-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…