Fans of Edgar Wright‘s 2010 Toronto-based comic book movie Scott Pilgrim vs the World know that one of the film’s greatest strengths is its Battle of the Bands structure. The music is a real strength of the comedy movie, with many of the characters being in authentic looking-and-sounding garage bands.
There are three main bands depicted in Scott Pilgrim vs the World. Firstly, there’s Scott’s (Michael Cera) band Sex Bo-Omb, whose other members are Stephen Stills (Mark Webber), Kim Pine (Alison Pill), and Young Neil (Johnny Simmons). Beck wrote the songs for Sex Bo-Omb. Secondly, there’s Crash (Erik Knudsen) and the Boys, who were based on Broken Social Scene.
Finally, there’s The Clash at Demonhead, whose members include Envy Adams (Brie Larson), Todd Ingram (Brandon Routh), and Lynette Guycott (Tennessee Thomas) and who were based on the band Metric. All of the actors, including Cera and Larson really sang and played instruments for the movie – some came with experience, whereas others had to learn from scratch. Larson recently posted some photos to Twitter, which show her rehearsing with the fictional band.
Larson says; “Somehow found these behind-the-scenes photos from the making of The Clash at Demonhead for Scott Pilgrim, We rehearsed like a real band with the guidance of Chris Murphy, Nigel Godrich and of course, Metric. And I got to play with my old friend Tennessee Thomas. We tore it up in Toronto.” Music producer Godrich worked closely with Wright on the music for the film, and Sloan’s Chris Murphy coached the actors who had no musical experience such as Webber, Pill and Simmons and helped them learn their instruments. Cera could already play bass.
Superman actor Brandon Routh spent three or four months learning bass for Scott Pilgrim. Brie Larson had tried to get a music career off the ground in the early-mid 2000s before her film career took off. She could already play guitar, but as Envy plays keyboards, this may have been a new skill for her.
If you’re a fan of movies with banging soundtracks, check out our guide to the best musicals.