Scott Pilgrim Vs The World Premiere Report
Edgar Wright brings Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Brandon Routh to London for the European premiere.
The Scott Pilgrim vs The World hype machine rolled into London last night for the European premiere.
A screaming crowd of Ramona Flowers look-a-likes (some stretching it a bit) welcomed Spaced and Shaun of the Dead legend Edgar Wright as he introduced his third feature film, based on Bryan Lee O'Malley's cult comic books. Juno and Youth In Revolt star Michael Cera is Scott Pilgrim, a slacker bassist who falls for the gorgeous Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, pictured above). However, to be with her, he has to fight her seven evil exes.
We sent ScreenGeek's roving reporter Christa Ktorides to the frontline - basically a pen for bloggers right next to the noisy stage. Alas, Captain America himself, Chris Evans was swept in after arriving in all his rock star glory, depriving us of one of Scott Pilgrim's evil foes. However, the utterly lovely Brandon Routh was on hand to talk about his role as a posturing bassist - Scott's ultimate nemesis. His character has vegan superpowers, and former Superman Routh revealed he does partake in a bit of veganism every now and again. The superpower he gains? "Better skin".
The first evil ex we see on screen is Satya Bhaba, who told us: "Getting to learn kung-fu and do that training, that was a real blast. That’s something I hadn’t really experienced before and I had a really good time." Is an email an acceptable way to be told someone is coming to kill you? "In real life, I hope I wouldn't be pissing anyone off to the level they'd want to come and throw fireballs at me, but if that were to happen, I think an email or text message is at least polite!"
It's not all about Ramona's exes - Scott's got a bit of baggage of his own. Brie Larson plays Routh's bandmate and the reason Scott is such an emotional wreck. Other than revealing that hurting people is "not something I’m into" (a relief), she lavished praise on her director: "He’s a visionary, he’s a genius. He’s not afraid."
Edgar himself stopped by to tell us how he's been a fan of Scott Pilgrim since day one: "When I first read the book in 2004, it didn't really have a big fanbase. I guess it's only in the last year it got a cult following."
We got to talk to Michael Bacall for a bit, the man Edgar entrusted to turn Scott Pilgrim's story into a script. When asked about writing the big action scenes, Bacall had this to say: "Listen to your director! Edgar had a very specific idea of what he wanted to do with this, and what the influences were going to be. We drew on a lot of reference material when we were writing for inspiration. We just dove into it and tried to compress Bryan's story."
Bacall explained how he came on board after being introduced to Edgar: "I auditioned for the job. I did a big pitch based on the first book, and it was hugely ridiculous, all stuffed animals and kiddie pencils. Not much of that survived. I was making up a story based on the first graphic novel Bryan had written, and we had a fun time in the meeting."
Finally, here's Scott Pilgrim himself, Michael Cera, with "MC" eccentrically scrawled on his nose. His character wastes no time in chatting up the girl of his dreams, so what's his technique? "I like to build up a wall of insecurity then put them on the other side of the wall." Sweet. We asked what it was like to kick the arses of both Superman and the Human Torch: "Very good. Those guys are tough," he said drily, before laughing.
Many thanks to Christa Ktorides and Michelle Grimes for the lovely photos.
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