Brandon Routh, best known for his role as Superman in the film Superman Returns, stars in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a comic book adaptation directed by Edgar Wright. In the film Routh plays Todd Ingram, an evil ex-boyfriend of Scott Pilgrim’s love interest, Ramona. Routh was recently in London along with co-stars Michael Cera and Jason Schwartzman to talk about the film, along with playing bass and working with Edgar Wright.

How much trust did you have in Edgar Wright’s vision to bring these graphic novels to the big screen?
Brandon Routh (BR): Edgar who? Just kidding. I hadn’t read the novels until meeting with Edgar, I met with him first and he briefly told me what the story was, but I basically would have done any movie with Edgar because of his track record, and the awesome films that he’s made before. I was a big fan, so I trusted him to make a great film.

Were video games part of the preparation at all?
BR: Yeah, I played in a lot of rock bands but that was just for fun. It happened to be that I was playing bass guitar in the movie, I learned to play it, that was kind of my research. I did watch a little bit on YouTube of different musicians playing the bass, just so I had some things if I wanted to go crazy, which I didn’t think I was going to do. I wasn’t worried about all that stuff because of Edgar. It was a drawn image so I figured that nobody had seen a live action version of Todd Ingram, so I was pretty safe that they were going to be pretty open to it.

How was it seeing the finished film?
BR: The film is very layered in its visual mix, with the visuals and the jokes and the music, where there are three or four things happening at once. You read it in the script but you can’t really imagine how it’s all going to come together. To see it on screen for the first time, and past that, the number of times we’ve watched it it still amazes me, some of the stuff. You catch new things all the time. Not only layered in that aspect but in the story, I think there are quite a few underlying meanings, things that can be extracted from the film that underline how visually stunning it is.

What audience do you envisage for this film?
BR: Anyone who loves movies. Or likes movies. If you like going to the movies, if you enjoy entertainment and going to the movies you have to see this. If you hate going to the movies, don’t go. But sarcasm aside, that’s the truth for me because it’s such a unique cinematic experience, something that you can go to the theatre and see, genuinely laugh out loud at something you didn’t see coming, so many jokes just come out of the blue, visual effects that you’ve never seen, and a really nice little romantic comedy throughout the movie. I think it’s something that years from now people will kick themselves for not going to see it in the theatre.