I realized this underappreciated fim is way overdue to be mentioned in my blog. If you have never seen it it will probably make no sense to you, unless you were a nerd who was born in the early 80's and grew up on comics, and video games, in which case Scott Pilgrim vs the World is what you expected life was supposed to be like based on what the media told us about young boys and girls and fantasy battles that defied the very laws of science. Before I can tell you my opinion, I must start with explaining exactly what happens in the movie based on the graphic novels of the same name.
Scott Pilgrim is a 22-year-old slacker who lives in a tiny house/apartment in Toronto Canada with his gay best friend because relaly, Scott is far too much of a loser to get anyone else to let him live with them. He maintains an incredibly positive attitude, plays guitar for a band called Sex Bob-omb, and dates a groupie named Knives Chau. Then he meets Ramona Flowers and falls madly in love with her and starts dating her, and then things get interesting. Ramona has "Seven Evil Exes" a.k.a."The League of Evil Exes" who come after Scott one by one insisting that he can not date Ramona until he has defeated all of them.
What really makes this interesting is that the fights are all video game style, evil exes has super powers, Scott can use combos and score points, and when Scott wins his opponent turns into coins, just like in the games. The whole movie is live action, except flashbacks which are done in cartoons the same style as the original graphic novels, and 8-bit graphics and sounds are peppered in as if Scott's entire life were a game. Towards the end, Scott uses an extra life to survive being killed and levels up. This whole thing seems insane, however, for anyone who ever played River Ciy Ransom, Double Dragon, Final Fight, etc. recognizes that this is exactly how life is supposed to work according to Nintendo, Sega, and Capcom. I know that many times I expected that someday I myself would have to prove my love by fighting for my girl, literally, and I may need to know how to properly perform a Hadouken in just such an emergency. It's just the way it was for our digital heroes, it's the way it was supposed to be for us. Alas, there is no cheat, game shark, or Konami Code that actually allowed us to score on a date, so most of us remained alone. But some day, all of us nerds hope to meet our Ramona Flowers and we will find our Power of Self-Respect and draw our flaming swords from our souls in our chests and fight all seven(or however many she has) exes to rescue our princess. At least it worked for Scott.
My personal favorite evil ex is #3 who is a vegan who gets super psychic powers from "not partaking of the milk or ovum of any living creature with a face" because "not eating meat just makes you better than everyone else." The only thing more preposterous than his powers and their origin is how he loses them. Scott tricks him into drinking coffee with actual dairy creamer prompting the vegan police to arrive and note that it is his third strike including a time he ate gelato ("Milk and eggs bitch!") so they have to repeal his powers leaving him vulnerable to Scott. I would also like to note that this ex is played by Brandon Routh, the same actor who played Superman, while evil ex #2 was played by Chris Evans, the same guy who did both the Human Torch in Fantastic Four as well as Captain America, and evil ex #5 is played by Mae Whitman who voiced Katarra in Avatar: The Last Airbender. You gotta give props to Scott for going up against super heroes and winning.
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