Scott
Pilgrim vs. the World, with its poor box office
performance and passionate fanbase, is the definition of a cult classic. Based
on the graphic novels by Bryan Lee O'Malley, the 2010 film boasted novel
visuals, a cute little plot, and the sharp wit and humor of writer/director Edgar
Wright, but as many of the fans of the source material can tell you, as a
straight adaptation it is only passable. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, a
Netflix reimagining thirteen years later, initially looked like it would tackle
this complaint. It did not. Yet despite Takes Off being more
of an unexpected “what if" reinterpretation of the comic and film, having
lower energy, and less novelty, it still ultimately has the same spirit and
quality as its counterparts.
The entire core cast of the 2010 film
returns to voice their animated counterparts, an impressive feat when you
consider how many of them have become superstars since then (Chris Evans, Brie
Larson, Anna Kendrick, and Aubrey Plaza, to name a few). The energy and
enthusiasm they bring to their roles is somewhat cancelled out by the
questionable editing, however—there is often too long of a gap between when one
character stops speaking and another begins, a relatively minor issue that
amounts to a perceptively slower pace when it happens back to back to back. The
energy of Takes Off feels odd because of this, especially when
you compare it to the frantic nature of the 2010 film, and I sometimes watched
the cartoon at 1.25 speed just to speed things up a bit. And while the
animation in Takes Off looks exactly like a moving version of
the original comic art there is no denying that the medium makes the new
adaptation less novel than the 2010 film, which derived a lot of its charm from
the marriage of live-action realism with cartoony violence and tropes. When
it’s all a cartoon to begin with it’s just not as unique.
But I suppose these criticisms are
only criticisms because I am comparing the new to the old. When taken on its
own Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is a whole lot of fun, and it does
have a lot of uniqueness and charm to it. The reworked plot and longer length
allow for more focus on the characters themselves, although at 8 episodes at 25
minutes each it is still a pretty short watch, and the fight scenes are truly a
blast to watch. It could have used some more of that Edgar Wright wit,
admittedly (he also returned but only to produce this time around), but the
humor still lands when it appears in its less concentrated form. I have not
read the graphic novels but it feels very much like their souls are still
intact in the new show, even if the plots are not. Fans of the film and fans of
the comic could do much worse than that.
Scott Pilgrims Takes Off is
now available in its entirety on Netflix.
This review was first published in
the Keizertimes on November 24th, 2023. Visit at www.keizertimes.com.
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