It stars an ensemble cast, with Michael Cera as Scott Pilgrim, a slacker musician who is trying to win a competition to get a record deal, while also battling the seven evil exes of his new girlfriend Ramona Flowers, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

Although it was a box-office bomb that failed to recoup its $85 million production budget, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World received positive reviews from critics, who noted its visual style and humor, and garnered a cult following.

Scott defeats the next three of Ramona's exes: Hollywood actor and skateboarder Lucas Lee, super-powered vegan Todd Ingram, and lesbian ninja Roxy Richter, while also confronting his own ex, pop star Envy Adams.

[7] O'Malley originally had mixed feelings about a film adaptation, stating that he "expected them to turn it into a full-on action comedy with some actor that [he] hated", though he also "didn't even care", admitting: "I was a starving artist, and I was like, 'Please, just give me some money.

[13] The film also takes on elements of style from the graphic novels, including the use of comic book text-as-graphic (e.g. sound effect onomatopoeia), which is described by Wright and O'Malley as "merely the internal perspective of how Scott understands himself and the world".

[37] Wright said that he took pride in having been able to record the original Lee's Palace mural before it was taken down; he also had the old bar reconstructed on a set for interior scenes, which was positively received when the bands consulting for the film visited.

[35][37] The backgrounds were also changed for the film: many landscapes were simplified in post-production to emulate the drawing style in the comics, including removing many trees from the scenes shot at Hillcrest Park and Turner Road.

[37] The Casa Loma fight is in the original comic book, but the moment when Scott Pilgrim is pushed through a matte painting generic cityscape to reveal the CN Tower was only added for the film.

[45] Patrick O'Donnell of NME wrote that "notable actors [having starred] in comic book adaptations before and after their roles in Scott Pilgrim [injects] a meta quality to the film's already genre-busting style".

[18] Wright said that he planned on casting Cera while he was writing Hot Fuzz, after watching episodes of Arrested Development,[48] also saying that he needed an actor that "audiences will still follow even when the character is being a bit of an ass.

[48] Like Cera, Wright already had in mind Mary Elizabeth Winstead as his choice for Ramona Flowers, thinking of her for the part two years before filming had started because "she has a very sunny disposition as a person, so it was interesting to get her to play a version of herself that was broken inside.

[54] Aubrey Plaza, who has a supporting role as Julie Powers, said that "there's a lot of weird, perfectly casted people", citing Michael Cera and Alison Pill as particularly matching their characters.

"[58] The soundtrack features contributions by Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, Beck, Metric, Broken Social Scene, Cornelius, Dan the Automator, Kid Koala, and David Campbell.

[48] The Blu-ray home release includes special features, with music videos of the complete performances of Sex Bob-omb's "Garbage Truck", "Threshold", and "Summertime", and The Clash at Demonhead's "Black Sheep".

[84] The AVID animatic, a black-and-white sketch animation with waveform graphics, was described by Edgar Wright as already "giving the film more of a sense of occasion and a very distinct break between the prologue and the first scene that moves the story forward".

We got excited about projecting such vivid imagery on the big screen, in front of an audience who most likely hadn't experienced that work.Shynola was also given a selection of references from Edgar Wright, who described the brief as "2001 meets Sesame Street" and showed them the title sequence of Faster, Pussycat!

[81] /Film notes that slow-motion broken glass falling and reflecting Ramona and Roxy as they fight resembles the character selection screen of Street Fighter, and that the Chaos Theater and Sex Bob-omb's forced labor is a reference to EarthBound.

[101] In Italy, it had evening screenings in cinemas for a week before being shifted to the afternoon slots; one scholar has suggested that the "flawed marketing plan" that saw it framed as a children's film was the reason for its poor box office performance.

[124] He adds that "the richly layered audio mix is, however, just as great on the [DVD] as it is on the Blu-ray edition [and] the 5.1 surround English track flawlessly replicates the way the film sounded when it was theatrically released.

[128][135] During the livestream, Wright gave a commentary with trivia about the film and various cast members, including Evans, Plaza, Whitman, Routh, Larson, Wong, and Webber, all joined him at different points to add their own.

[15] In his chapter, "Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Texts: Adaptation, Form, and Transmedia Co-creation", Bodner noted several elements that create the film as transmedial, describing its references to the comic book and video game media.

[109] Zeitlin Wu said that "unlike the 1960s Batman, the use of visual onomatopoeia in Scott Pilgrim seamlessly merges reality and illusion, which seems apt for a storyline in which the two are indistinguishable", using the comic book words within the film as part of the story rather than alongside it.

[141] He also noted the use of split screen, considering it both a reference to videogame multiplayer modes and 1990s television, and a technique to draw attention to the mediality of film "by making visible the impact of an editor, a role which in the dominant continuity editing system is regarded as one that should be kept hidden".

Peter Debruge of Variety gave the film a mixed review, referring to it as "an example of attention-deficit filmmaking at both its finest and its most frustrating", saying it was economical with its storytelling and successfully incorporated the many big fight set pieces, but missed opportunities to build Scott and Ramona's relationship.

"[148] Cindy White at IGN gave a positive review, praising Wright and the film's style extensively, though she did mention that "the middle drags a bit and the ending isn't all [she] hoped it would be.

"[150] Abrams opened his review lamenting that "the sad thing about Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is that people assumed that because it embraced its niche-oriented demographic's interests, in its ad campaign and in its content, that it was destined for cult status and nothing more.

"[148] White writes that the elements of mash-up in the film's style creates "a pop-culture cocktail that is fun, funny and deliciously offbeat", praising Wright for "[making the comic book elements] work in the translation to live action, and [having] enough respect for O'Malley's work in the first place to try to capture that spirit;[149] Scott agrees, saying that the success comes from its ingenuity in bringing the video game to the player's world, rather than the other way around, and so "the line between fantasy and reality is not so much blurred as erased, because the filmmakers create an entirely coherent, perpetually surprising universe".

[46] After seeing the film at a test screening, the American director Kevin Smith said he was impressed by it, and that "it's spellbinding and nobody is going to understand what the fuck just hit them", adding Wright "is bringing a comic book to life".

[164] In 2020, Evans compared the fans of Scott Pilgrim to those of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, saying they were just as rabid and dedicated;[52] in February 2020, reviewer Alani Vargas wrote that "it might not be so 'cult' today; if you bring the movie up to anyone now, odds are you'll get a very enthused response to it".

[167][168] The music video for Australian band The Vines' single "Gimme Love" is an homage to Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, adopting the visual style of the movie's opening,[169][170] and Kid Cudi sampled dialogue from the film on the song "She Knows This" from his album Man on the Moon III: The Chosen.