Warning: Contains spoilers for both the comic and the movie
Sometimes Hollywood will give us an excellent film adaption of a book or book series, from Harry Potter, to To Kill a Mockingbird, to Scott Pilgrim. The movie will be absolutely fantastic, but it will not be better than the book.
Thats how I feel about Scott Pilgrim anyhow. The movie, prior to reading the comics, was one of my all time favorite films. After reading the comics, it still is, but I have a different sort of respect for it.
This was not an easy thing to adapt, but instead of changing the story up to fit the big screen, director Edgar Wright brilliantly changes the big screen to fit the story. The Scott Pilgrim movie fully embraces it's comic book routes with over the top visuals and comic book sound effects appearing as words floating in the air on the screen. The movie has a really trippy side to it, and it's a pleasure to watch.
Another thing the movie nailed was the music. Everything from the 8-bit background music, to the musical numbers are fantastic. Clash and The Boys' 6 second songs are hilarious and perfect. Sex Bob-Omb's songs are low quality and believably bad, but kind of awesome at the same time too, and Clash at Demonhead's songs are legitimately good. The soundtrack is perfect. My one complaint is that they should have had Kim and Scott playing a terrible cover of "I'm a Believer" near the end like they do in the comics, but I'll get over it.
So the visuals and the music were brilliant in the movie. My biggest complaint was that it had to be shortened for the big screen. Some of my favorite parts, like the battles with Envy Adam's and Knives' father had to be cut out. The story wouldn't have really fit two movies but another twenty minutes tacked onto the 2 hour playing time would have done it some good.
The other problem I had with the movie was that some of the characters weren't fully captured in the film. Michael Cera was a perfect fit for Scott Pilgrim. Kieren Culkin (I don't know if I spelled that right but I'm too lazy to check) was brilliant as Scott's gay roommate Wallace. Stephen Stills, Kim Pine, Stacy Pilgrim, and all the evil exes were great too. The only problem was Ramona. Ramona, Ramona, Ramona. It may be that Mary Elizabeth Winsted didn't fully understand the character, or the writers didn't fully understand the character, or both, but in the movie Ramona is kind of a tool. She gives off a very negative attitude, and she's a lot nicer, as opposed to Ramona in the book who is nice on the surface, but just hard to get to know. Ramona in the movie gets mad and leaves Scott for Gideon, as opposed to in the book where she is (mostly) faithful to Scott. Of course, they justify this with some sort of mind control thing but I think the whole Gideon haunts Ramona's subconsious makes more sense.
Overall, the movie is great and worth the watch, but I would definitely recommend checking out the books too. Bryan Lee O'Malley is brilliant, and both his comics and Edgar Wright's movie are great in their own way and ought to be admired.
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