The boy is nervous. He clutches his bass guitar, trembling. It's the semi-finals night of Battle Of The Bands, and his prospective girlfriend is out there watching, waiting. This is his night to shine. If his band can trump this round, maybe he can finally win this girl's heart. The band takes the stage. Across the venue, the opposing band stands poised behind a giant DJ stand. They flip on their massive PA system, and as the decibels rise, two giant glimmering dragons emerge from the turntables and synthesizers.
The dragons snarl and screech. They coil back, preparing for attack. The boy and his band are frozen in fear. The glittering beasts lunge forward. The drummer snaps the band out it's trance, with a resounding "ONE TWO THREE FOUR!". The band strikes their first note, and as the room explodes with sound, a giant translucent creature bursts forth from their amps. It clashes with the dragons, wrestling and biting them. Forcing them into submission. As the bands battle for the love of the audience, the clash of the metaphorical titans rages.
Welcome to the new Hollywood.
Yes that's right. Scott Pilgrim vs The World has made that daring leap that entertainment has been tiptoeing near for years. The Unfettered Metaphor. Metaphor and simile have been a part of literature for the better part of human history. But for the most part, if a metaphor involves an explicit and radical departure from reality, it has been relegated to dream sequences, asides, monologues and soliloquies, or quick visual gags. All of these instances are basically saying "this is what it's like, but it's not actually happening in the context of the plot".
Look at TV shows like Family Guy and Scrubs, which often have radical departures from reality as the basis of their comedy. These strange happenings and random jokes are usually removed from the main plot via "This is worse than the time ____." in Family Guy or J.D.'s daydreams in Scrubs. It's a common way of expressing a metaphor without it actually breaking the reality of the plot. But ultimately, it assumes one annoying thing. That the audience is too stupid to realize whether these things actually happen or not. That's why those methods are used, to indicate that it didn't actually happen.
Scott Pilgrim delightfully ignores these methods, and assumes the audience is much smarter than that. Though the metaphors are mostly quite blatant (like the scene from above), they provide a compelling backdrop for the narrative, and they never snap back to reality or cut back to a previous event. The characters and the audience simply accept what is happening as reality. To watch Scott Pilgrim vs The World and proclaim "Why is everyone fighting with lightsabers and shattering into coins?" is so insanely stupid, I won't even dignify it with a proper answer.
Unfortunately, the film is geared toward a very specific crowd, which will limit it's exposure. If you were born before 1980 or after 1995 and never watched MTV or played video games, Scott Pilgrim will have little to offer you. But it's technique and style are amazingly original, even if it is mostly a mish-mash of 80's and 90's pop culture references. We can only hope that other genres take notice and apply the film's techniques themselves. The blatant disregard for reality combined with the intelligent use of metaphor makes for a very quirky, but very satisfying experience.
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