Screen Time | Ranking Every Evil Ex in “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World”

This week’s Screen Time is about the movie “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.” I’m not even going to get into the fact that the title is extremely misleading because Scott (Micheal Cera) doesn’t actually fight the entire world, he only fights a couple of people. Anyway, Scott is talking to this cool new girl, Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). She has colorful hair and also seven exes who are super evil. So evil, in fact, that they’ve created a league called The League of Evil Exes (very original), and their goal is to destroy Ramona’s new boo thang, Scott Pilgrim. Some of the exes are more evil than others, and someone needs to be brave enough to rank them. Let’s cut to the chase — least powerful to most powerful (spoilers ahead, don’t say I didn’t warn you).

7) Lucas Lee (Chris Evans)

“Oh my God, Captain America is in this movie?!” Yeah, sick right? Before he was a superhero, he was Lucas Lee, skateboarding movie star and Ramona’s ex-boyfriend. Despite his huge muscles, Lucas is the absolute weakest (and most embarrassing) evil ex. When Scott arrives to fight him, he’s acting on the set of his new movie. After Scott politely asks for Lucas’ autograph, the battle begins.

After an unsuccessful attempt to beat up Lucas, Scott has an alternative plan — asking Lucas to do a skate trick on some stair rails. Lucas refuses at first, saying, “There are like 200 steps and the rails are garbage.” To which Scott replies, “There are girls watching.” This is enough to make Lucas do the trick, ultimately skating too fast and simply disintegrating. It’s embarrassing! His ego — or as your highschool English teacher would say, his hubris — was the cause of his death. What a joke of a battle — the bar is on the floor.

6) Matthew Patel (Satya Bhabha)

Matthew dated Ramona in seventh grade and he’s got a few fatal flaws.

1. A) He’s dressed like a hipster pirate. At one point during the fight, Scott asks Matthew if he is, in fact, a pirate. He has zero drip, so that was his first mistake (except for that sick side bang and eyeliner combo, I’m an advocate for that).
2. B) He breaks out into song in the middle of the fight and it’s kind of super awkward … if he were going to do a song and dance number he should’ve done it from the beginning for consistency. He should have made that a character choice. One thing I will say about Matthew Patel is that even though he’s pretty weak, he’s probably the most kind evil ex, writing Scott an email warning him when the battle would begin (which Scott didn’t even read).

5) Roxy Richter (Mae Whitman)

Roxy is not the weakest ex because she puts up quite a fight, but she’s still emotionally weak. Roxy reveals during the fight that she’s not even there for her own revenge, she’s there to tell Ramona, “If Gideon can’t have you, no one can.” Girl WHAT? Roxy isn’t even there to beat up Scott and Ramona for her own revenge, she’s doing it for GIDEON, who (spoiler) is the final boss of the movie. Like come on. Is it even worth the effort?! The weakest thing you can do is not recognize your own self worth, Roxy. If you’re going to battle someone, at least do it for yourself.

4) Gideon Gordon Graves (Jason Schwartzman)

He’s Ramona’s most recent ex, and so some may believe he’s the most powerful. In all honesty, though, he’s pretty lame. He’s an American music mogul and even has his own performing center, the Chaos Theater, and he’s worried about fighting Scott. It just doesn’t make any sense. He also swallows his gum during the battle and is worried about it staying in his digestive tract, which everyone knows is a myth.

3) Todd Ingram (Vegan) (Brandon Routh)

I feel like Todd has to go in the number three spot because he has a giant “3” on his t-shirt. He also liked the number three before Chance The Rapper made it cool, and that deserves credit. Todd is super powerful because he can play a really mean bass. There’s really no other reason. He’s vegan and that’s where he gets his power from, but his downfall is that he had one of those little containers of half and half. That’s when the Vegan Police show up and take his powers away, so Scott doesn’t even defeat Todd — the Vegan Police do.

2) The Katayanagi Twins (Keita and Shôta Saitô)

Yes, I know they are two different people, but it didn’t seem fair to rank one above the other. Ramona dated both Katayanagi twins at the same time because she couldn’t tell them apart, but it’s OK because they have a really sick EDM band going for them now. They’re actually the only EDM band in the movie, so they gain a lot of cool points for being unique. They can also summon dragons through their music, so that should say a lot regarding power.

1) Envy Adams (Brie Larson)

Oh, yeah. Here she is at the number one spot. I know why you didn’t see this coming. Envy isn’t Ramona’s ex, she’s Scott’s, and she broke his little heart! This is a BONUS EX who Scott never explicitly fights, but she plays mind games with him, which are the most powerful form of warfare. She used to be kind of lame, but then she #BossedUp and became the lead singer for a cool band, Clash at Demonhead. Scott isn’t even the lead singer for his band, so that makes her way cooler than him, and thus the most powerful ex.

If you read all of that and haven’t even seen the movie yet, you’re incredibly brave because I just spoiled the entire thing. I appreciate your outstanding commitment to finding out the true ranking of the Evil Exes because I needed to get that off my chest. If you also have a lot of evil exes, take comfort in the knowledge that you’re probably cooler than at least half of them.