Ahhh, Edgar Wright, you magnificent bastard. You've done it again. Every single piece of film you have directed, I have loved to bits. To this day, Spaced remains my favourite Britcom *shudders at the use of the word* of all time. Shaun of the Dead is perhaps the only film involving zombies, Queen and the use of the word 'cunt' in the first two minutes I can think of. Hot Fuzz deserves praise if only for the line 'Stabbed in the hand by a man dressed as Santa Claus'. And this brings us of course to the director's latest, greatest and most Hollywood-y directorial achievement: Scott Pilgrim Vs The World.
I was introduced to the Scott Pilgrim books through Empire magazine. Already a rabid Wright fan, when I heard that he would be adapting a comic book series before completing his 'Blood and Ice Cream' trilogy (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and the upcoming The World's End) I was curious. Then ANGRY! Then hungry. Then kinda sleepy.... Then I think I got drunk for a while. THEN I logged on to the Empire website and read an article by the magazine's primary Pilgrim fan, Helen O'Hara, all about why we should love this weird little book series called Scott Pilgrim. Described by Joss Whedon as the 'Best Book Ever', the Scott Pilgrim series is arguably just that. I love it to pieces. Truly, I do. Some day I may release seperate reviews of each book, but since this article is about the movie, I'll simply say this: Scott Pilgrim is fantastic and if you haven't read it, you must stop what you're doing, slap yourself twice in the face for being silly and pick up the phone, screaming 'GET ME THE COMIC BOOK STORE!'. Well, I guess you could dial first. Or just go to the store.
Being such an uber-mega-awesome Pilgrim fan, I was of course skeptical about the movie to begin with. It's never easy to hand your favourite series over to Hollywood, even if it's in the hands of such a director as talented as Wright. Coincidentally, the first thing that sprung to mind when reading SP for the first time was Spaced. Spaced has that kind of atmosphere where a character can be lazing on the sofa moaning about their unemployment one minute, then battling a ninja the next minute without a major shift in tone occuring in between; the kind of atmosphere Scott Pilgrim has in spades. Michael Cera was announced for the title soon after I finished the second book, and I was pretty BLURG about it, moaning to my friends, my relatives, and homeless guys on the bus about how he wasn't right for the part, and played the same character in every movie and all that crap.
By Jove, I was stupid.
The thing I feel the movie really excels in is casting. Every character is so perfectly lifted from the pages of the books, I can't help but feel some kind of voodoo was involved. It is TOO perfect. Kieran Culkin just kicks all kinds of ass as Wallace, which, seeing as he's my favourite character, I just want to HUG the actor for. Mark Webber is UNCANNY as Stephen Stills. Ellen Wong is the exact blend of adorable and insane as Knives Chau. Johnny Simmons as Young Neil is hilarious, despite only having about three lines. Each evil ex (excluding Roxy, but we'll get to that) was spot-on, particularly Brandon Routh. Mary Elisabeth Winstead was.... actually, I didn't like her that much. I don't think she was very charming. She didn't have a whole lot of chemistry with Scott. They only really got to show the crappy parts of their relationship. Due to the time constriction Wright and co had adapting a six book series into a 112-minute movie, quite a few of the 'standing around talking' parts of the books had to be cut down. We never quite got to see Ramona and Scott really have much relationship-y time. They never really had fun together.
There were some things I would have LOVED to see in the film. Almost all of my favourite scenes were cut from the film for time constraints, and a lot of characters (Kim and Envy in particular) are extremely watered down, reduced to the core elements of their characters. But that's okay, because above all, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World has captured the SPIRIT of the comics. Every time the little 'Rating: Awesome' boxes popped up, my heart sort of swooned with love for this film, with happiness for how right they got it. It looks exactly like the comic books, but not in the way that, say, Watchmen does. This isn't a panel-for-panel adaptation, but at the same time it is a lot more faithful to the source material than even the slowest slo-mo action sequences Zack Snyder's computer can conjure up. It is just pure awesome. I honestly can't think of a more creative way of describing it.
One thing I want to talk about is my favourite of the books, Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together. The fourth in the series, this book has a distinctly summer-y feel to it. From the colour pages at the very beginning to the whole getting a job, hanging out at the mall, staying up really late kind of atmosphere, it really captures summer in the subtlest of ways, I think. Scott's life kind of goes down the crapper in this one, but the way he resolves everything in a single scene is one of my favourite moments in the whole series. Come to think of it, most of my favourite series moments come from Gets It Together, from Scott hiding in Ramona's purse during a fight (his cartoon head poking out and saying 'Yeah!' to everything she yells at the enemy) to Roxy's wonderful line 'You punched me in the BOOB!' (followed by 'puking sounds' from Scott) to Knives' father attempting to murder Scott on several occassions with his antique samurai swords ('Man, my dad is so lame!'), this is by far my favourite book. However, it is also the one they cut the most out of. I guess it's because the movie takes place over a MUCH shorter time span than the comics, so the summer feel is already right out. Roxy Richter, the evil ex-girlfriend of this book, is also my favourite ex, and ironically the character I thought was the worst portrayed in the movie. Some of her best lines ('Prepare to die, obviously....' and 'AGH! Forget it! Never mind! *teleports away*') were either missing or performed.... incorrectly. I know I can't judge, because Bryan Lee O'Malley himself was heavily involved in the movie so he probably thought the lines were delivered perfectly, but I just didn't like her. Also, why didn't she explode into bunnies, pigs and tweety birds?! Regular coins? What the hell, man?!
Anyway, I close by saying that Scott Pilgrim Vs The World is an excellent adaptation - it is not nearly as literal as some (*cough*Watchmen*cough*) and not as distant as others (*cough*The Dark Knight*cough*) from the source material, but it doesn't have to be because above all, it FEELS like Scott Pilgrim. It has the atmosphere and heart of the comics, even if they had to cut out a whole lot. Perhaps it would have worked better as two seperate films, with the first ending on The Infinite Sadness and the second beginning with Gets It Together. But no, Scott Pilgrim is its own masterpiece. If Hollywood ever rams a sequel down the series' throat, I will personally track down EVERYBODY in Hollywood and ram eleven copies of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen down their asses. You heard me - DOWN THEIR ASSES.
Anyway, normally I would say 'See the movie', but instead I ask of you, read the books. The movie's fine, but my heart truly lies with the little comic book series that started it all. The movie is hella tight, though.
Peace, goddammit!
