Well I just came back from seeing Scott Pilgrim vs the World. And… well, I was originally planning on having one big super-post reviewing the whole of Scott Pilgrim, including the movie, the game, and the comic. But after seeing the movie, I realized I had a lot more to say about it than I was originally expecting. As such, I’ll review the game and movie separately (and will not bother with reviewing the awesome comic series).

Just a quick look at how I got into Scott Pilgrim: I never heard about it, at all, until I saw the first trailer for the movie. And I thought it looked awesome. And then I found out it was actually based on a comic book, so I went and read it, though I waited a while before doing so, so I ended up reading the comic, multiple times, back in June (and the final volume, multiple times, the day it came out). Loved every second of it so I set my expectations for the movie pretty high. And than add the fact that it’s being made by Edgar Wright… yeah, I was really damn hyped.

So read on and see what I liked and didn’t like about the movie!

(NOTE: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS, BUT I’LL TRY TO NOT SPOIL TOO MUCH)

The visuals
I’m generally very picky when it comes to special effects in a movie. Basically, nothing in the last 10 years really wowed me. The CG and green screen effects just don’t mesh very well a lot of the time, and the CG is usually very obvious and not really well done enough to be believable. Scott Pilgrim, on the other hand, very much wowed me. Other than that one “fight” against the Twins, everything in here looked great. That’s what a comic book movie should look like! There’s things flashing everywhere, words for sound effects all the time, and everything fits in seamlessly. Really, that whole “words popping up for sound effects” thing is so well integrated in the Scott Pilgrim world that it never gets old. Every single effect is believable in its own fucked up way. While lots of modern movies just make me think “well that’s obvious CG”, this one made me think “oh shit that looked awesome”. The visuals alone really got me immersed into the movie, and that’s more than I can say about most modern films.

And the editing is masterful at times. The transitions from one scene to another really feel comic book-ish, and some parts are just so awesomely edited, like one part in the third fight REALLY surprised me. And there’s actual use of comic book panels used for backstory which was really cool.

The casting/The characters
Well, there’s some good and some bad to talk about here. Let’s start with the good.

Michael Cera… Who honestly thought he’d nail Scott Pilgrim (not literally)? I haven’t seen much of his movies (Superbad, Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist), but I did see that he seemed to be stuck in one character style and not much more, and, after reading the comics, I really thought that Cera wouldn’t be able to portrait Scott properly. Sure, he had Scott’s “loser” side down okay in his other roles, but his dumb/oblivious/strangely funny side? I was expecting a bit of fail here. And I’m happy to be proven wrong. Cera’s performance is just plain good. He’s very believable in the role, and I don’t think many other actors could have done it as well as he did. He didn’t deliver his performance in the same way that I was expecting Scott to be (AKA a bit more over-the-top), but the way he did it was great for sure.

A lot of the other characters were really good too. Ramona wasn’t as fun as in the comics, but I still feel that the performance was really nice and still true to the original. Knives was great too, though kinda over-acted at some parts. Kim was perfect, they might as well just have taken her straight out of the comic. Wallace was almost half as awesome as he is in the comic, which is saying a lot. And the first 3 exes are quite faithful to their originals as well (though Todd really only looked awesome when he was using is Vegan powers, his attitude was faithful to his comic book incarnation). And I guess Roxy was okay too. Looks-wise she was great, personality-wise she was very similar, but her role, as a whole, was very much downplayed. All of those characters are really fun to look at and mostly true to their comic book versions in regards to both looks and personality.

But I have one, big, bulging problem with the characters. The script leaves NO place for side characters. At all. That drummer girl with the bionic arm that’s in The Clash at Demonhead? Well you see her ONCE in the movie, playing drums. Envy was pretty much completely ruined: partly because the actress didn’t look like her and partly because she was essentially useless to the plot. Which really sucks since Envy is such an important character in the comics. Then there’s some characters that are removed altogether, like Lisa, Mr Chau, Joseph, and quite a few more. Even Crash and the Boys were removed from the equation after the first big fight, despite them originally being super important in the third fight. One of the comic’s strengths is that it has such a powerful supporting cast, helping us explore the main characters a lot better, and here it’s basically all ignored. Even Kim, who is one of my favorite characters in the comic, just doesn’t end up doing much other than playing drums (despite being perfect in the role, she really adds nothing to the story). The casting itself isn’t bad at all, other than for Envy, but all the characters other than Scott, Ramona and Knives just don’t get lots of screen time, or important dialogue.

Faithfulness to the comic
The first half of the movie will have fans of the comics go CRAZY! Sure, there’s some minor changes here and there, and a lot of scenes are tweaked or just plain skipped (the whole fight against Lucas Lee is kinda different but it keeps the same basic idea as the comic and the guy playing Lucas is just awesome in the role). Really, the first half of the movie is awesome, and, if the movie had kept on going like this for the second half, this probably would have been one of the best movies in at least the last 10 years.

The movie starts derailing from the comic during the fight with Todd Ingram. Not before, not after, DURING. It still goes through most of the same events for that fight, but in one big shot rather than being separated in multiple encounters, and the fight between Ramona and Envy is removed. That adds something really weird not too long after: Envy’s “weak point” is actually given to Roxy for some reason. Weird.

Afterwards, the writing takes things that happen in the comic in completely weird directions. One change in the plot is that Scott’s band is in a Battle of the Bands thing. The Twins are completely different from their comic book incarnation. Here, rather than being badass super-intelligent robot makers who resort to kidnapping to fight Scott, they’re just 2 DJs who fight with sound… giving us the lamest battle in the movie, where their sound becomes 2 dragons (lolreference), and The Sex Bob-ombs have their music becoming a yeti or something. I didn’t get it and it made no sense. The Twins were a major turning point in the comic, while here they were just a side-attraction. The part with Roxy was incredibly short too. You had a short intro to her before the fight with Todd, and then, right after the fight with Todd, her part in the story was resolved, without any of the fun scenes from the comic.

And the ending is completely changed from the comic. But I have no problem with taht actually. It adds a lot of really fun elements and a lot of really weird things, but it’s enjoyable. Yeah, while the high point of the movie was well passed by then, the ending is still really damn fun. Cool fights, cool effects, fun plot points added in there. And a few really funny jokes. Yeah, I didn’t expect the ending to be like in the comic, considering the movie was made long before the final volume came out, and this was a pretty satisfactory way to end it. Solid ending!

I already mentioned that no importance is given to side-characters, which sucks, but then there’s the fact that so many of the themes present in the comic, such as the difficulties of growing up and dealing with reality/coping with past actions, are completely ignored. And as such a lot of important scenes from the comics are ignored. And a lot of the back story wasn’t explored whatsoever. They never talk about why Envy breaking up with Scott was so bad for him, for example. It feels like the movie isn’t as “deep” as the comics were.

And really, why the whole “battle of the bands” thing? I don’t get it.

Overall
This is definitely a very fun movie. The first half is just brilliant. Afterwards though, the movie feels incredibly rushed.

Honestly, I feel like it should have been a bit longer (like, an extra 40 minutes), to be a bit more faithful to the comics, or maybe even just to give more time to the supporting cast to be useful. The other thing they could have done is split the movie in 2. That could have enabled to make 2 awesome movies rather than one movie that starts out badass and sort of starts wavering halfway through. 2 movies would have made it a lot easier to more properly follow the comics and could have spent more time exploring the themes from the comics. It really felt like they were pressed for time/money for the second half. So, while it still LOOKS really good and is still really fun to watch at that point, the story-telling takes a nosedive from the first half (just to get back up again, though not as good as the first half, for the finale).

I understand that the movie can’t be 100% accurate to the comics, especially considering how much content there is in there, but some of the changes are just a bit too drastic. I mean, the first 2 fights and the events leading to them are almost identical to the comic, even including completely useless parts like Scott learning the bass for the battle music in Final Fantasy 2, but then the second half just rushes through the battles against Roxy and the Twins, skipping through at a horrifyingly fast rate and skipping most scenes completely, which was a shame.

But it’s still a really fun movie. Good cast, awesome special effects, great comedy almost all the way through, lots of really fun references (and there’s one reference NO ONE expected and it was damn funny because of how spontaneous and random it was) and, despite not being entirely faithful to the source material, still conveys the overall story of the comics quite well (though in a very rushed manner).

Video game/comic book fans should check it out, there’s a lot there to love for them. Fans of the comic series should obviously check it out too, but don’t expect it to be as good and deep as the comic.

Pros and Cons
Pros
- Awesome special effects
- Very good acting
- Great action
- Very funny
- Looking for references is fun
- Despite the huge change from the comic, the climax of the film is very fun

Cons
- The second half of the movie feels rushed
- A lot was changed from the comic that could have remained unchanged
- Some of the themes explored in the comics aren’t touched upon at all in the movie
- The supporting cast is shoved aside to concentrate more on Scott and Ramona, which isn’t a TERRIBLE thing, but still kinda bad considering how great the supporting cast is in the comics
- Why did they ruin Envy Adams? WHY?

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