Scoot Pilgrim vs. the World the movie is a phenomenal film that reminds me of an anime cartoon hybrid in live action. It is action packed and has everything that I love and want to see inside a film. It’s got fight scenes, its got thrilling dialog, its got fun and likable characters. Well, technically your supposed to understand that the man characters are assholes and your not suppose to idolize them. Let’s get into more of a technical breakdown of this film. It makes me incredibly happy so lets do it!
First, I gotta talk about these bomb ass visuals. It’s got this early 2000’s aesthetic that I just love. The action sequences outline the characters with superb CGI effects, it visualized musical attacks in this comic style. The movie really is a visual masterpiece. It feels like all these characters are in this small town but at the same time everything feels dingy with flare. Adding the video game tropes of coins bursting outwards from defeated foes and score numbers appearing is amazing. Having slaps or punches followed by like Adam Wests Batman style “Thwapps” appear on screen lends itself so well to a modern style. The movie is a comedy with a serious story, the visuals know when to be serious and when to not be. They are both simultaneously the silly and wacky shit you see in comics and also very focused on serious shots. I freaking love it. A lot of things in the movie carry these visual gags as well, such as the one chick cursing and her mouth bleeping out with a black box and the characters in universe seeing it. The movie borrows some of the visuals from its source material, I don’t know if it is directly or if it’s just inspired drawings. I hope they are direct rips from the visual novels but I have no idea. This movie has inspired me to go find copies of these books and read them!
Alright, lets talk about the audio of this movie. I cannot stress enough how much I love the audio. It is so good, and the audio gags they play with as well. Like at the beginning of the movie Scott says he learned the riff to a PlayStation 2 game and then uses it too defeat the vegan dude later on. Also just the people fighting with music is great. The battle of the bands is literally a battle. People are being blown back by these gnarly notes literally being thrown at them. Sometimes the music is visualized as dragons, sometimes its just sound waves. I love it so much! The sound design of this movie is amazing!
Now for the main course. The characters and plot! Holy hell! They did such a good job casting this movie! None of the characters feel like the wrong actor, the casted it perfectly! The lead actor really got the whole thing of “unintentional asshole via inaction” spot on, and he plays it so well. The story is funny and convoluted but it never feels like things are happening that you’re going “why did this happen?”. It all feel intentional, I don’t feel like there’s fluff and filler. It feels like a lean and mean movie that honestly could’ve had more fluff and filler to flesh out some of the characters more. The story still works and is a masterpiece but it does feel like they just let some details hang in the air with no explanation. Maybe that’s how the books are, I honestly don’t know. Even so, I am basically arguing semantics over a masterpiece right now. This movie makes me want to go read the books, it has left me wanting more Scott Pilgrim films. Now they might not be making a Scott Pilgrim movie any time soon but we might be getting an Anime. That might be dope as hell, or it might be a flop. Only time will tell, all I know is that I want to dive deeper into the Scott Pilgrim universe.
5/5
-Ben