Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Edgar Wright puts the rules on the table in the first few minutes: seven exes, seven fights. Each fight is dressed in a different game or genre pastiche, so the decoration genuinely varies; the beat does not. Someone arrives, someone fights, someone bursts into coins, on to the next. If episodic set pieces that do not build on each other tire you, this structure will. The second choice is subtler. The camera almost never leaves Scott’s point of view, so his selfishness is not criticised from outside but converted into the film’s style, and Knives and Ramona spend a long time existing as problems he has to solve. The film was shot before the sixth and final volume of the comic was published, and no material from it appears. The ending originally filmed put Scott back together with Knives; once the sixth volume showed Scott and Ramona together, a new ending was shot to match the books, and the cinema version carries that finish. The cast trained in fighting together for two months, the band members learned their instruments, and the punch flashes were real flashbulbs fired on set. Good if you are happy reading captions, counters and sound effect lettering while you watch. Not for a viewer expecting the fights to accumulate into something.