Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Script Review

POSTED BY Alex Zalben, 20 March 2008

I’m not going to tell you how, or where, but I got a chance to sit down and read a draft of Scott Pilgrim’s Little Life, the film version of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s series of graphic novels. With the recent news that Michael Cera may be cast as the title character, I thought it might be appropriate to key you guys in to the ups and downs of the movie version.

Beware, of course… There’s spoilers here, not just for the movie version, but for the books as well. Because, at least in the draft I read, the movie covers every single book. That’s right. This isn’t the first book in the series, adapted into one movie Chronicles of Narnia style. You’re not going to get six (or seven) Scott Pilgrim movies, at least none that are based on the series of books O’Malley is in the process of writing. This is all of the books, packed into one two hour film.

Now, before I get any further, I should clarify that I’m pretty sure this is a very early draft of the script. I know this because only Michael Bacall is listed as the writer on the front. No Bryan Lee O’Malley, no Edgar Wright. What we’re talking about here has most likely gone through a ton of changes, so take everything with a grain of salt.

Okay, back to the review. As I mentioned, the screenplay covers all the books in the series, including several revelations and characters that have not yet been introduced. For those of you who haven’t read the series (and really, you should), Scott Pilgrim is a 20-something slacker living in Toronto in a one-room, one-bed apartment with his gay friend Wallace. He plays in a band called Sex Bob-Omb that, by all rights, is probably pretty terrible. And he’s just started dating a girl named Ramona Flowers. But in order to keep dating her, he must defeat her Seven Evil Exes in mortal combat. Not the video game. To the death.

The book series has tons of characters in it, and the movie does a handy job of introducing the main ones right at the top, using Scott’s new, 17 year old girlfriend Knives Chau as the gateway. As she meets everyone, we meet them too, which kicks right into the title sequence, which is described in the script as “exploding in the air” out of Sex Bob-Omb’s instruments.

I’ll say, right off the bat, early version or not, Bacall’s script perfectly captures the light and fun patchwork feel of the books. There’s a ton of visual effects going on in this movie, from speech bubbles pushing people over, to giant battle sequences… It’s actually going to be fascinating to see on film, and at least for the first half, it totally works.

Following the book pretty faithfully, it starts like an indie comedy with touches of the surreal, and as soon as Ramona Flowers hits, things take a turn for the weird. I remember reading the book, getting to the part where Ramona is running through Scott’s dreams, literally, and being totally thrown. Again, for those of you who haven’t read the book, Ramona delivers packages through subspace doors, which, you would think would be a big deal, right? Not really… It shows up in book one, and isn’t even referenced again until book four. Same thing here, and I think a lot of the audience who will come to see a quirky indie comedy will have no idea what to think at this point.

Especially as we very, very quickly get into the first battle.

This is the part of the script I’m not quite as crazy about, and, if I was to guess, will get the most work in the next few months. In the first half, we’re treated not only to a nice set-up of the characters, but some great calm scenes ripped right from the page. In particular, Ramona and Scott’s first date plays exactly how it should: Ramona, despite her better nature, is charmed by Scott’s complete adoration for her, and generally clumsiness with human interaction.

Then the fighting starts, and it doesn’t look backwards. There’s fight scene after fight scene, as Scott tears through all of Ramona’s evil exes, with very little time spent on any sort of character interaction.

If I remember my timeline correctly, the original version of this script was written before the excellent fourth volume of the series came out, and I hope that newer versions of the script incorporate a little more of the sense of that book. In it, it becomes clear that the series is about Scott learning to be a person, and growing up (just a tad), rather than sticking around in his video game induced rut for the rest of his life.

In this script… He doesn’t learn anything. By the end, he’s in the same place he started (almost literally), and this is supposed to be a good thing. Sure he’s defeated all seven exes, and saved the indie rock world for another day, but he’s learned nothing, and gone on no emotional journey at all.

There’s a lot of plot points towards the end, in fact, that feel rather forced. There’s a ton of pop culture references that plays more on the side of spoof than homage. In particular the references to indie rock culture (an evil exec cackling about rallying the indie snob youth), and movies (Uncle Owen, R2D2) feel rather forced. In the books, and in a lot of the movie, the jokes play more like relatively timeless homages to geek culture, rather than a very specific Star Wars reference. There are some great movie specific touches, and playing with the movie form that I really appreciated (Scott’s use of a one-up mushroom comes to mind), but they get fewer and farther between in the second half.

Looking at the books themselves, you can see very clearly why director Edgar Wright was drawn to them. Look at Hot Fuzz, which succeeds in being both a parody of action movies, and an homage to them at the same time. Scott Pilgrim, in essence, is a lot like that. When the script is hitting those moments (again, the first 30-40 pages or so) it’s great. When it’s playing the same jokes (Wallace is gay! Pointing out how lame your own jokes are!), over and over again (the last thirty pages), not so much.

That all being said, I laughed out loud a whole lot at this script, both the dialogue, action, and even the stage directions. I would say from reading this that, with revision, Bacall has a chance to make something completely unique and unclassifiable here. Reading it as a script, you have to wonder how Universal is going to market the movie. Is it an indie rock flick? Is it a romantic comedy? Is it a ninja action spectacular? For those who embrace the movie, this won’t be a problem… “It just is, man.”

But having Michael Cera, even with his strong indie sensibilities, coming off of Juno and Superbad, two massive hits, is going to give Universal a lot of impetus to market this as a tentpole movie… And I honestly don’t know how they’re going to do that. They’re going to HAVE to trick somebody, and I wonder if that segment of the audience is going to be pleased.

However, for the segment of the audience that is Scott Pilgrim fans (and most likely by the time this movie comes out, that segment of the population will have doubled, easily), it’s going to be great to see Ramona (“You know, she has hair like this?”), Knives, Wallace, Young Neil, Other Scott, Kim Pine, and, yes, Scott treated with the respect and hilarity they deserve.

Also, tiny little last note: Please, please change the title. I like that it plays off one of the books, but please put back the "Precious," or change it to something else. During the title sequence in the script, the title is "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World..." Maybe go with that instead? Or how about just "Scott Pilgrim?"