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While Scarlett Johansson may be best known for her portrayal of Black Widow in the MCU, the talented actress actually started her adult career in acting with a very different sort of comic book movie, perhaps unbeknownst to some of her biggest fans. While Johansson appeared in a few major roles as a child actor, like in Manny and Lo and Home Alone 3, her turn as Rebecca in Ghost World, a 2001 black comedy and adaptation of Daniel Clowes’ comic book of the same name, is arguably the role that put her on the map.
Ghost World, a comic book movie with no superheroes, follows best friends Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson), recent high school graduates with no concrete plans for the rest of their lives. One day, while incessantly bored, the girls answer a missed connections ad as a prank, hoping to watch a sad person get even more devastated. However, when the friends’ plan works, and Seymour (Steve Buscemi) goes to a diner to meet his supposed date, Enid feels unexpected remorse when she watches the man get stood up. This leads Enid to develop an unprecedented friendship with Seymour, transforming the way she sees the world.
Ghost World was written by Terry Zwigoff and Clowes, the latter of which co-adapted his own comic for the screen. Several issues of the Ghost World comic book were released between 1993 and 1997. During an exclusive chat with Creative Screenwriting, Clowes revealed that the process of adapting his own work was more complicated than one may initially think. “I started by trying to transcribe the comic into Final Draft. I figured that’s how you do an adaptation. Then I tried throwing everything away and writing an entirely new story that was very different from the book. And I synthesized those two things into a final screenplay. The actual film itself is very different from the script we wrote.”
Image courtesy of United Artists
Ghost World was released in limited theaters on July 20, 2001, after being screened at several film festivals, including the Seattle International Film Festival (where it premiered) and the Fantasia International Film Festival. The eccentric comic book adaptation received phenomenal reviews upon release, with legendary film critic Roger Ebert giving the movie a perfect four out of four stars rating. However, the film, which cost only $7 million to produce, didn’t make a bang at the box office, opening with just $98,791 and ending its theatrical run with $8.7 million globally. Despite its poor box office numbers, Ghost World snagged an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2002 and is now considered a cult classic by many.
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Ghost World absolutely deserves its cult status for its weird and wacky portrayal of everyday life as a teen approaching adulthood and navigating the real world. There is an undeniable surrealism that plagues almost every scene of Ghost World, but the film still manages to be sweet. One of the highlights of the movie is Enid’s experience at a summer art class where the peculiar but lighthearted teacher Roberta Allsworth (Illeana Douglas) shows the class a film she made that is a hilarious black and white nightmare. This kind of randomness showcases a sort of pre-Adult Swim style of humor that served as a catalyst for the latter. However, while Ghost World dabbles in absurdism, the film’s heart is based in an emotional reality.
The relationship that eventually forms between Enid and Seymour is complicated, but oddly touching. They are two lost souls who never thought they could bond, but do, through music, art, and kindness. However, Enid’s secret of how she actually first met Seymour looms dangerously over their friendship, but creates great suspense for the viewer. The relationship between Enid and Rebecca is also so soul-crushingly relatable, especially when the friends start to drift apart.
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Johansson, while playing a supporting role, is one of the best aspects of the film. Rebecca starts off the movie as one half of a more elegant female duo of Beavis and Butt-Head. However, as the film evolves, Johansson provides some of the most emotionally tough sequences, showcasing that she was a star in the making.
Ghost World has a strange, ambiguous ending, which has some thinking it’s a metaphor for something much darker than meets the eye. Zwigoff told The Independent that he doesn’t think the ending contains the bleakness that others do, but Birch seemed to think the opposite during the same conversation. No matter what the ending means, Ghost World is an endlessly entertaining, laugh-out-loud funny, heartbreaking comedy with a distinguishable vibe that should be enjoyed by all Black Widow fans who haven’t seen this fairly hidden gem already.
Ghost World is currently streaming on Prime Video and Tubi.
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