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-Edgar Wright’s genius for capturing the struggles of twenty somethings continues to amaze after ten years.
For Scott Pilgrim age means a lot. The story takes place at a moment in the characters’ lives when just five years can feel like a lifetime. The difference between 18 and 23 might as well be the distance from here to the next galaxy.
In the movie Scott gets grief for dating a high school senior. He’s twenty-two. The oldest person in Scott’s circle is twenty-five. A couple of the villains, bad guy interlopers that must be dispatched, are maybe in their thirties. Scott Pilgrim lives in a world as clean scrubbed of older adults as Charlie Brown’s is of anyone over ten.
All that to say, for the existential concerns of the characters in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, age is very important, years carry weight. 17 is not 18, 21 is not 22 and 25 is all “grown up.”
So when I say that ten years has passed since the release of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World don’t imagine a now thirty-two year old Scott looking back and realizing that ten years means less than he’d hoped. Imagine the Scott of the movie trying to picture ten years, “…like, in my mind’s eye or whatever,” seeing himself at twelve and dropping onto his knees in his desolated imagination just before Ramona roller blades by and says, “Suck it up Pilgrim, thirty-two is adult, not old.”
To which he might say, “What’s the difference?” because if the world on screen is any indication he might never have met an adult and might honestly not know. And if my recollection of that age is any reference (I am thirty-eight as I write this) that liminal space between youth and adulthood is exactly as disorienting as it seems in the film.
Five years has just hit like an earth shattering comet and you don’t see yourself in anyone on either side of that divide. The over-twenty-fives intimidate you and you really get on their nerves. You can’t communicate with the under-twenties…having to explain everything as they see it for the first time. Time is moving fast and you wonder, is every five year…
