic and frenetic visual style, which borrowed from video games, manga and martial arts movies, the film underperformed at the box office. In the 10 years since, however, it's attained cult status. It was one of the first films we talked about on PCHH back in the day, and we loved it then. But does it hold up? I'm Glen Weldon, and today we're looking back at "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" 10 years on on POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR from NPR. Joining us from his home in Washington, D.C., is NPR Music's Daoud Tyler-Ameen. Hi, Daoud.
DAOUD TYLER-AMEEN, BYLINE: Hey, Glen.
WELDON: Also here from D.C. is Mallory Yu, movie editor for All Things Considered. Hey, Mallory.
MALLORY YU, BYLINE: Hey there.
WELDON: And joining us for the first time from Queens, N.Y., is writer, comedian and co-host of the "Bad Romance Podcast," Jourdain Searles. Welcome to the show, Jourdain.
JOURDAIN SEARLES: Hey. Thanks for having me.
WELDON: Sure. All right. Let's get into it. "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" stars Michael Cera at what I would argue is peak Michael Cera. He is dating a high schooler, Knives Chau, played by Ellen Wong. Then he meets Ramona Flowers, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and eventually dumps Knives. But then he learns that in order to date Ramona, he must first defeat her seven evil exes in what turns out to be heavily stylized combat.
The film was based on a series of graphic novels by Bryan Lee O'Malley and wears that comic book providence on its sleeve by doing things like depicting sound effects and speed lines visually on screen. Not only is it stylish as hell, but when you watch it with 2020 eyes and the opening credits roll, you sit there going, oh, oh, oh, Kieran Culkin, Anna Kendrick, Aubrey Plaza, Brandon Routh, Mae Whitman, Brie Larson, Jason Schwartzman and, with eyebrows never more on point, literally Chris Evans.
Daoud, what's your general impression of the film today? And has it changed at all over the last 10 years?
TYLER-AMEEN: I really liked this movie. I think if anything's changed in the past 10 years, there are moments that I have to kind of watch through my fingers now. I saw it in 2010 off a fresh breakup, which, I think, is the way to see it.
WELDON: (Laughter).
TYLER-AMEEN: And I walked out. And I was kind of like, I think I liked that. And over time, I sort of found that I couldn't quit it, that I went back and re-watched scenes from it over and over again. It became sort of like a late-night comfort watch. And I think the thing that sticks with me about it is that, in many ways, it is a romantic comedy with all of the trouble that that brings. But you're aware from the very start that the hero sucks (laughter)...
WELDON: Yeah.
TYLER-AMEEN: ...That he's the worst. I also recognize that maybe one reason why I'm able to enjoy it so much is that I'm not in this movie. It has no Black characters. If Knives Chau was Black and there were lots of jokes about that, I'm sure that at the time, it would have made me itch a lot more. But the thing that I thought about watching it last night getting ready to talk to y'all is that in a way, I am in this movie because I've been a 22-year-old, cisgender, straight dude. And the thing that I recognize in it, even - this is the aspect where, to me, it's less just about, like, loving it and more about, like, kind of finding it useful because it can be gutting to see some of your worst moments reflected back at you...
WELDON: Right.
TYLER-AMEEN: ...Obviously in an extreme way. But I think if you're a young, horny dude who still has a lot of growing up to do, you want excuses for your romantic life to feel epic and like a conquest. And you don't want to just woo your partner. You want to win them. And so if Scott's taught me anything over the past 10 years, it's that that is a great example of the kind of personality that you hope to grow out of. The main thing that's changed for me is that I've come to understand why certain things about this story and this film and the main character would turn people off. But it's a net positive for me.
WELDON: OK. Now, Jourdain, like all of us on this podcast, you both read the books and have seen the movie. What'd you think of it then? What do you think of it now?
SEARLES: Well, I loved the books. And I was also - when the movie came out, I was, like, 18. So (laughter) I read the books when I was in high school. And I saw the movie, like, right at the end of high school. So I was kind of at the exact right time to be on Knives' side the entire time (laughter). It's interesting watching it now. Like, between 18 and 28, like, that's, like, a whole big gap of time. I became an adult (laughter). I'm more on Kim's side now.
WELDON: Right - good point. Kim is his ex he dated in high school who is now the drummer in his band Sex Bob-Omb. Mallory, first, give me your big-picture thoughts. But also, a while back, you wrote a really smart Twitter thread about the treatment of Knives Chau, as Jourdain mentioned, in the movie and in the books - but first off, your overall impressions.
YU: This is a really, really easy movie to love, especially if you were, like Jourdain, 18. I was 21 when I saw - when the movie came out. It's a movie that's, like, aimed directly at our generation - right? - like, the sound effects, the references, the manga references, the video game effects. Like, everything is sort of aimed directly at me and my peers. It's fun. It's frenetic. It's chaotic. It sort of captures that comic book-graphic novel, like, energy. But at the same time, the Twitter thread you mentioned is me essentially saying Knives Chau realizes eventually that Ramona isn't the problem. It's Scott. And I think for me that's - ultimately, the issue with the movie is that I know that I'm supposed to think that Scott is the worst, but the movie also wants me to root for him. And at this point, the fact that the movie opens with this is Scott Pilgrim, he's dating a high schooler - automatically, I just can't deal with that. And automatically, that takes away Scott's protagonist status in my head.
WELDON: I do agree with you there. You know, this is the first time we got to see what Edgar Wright does as a director on his own. I mean, he collaborated with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost so often on the TV show "Spaced," and he'd already done both "Shaun Of The Dead" and "Hot Fuzz" by this time that I had come to think of their visual style as those guys together. But here, for the first time, I really understood anyway how much of the energy, the pacing - the pacing of this movie is incredible because he just willfully discards anything that isn't fun to look at - no filler, no endless walking scenes. When somebody says, let's go home - boom, jump cut, they're home. But I do agree with a lot of the stuff people have been saying about Knives Chau. And in fact, there is a first-draft quality to a lot of the characterizations here. We meet Matthew Patel. He does a Bollywood number. You know, the Katayanagi twins attack with sonic dragons and Roxy Richter, another one of Ramona's exes, is an angry lesbian. But I got to admit that she does get some of the best lines in the movie. I mean, when she screams I'm bi-furious (ph), I'm sorry. That's a good line. I'm sorry.
YU: I mean, my friends and I started screaming that at each other, and we weren't even bi-furious at the time.
WELDON: Same deal when she calls Ramona a has-been. That's - I'm sorry - muah (ph) - great. Love it. I think a lot of these characters are more lazy than malicious, but who cares? That's the thing about portrayals, right? I mean, creators can convince themselves that intent matters, but audiences don't care about your intent, dude. Audiences are oblivious to that. It's just this thing you're putting out in the world. You can't count on it to be received with the context that you are well-intentioned and noble. I mean, I agree with what you say about Knives Chau. The character is dumped on. I think - and I want to say - I want to be very careful here because I don't want to be misconstrued. But even though it's a very thinly written part, Knives Chau, and it is problematic as hell, Ellen Wong is pretty great. She's doing...
JOURDAIN SEARLES AND MALLOY YU: Oh, yeah.
WELDON: ...A great job with it. She just throws herself into this role so deeply that she, at first, expands the stereotype and then pushes past it and then completely blows it up in my mind. She creates a living, breathing character with whom you can't help but empathize. It's a testament to an actress who is remarkably fearless.
SEARLES: Her career not blowing up has made me angry for, like, 10 years.
WELDON: Yeah.
YU: Oh, yeah. As a 21-year-old watching this, I immediately obviously related to Knives because I was a 17-year-old weird Asian kid once. If I had watched this or read the books as a kid, I think the character of Knives would have reinforced a lot of negative stereotypes that I already had internalized. And so it is hard to watch it as an adult who has moved past some of these stereotypes and wants to push past them to see a character as thinly written as her written by an Asian man.
WELDON: Right.
YU: It is hard to swallow some of the what I see as internalized racism in her character and characterization. And I think it's the sort of humor of the time. I just can't connect with it anymore.
SEARLES: I mean, it seems like Bryan Lee O'Malley - and I felt this at the time, too - that he was, like, dealing with a lot of biracial angst. And you can see that in the sense that, like, most of the characters are white. And I feel like that's where he was at at the time, where he was just writing all these white characters. And then here's the one Asian one, and it's like he couldn't deal with, you know, writing her better.
WELDON: Absolutely. Let's take a short break. When we come back, we'll dive into the distinctive sounds of "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World," plus the Michael Cera of it all. So don't go away.
Welcome back to POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR. Let's talk about the music of "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World." One could almost say the music is another character in the film.
(LAUGHTER)
WELDON: This movie for me did some service journalism. Like, good bands came into my life because of this movie. I started listening to Metric because of this movie. Daoud, can you talk about how the music not only sets the scene, but it also kind of sets the Toronto music scene?
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah. The crew behind the music all on its own, it's kind of like the same way that the casting is one of those "Dazed And Confused" kind of wonders where it's just, like, how were all of these people involved in the same thing? You've got Beck writing songs. You've got Nigel Godrich, who's Radiohead's producer. Metric obviously does the song "Black Sheep" that Brie Larson's character sings and kills in the movie. Brendan Canning and Kevin Drew from Broken Social Scene - this is that moment where, like, 12 people from Toronto and Montreal made up, like, 50% of indie rock.
WELDON: (Laughter).
TYLER-AMEEN: And I didn't know this at the time, but Chris Murphy from Sloan, another great Canadian band, was their music coach. Some of the actors hadn't played instruments before, and so he taught them how to play and get the posture and the body language right. But also, music is used narratively. Two of the battle scenes with the evil exes are music duels - the bass battle with Todd Ingram, played by Brandon Routh - Superman, one of the handful of movie star superheroes in the cast - and then the amp versus amp battle with the Katayanagi twins, where you have a garage rock band and an electronic duo making one song together by fighting each other.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD")
MARK WEBBER: (As Stephen Stills, singing) My threshold, my threshold, my threshold - I'm reaching my threshold.
TYLER-AMEEN: It's pretty wild. I mean, it's like, you listen to the soundtrack, and because of all of the work that's done with the framing and the staging and the animation and the fact that the music is not just, like, you know, ornamental or incidental, it really is, like, woven into every aspect of the narrative that you really can see it while you listen.
SEARLES: Yeah. And of course, there's Plumtree, where Scott Pilgrim comes from. And he wears, like, a Plumtree shirt.
WELDON: Yeah, he does. He does.
YU: I mean, that's what makes this movie such a good, like, graphic novel adaptation - right? - because I think what "Scott Pilgrim," the graphic novels, did so well was allowed you to kind of see the effect of music in a space, you know, like, the way that a rock band sort of fills a whole concert venue with sound. I think the graphic novels did such a good job of portraying a sonic quality in a visual way. And the movie is able to kind of add a different dimension to it, which is really fun. It's really fun to see all the sound effects - the door slamming and you kind of see the comic book pop-up. Like, I just love the constant references to, this is a visual story. Even though music is something that we experience through our ears years, you know, we can still see it.
WELDON: Absolutely. You know, the biggest change in how I perceived this movie came in who I thought the movie was about. I mean, when I watched this film in 2010, I saw it as Michael Cera's movie. I wasn't really picking up on what Mary Elizabeth Winstead was doing. Now, 2020, watching it last night, that's all I'm picking up on because what Michael Cera does in this movie is so familiar now, and it's light bordering on slight. But there is such a deep well of melancholy, a depth coming from Winstead's performance. I mean, this is when it turned for me, when I was, like, clicked in. Oh, she says at one point that Scott is the nicest guy she's ever dated. And 10 years ago, I was like, oh, that's sweet. And now I'm like, oh, God, that's bad news.
SEARLES: Yeah. I mean, he even talks about, like, how sad that is...
WELDON: That is.
SEARLES: ...Because he's a bad person. And, I mean, so much of the books really is about him being a bad person. And the big issue about that is that whenever he does something bad, he forgets it, and so he doesn't learn it. And so in the sixth book, he meets, like, Nega Scott. And Nega Scott is essentially, like, every terrible thing that he's done that he's wanted to forget. And they merge, which means that he remembers what a bad person he is. And there's kind of hinted at in the movie, like, with Kim - how Kim, like, very clearly hates him, but he acts like he can't remember why. And you basically find out that in every relationship, he's been terrible, which is why he dates Knives - because he figures that he can't disappoint her if it's not a real relationship.
YU: Because she's a high schooler.
WELDON: Yeah.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
SEARLES: (Laughter).
TYLER-AMEEN: Cera's vibe at this point around the end of the 2000s - kind of sheepish, self-conscious soft boy who's also, like, totally DTF - that schtick is already arguably starting to sour at this point. That's why a few years later, when he plays himself in "This Is The End," the joke is, like, what if he was just fully, unapologetically insufferable? What if there was no smokescreen about it; he was just actually the worst? It's one of the things that makes him good for this role.
And if you can take that but drop it into a story where he's at the very least not completely surrounded by enablers - like, the thing that happens in so many, like, romantic comedy-type stories is that the version of friendship that we see represented with people who are just making bad decision after bad decision is, like, we got you; like, we're here for you through thick and thin, rather than, like, confronting people and telling them, like, no, you're exhausting. You make life difficult for people around you. Like, that's a really important part of friendship, too.
YU: Just jumping off of that, I love Anna Kendrick's character, who plays Scott's sister. I was saying she was, like, my voice in this movie. Everything she said about Scott was exactly what I wanted to say at that moment. So it was really fun to kind of hear her come in and go, like, oh, you're just the worst. Why?
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
YU: So I do appreciate that, you know, Scott is constantly being told, you're bad. Why are you doing this? What are you doing? But at the end of the movie, the lesson that he learns is self-worth. And I'm - I understand what that's supposed to signify in his kind of character arc. But I don't know if self-worth - the lack of self worth is Scott Pilgrim's real problem. I personally think that his real problem is just his lack of considering other people's worth (laughter). So it's hard to kind of see that his big lesson is self-worth, and that's what allows him to defeat his big villains.
WELDON: That's why I think it's important that the character, Ramona, is - yes, she's a dream girl, but she's by no means a manic pixie dream girl - not pixie but a clinically depressed Joy Division dream girl who needs to dump Scott, get a therapist and find a workbook and just start going at it because I think it's important for him to understand that somebody else has problems and he needs to address them.
And I don't know what it is. I think it's probably the strength of Winstead's performance, but maybe just because it's more contained - you know, two hours watching a character versus six volumes reading her. I get a much stronger impression of who Ramona is as a character in the film than I do in the books. But that cuts both ways - right? - because I understand why book Ramona goes back to Gideon, her seventh evil ex. I think that's a think book Ramona would do. But movie Ramona is so much clearly defined and stronger that when she does that, it's a much bigger leap for me.
TYLER-AMEEN: Gideon is a great point of comparison because he's comic book evil. Like, this is a martial arts fantasy story about regular people, but he is the kind of proper villain with evil henchmen who uses cybernetic mind control to make people do what he wants. And Scott probably looks at that and says, like, well, I'm not that guy.
WELDON: Right.
TYLER-AMEEN: The thing that felt important to me to understand about that moment over time is that, like, yeah, that doesn't make you good on your own. You can still be pretty selfish and thoughtless even if you're not a supervillain.
WELDON: Right.
TYLER-AMEEN: Glen, I have a question for you, which is, as our foremost chronicler of nerd culture, as somebody who has watched the sort of steady progression of how things like comic books and video games and, you know, fantasy and sci-fi stories have sort of moved in and out of the center of culture, did you have a reaction at the time to where this fit on that timeline? - because we're not quite at the moment yet where it's just the central tentpole of everything, where there is, like, an empire of, like, superhero content that just is propping up half of Hollywood at this point. Did it feel ahead of its time? Did it feel stuck out of time? What - how did it strike you?
WELDON: It felt at the time like the best comic book movie I had seen. You know, the pickings were pretty slim back then still. But, I mean, you know, the thing about nerd culture is that it resents when the things it loves get popular, but it also aches for it to happen. That's all they want to happen - is for the thing they love to become like football. But when it does, they react. And so that's why the fact that a lot of these references in this book and this movie are so niche and so specific to manga, martial arts films and especially video games. That was its selling point to the geeks. And maybe one of the things that made it a harder sell in the movie to the mainstream America at the time - I think this movie comes out now, you change some stuff about some of the characterizations, but I think a lot more people would get it.
TYLER-AMEEN: No, it's true. It's very Canadian...
WELDON: Yeah.
TYLER-AMEEN: ...In its approach to sort of stardom and presence. Nothing's too big.
WELDON: Yeah.
YU: But at the same time, it's not afraid to be big and over-the-top. I mean, my issues with, like, the dragon sonic waves aside, that scene is just so fun to watch.
TYLER-AMEEN: It really is.
YU: Like, this movie is just so fun to watch. Like, as much as I was, you know, kind of grumbling about Scott being the worst the whole time, when those jokes land, they land so well. And it still makes me feel that kind of excitement about the manga and the video games that I grew up loving.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
YU: And it's still fun to see, like, oh, I get that reference.
SEARLES: Re-watching this movie made me think a lot about how I feel like ensemble films aren't as good anymore, like, in the sense that everyone is doing what they need to do. Like, Kieran Culkin, especially as Wallace, which - I mean, I've always loved him. He's great. I watch comedies now, and I've kind of just been doing, like, research on, like, how comedies have changed in the last 10 years. And I notice that, like, more often now it's, like, a bunch of famous people and the hope that they will have chemistry, whereas, like, with "Scott Pilgrim," it's a bunch of people who weren't really famous, and they just trusted that they were going to have chemistry and work together. And they really, like, for the most part, really embodied their characters in a way that I don't feel like we see that much anymore.
WELDON: It's true. All right. We want to know what you think about "Scott Pilgrim." Find us on facebook.com/pchh and on Twitter @PCHH. That brings us to the end of our show. Thanks to all of you for being here.
TYLER-AMEEN: Thank you.
YU: Thanks for having me.
SEARLES: Thanks for having me.
WELDON: And, of course, thank you for listening to POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR from NPR. If you've got a second and you're so inclined, please subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org/popculturenewsletter. And we will see you all next time.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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