Scott Pilgrim Is Not a Role Model And That’s Okay

Scott Pilgrim Is Not a Role Model – And That’s Okay

Scott Pilgrim is a great movie, but its titular protagonist is a terrible character who only finds redemptions in the growth he undergoes.

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Scott Pilgrim Is Not a Role Model And That’s Okay

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a treasure of a film, drawing upon the colorful and creative comic written by Bryan O’Malley and combining it with the signature directorial style and flair of Edgar Wright. But there’s a slight hiccup for any Scott Pilgrim fan who gets really into the film or the comic — Scott isn’t a good person. Not all protagonists have to be good people, but its typical of a film to communicate to its audience whether or not they should empathize with its hero. A character is shown to be good or bad, so the audience knows who to root for as the story progresses.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World tells the audience they should like Scott. He’s depicted as a down-on-his-luck base player with low self-esteem, lost and adrift in the world until he meets Ramona Flowers, the girl of his dreams. But the first complicating factor comes with where Scott finds himself the first time he sees her — at the library with his girlfriend. He starts off the film already dating Knives Chau, a 17-year-old high school girl. Scott treats Knives terribly throughout the film, and it becomes clear he’s only dating her in the first place because of how “cool” she finds him. He thinks terrible of himself and goes to Knives for validation even though he doesn’t really have strong feelings for her.

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Scott Pilgrim Is Not a Role Model And That’s Okay

This only gets worse once he meets Ramona, as he briefly cheats on his girlfriend with the pink-haired girl before unceremoniously dumping Knives. This comes back to haunt him later in the film, but it’s the first real example of how Scott isn’t a good person. He’s not evil or malicious, he’s just ignorant and a bit of a coward. He doesn’t know what he wants out of life and ends up hurting the people around him in ways that are selfish, mean and — even if unintentionally — downright cruel.

There’s also evidence this isn’t the first time he’s behaved like this. One of Scott’s foremost detractors is Julie Powers, a minor character that pops up throughout the film and slags Scott off every time they meet. She even “forbids” him from dating Ramona when they meet at a party, rattling off a list of girls Scott’s wronged in the past. While Julie certainly seems to be taking the least charitable view of Scott’s misadventures in love, it’s backed up again by the song performed by Scott’s ex-girlfriend, Envy Adams. She sings Metric’s Black Sheep, a song that castigates an ex-lover for how much they sleep around. Even if Scott doesn’t mean to hurt others, the results speak for themselves.

So why do people even like Scott Pilgrim? If it’s the story of an ignorant, “wannabe-ladykiller,” what is there to enjoy? The important part of the film is how it’s a story of growth. Scott goes into his first encounter with the film’s main protagonist, Gideon Graves, thinking all he needs to do is profess his love for Ramona and that it’ll save the day. But Gideon literally shatters the power of love, killing Scott and forcing him to use his extra life. Scott has been in love with plenty of girls in his past. Confessing his love for Ramona doesn’t change anything, and it certainly doesn’t make him a better person.

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It’s in Scott’s final fight with Gideon that he reaches a form of enlightenment, fighting instead with the “power of self-respect.” By gaining some self-esteem and recognizing his own worth, Scott can move past his previous self-destructive patterns and actually make amends with Knives. They work together to save the day, and the film’s original ending even saw them ending up together. Fans of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World shouldn’t aspire to be Scott. He’s a self-destructive, wastrel youth with a lot of growing up to do. But they can still be inspired by the lessons he learns and use the “power of self-respect” for themselves.

Link Source : https://www.cbr.com/scott-pilgrim-not-a-role-model/

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