In part one of our epic-geek-out Scott Pilgrim discussion, we looked at how the movie treated Scott’s relationships with Ramona, Kim, Envy and Knives. Now we turn our attention to Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour and the series’ antagonist, Gideon Gordon Graves. Once again, this post includes spoilers for book six. Lots of them, this time.

Part Two – Gideon’s Machinations

James: I didn’t really get what the “Gideon messing with Scott’s memories” development was supposed to be doing, in the books, so I’m not surprised it didn’t make the movie. It appears to be saying that Gideon is responsible for Scott failing to realise he’s been a dick in the past, and if that is the case, I don’t really like it. It takes the responsibility out of Scott’s hands, and I think that negatively influences his character arc.

Seb: Hmm, good point. What I like about the memories thing is that, structurally, it makes the flashback at the beginning of book two very clever. When you read it, you just assume it’s there at that point to give you the background of Scott and Kim’s relationship (and so, really, it could show up at just about any point in the first three books, in preparation for the Lisa stuff in book four – though thematically, the earlier you know about what happened with Kim, the better). But when you discover that it’s a memory that Gideon tampered with, well, it’s not unreasonable to assume that it’s been placed there as part of the narrative – in that the point in time at which we encounter it is the moment that Gideon, having just been first made aware of the presence of Ramona in Scott’s life, is going in there and screwing with it. It’s damned clever long-term plotting, really.

That said, what I’ve struggled with is the reason why Gideon did that – aside from sheer malevolence – and I think you’ve come to a similar conclusion to me – he did it as a pre-emptive weapon against Scott. Because how did Scott finally “level up” in order to defeat him? By gaining the power of understanding. So Gideon finds a way to try and prevent Scott from reaching that point, by fuzzying up his past (on a side-note – if there’s one plot thread left maddeningly incomplete, it’s the fact that we never got the full story of Scott and Envy’s break-up – the combination of Scott’s memories proving to be unreliable, and a couple of cryptic statements by Envy in the last book, suggest that there’s a LOT more to it than the “Get out of my life” conversation we’re familiar with, and I want to know what happened!) and thus denying him the opportunity to understand how similar he is, or could have been, to Gideon.

But like you say, that’s problematic, because Scott’s previous lack of self-awareness should be his own problem – when you boil it down, basically the entire plot of the series is Scott’s recognition, and conquering, of that inherent character flaw.

Perhaps, though, the reason for Gideon doing that is just another evil plan of his – no particular reason, just being a dick. Because, when you think about it, O’Malley threw in quite a good number of those – and it’s one of the things that’s to the detriment of the book. Basically, in that last book, Gideon is simultaneously:

- Preparing to fight and kill Scott
- Controlling Scott and Ramona’s minds via the “glow”
- Launching the Chaos Theatre in Toronto
- Trying to control Envy’s life
- Keeping all the girls who’ve ever rejected him in cryogenic suspension

It’s too much, basically. The last one in particular comes out of left-field, and serves no purpose other than to further drive home Gideon’s status as a creepy, possessive psycho.

J: The cryogenic stuff definitely came out of nowhere. The only reason I can think for it existing is to offer a reasonable answer to the question “how do we know Ramona wouldn’t be better off with Gideon?” – aside from the fact that he organised the league, we don’t really know much about him. At least this way,  we know that once he’s done with a girl, he locks them up so no-one else can have them. He’s just after trophies.

Having re-read the books, though, I’m still not sure how far in advance the Gideon-memory stuff really was figured out. I suppose we can’t tell for sure, but I’m not sure I feel entirely comfortable crediting O’Malley with the clever plotting you’re talking about, because I didn’t see much evidence that made me think it wasn’t figured out in retrospect. It works, but was it always planned that way? I dunno.

S: Fair point. Although if you want to talk good advance plotting – the use of the 1-UP was one of the best moments of the book (and gave it one of the best lines courtesy of Scott’s mum). And yet, when it comes to the film, it was arguably done better – although in terms of the narrative the book needed to have them resume from the same point because of the significance of the conversations earlier in the scene, the film put a good twist on it that not only made better literal sense (being more how extra lives actually work in games), but dramatically made for a great and highly amusing scene with him “replaying” the level.

Really, though, in the book it was a continue that he got, rather than a 1-UP ;-)

J: Ah, see, the 1-up is the one thing I thought definitely was advance plotting – a little too nakedly, in fact, since as soon as I saw it I was like “well, I guess he’s going to die at some point, then!” Part of me thinks that in the film, they should have used the “save point” idea from book 3 instead, actually, since that’s a little more analogous to how they played it.

The glow’s another thing that I’m not sure really got much explanation, either. I understand that it’s about people being locked inside their heads, right? But what does that actually mean? Ramona glows 3 or 4 times during the series, and Scott once or twice, but even after a re-read I’m not clear on what’s actually going on internally when that happens, or indeed, what causes it to happen. I get that Ramona can use it to travel through sub-space (even though that kind of conflicts with her comments in book 1 about how it’s strange that people in Canada don’t know how to use sub-space) but what does it mean, practically speaking, for people to be “locked inside their own heads”? And to what purpose was it inflicted on Scott and Ramona?

S: It’s tricky. I still haven’t really figured it out either. The best I can come up with is that it’s, simply, “emotional warfare” as Gideon puts it. Presumably he “made his millions” selling it for other people to use, but he himself used it on Scott and Ramona (he can clearly deploy it at will, as seen when he does so on the crowd towards the end) as another way of screwing with them. And it seems that it locks you up with your own issues, leaving you unable to express or confront them? So they just sit there in your head, slowly damaging you? Why that manifests itself in the glow, I’m not sure; and yeah, while the idea of Ramona turning it around (presumably because she has so many issues that it’s more powerful in her) and using it to ride into subspace is a nice one, it does sorta contradict that (throwaway?) line in book one.

J: Funnily, even though I wasn’t bowled over by the book’s resolution to the glow thread very much, the film’s “computer chip in spine” reveal was probably the one change which I think felt a bit lazy. The book and film have a fantasy world that’s incredibly consistent, and putting a chip in Ramona’s spine feels like a transplant from a much lamer narrative by comparison. At the very least, they could have said Gideon was, I dunno, using a cheat code or something. It didn’t ruin things for me, but it felt a bit thin. Like a placeholder that never got changed.