Netflix
For a certain group of people, life can be divided into two eras: before Scott Pilgrim and after. Whether their entry point was cartoonist Bryan Lee O’Malley’s fantastic series of graphic novels or Edgar Wright’s 2010 feature-film adaptation, fans of the series have found themselves transfixed by this very funny, very Canadian, very fantastical saga. The story of a video game- and indie rock-obsessed, twentysomething loser fighting for the right to date the girl literally of his dreams, Scott Pilgrim took us on an unexpected, hilarious, heartfelt, and deeply relatable journey over the course of six volumes and a 112-minute film.
The comics’ greatness lay in their fearless commitment to the bonkers premise, which appealed directly to readers around Scott’s own age. O’Malley created a world in which Super Mario-style power-ups actually exist; a burnout bassist is also commonly regarded as “the best fighter in the province;” veganism is a superpower; and a woman’s exes will join together to form a supervillain team, determined to stop her from ever dating anyone else again.
O’Malley’s series of graphic novels was, by every measure, a singular work for a very specific, grateful audience. So it shouldn’t have been a shock that the film flopped at the box office—despite satisfying most fans and capturing new ones, drawn in by the hyper-stylized world, action, and non-stop jokes. While many of us celebrated that a film with such a wild aesthetic was even produced, Scott Pilgrim was perhaps too animated a story to fully work in live action, let alone become a crossover hit.