Scott Pilgrim vs. The World Blu-Ray Review

Edgar Wright goes it on his own with a little known comic book adaptation that is a moviegoer’s wet dream, infusing movie, music and game references aplenty.

Movie Review

Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is an unemployed 23-year-old bass guitarist in an up-and-coming garage rock band who is dating a cute 17-year-old high school girl, Knives Chau (Ellen Wong).  He is having fun in life and rolling along at a nice even tempo until one day Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) roller-blades into his life.  No one knows what her past is, but Scott will find out very soon as he tries to make Ramona his new girlfriend.  Before Scott can begin dating Ramona, he must prove himself by defeating the league of seven evil exes who control her love life.  They will do anything to get rid of and destroy any new boyfriend Ramona may consider.  If Scott wants to find true love with Ramona, he must defeat all seven, before the game is over.

I’m totally unfamiliar with the source material here but was sold because I’ve been an Edgar Wright fan ever since falling head over heels in love with ‘Spaced’ on Television many years ago.  It’s a film that tries to be hype and cool while poking fun at them very same ideals, being both self referential and self deprecating at the same time.  It’s a difficult tightrope to follow but it mostly pulls it off.  From what I’ve heard the adaptation is faithful although the ending is different because the last book wasn’t finished before they went into production.

Edgar Wright brings his usual bag of visual and audible tricks to the forefront, so much so that most were turned off on its theatrical release but this film deserves to be revisited on Blu-Ray as it is a gem of a film.  It’s a kaleidoscope of inventiveness which is truly inspiring but it is an acquired taste although I for one found it stunning.  It’s a quirky alternative world with fights breaking out all over the place, musical numbers and interactive graphics that pepper the environment in a playful way.

The cast are firing on all cylinders with Michael Cera giving us his usual awkward young adult routine but injects some freshness into it and Mary Elizabeth Winstead is an understated beauty as the hair colour changing Ramona.  Props too have to go to Kieran Culkin for playing Scott’s gay friend with some great funny lines and looks.  All the Evil Ex’s are played to villainess and comedic affect with Chris Evans, Brandon Routh and Jason Schwartzman being the standouts.

The music is a fundamental part of the movie with beat master supremo Beck on producing duties, he brings together some eclectic and diverse musical styles which add genuine authenticity to the film.  ‘The Matrix’ and ‘Team America’ cinematographer Bill Pope injects the visuals with flourishes which aren’t apparent on just one viewing,  like when Scott and Ramona talk on a bus the background changes subtly to X’s for Ramona and hearts for Scott mirroring their thoughts, subsequent viewings bring more and more out of the film.

Video Presentation

‘Scott Pilgrim’ lands on Blu-ray sporting a 1080p AVC-encoded image that doesn’t seem to pop as well as it did during its theatrical run.  Colours are muted and don’t seem nearly as bright and vibrant as they did when the movie was shown in theatres.  Fine detail looks good, but won’t ever blow you away. Facial details like freckles, pores, and facial hair are well defined, but again lack that HD oomph.  Blacks are deep, but at times shadows tend to obscure faces with slight crushing rather than adding to the picture’s depth.  As for other digital anomalies like banding or aliasing, I didn’t notice them at all.  Source noise is completely non-existent, providing a clear picture.  Overall, this just doesn’t look like the movie I saw in theatres.  The colours seem off, I don’t know how else to say it. In the theatres it looked brighter, the colours looked better and more in tune to the world that Scott inhabits.  I would never imagine a world where Scott Pilgrim lives to have a restrained colour palette, but on Blu-ray it has just that.

Audio Presentation

The DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio is a fun, vigorous mix that will keep you completely engrossed in the movie.  From mono-sounding original Nintendo music, to full-bodied bass-rumbling techno beats this soundtrack contains just about everything. Just keep in mind that just as the blocking is intentional in the video portion, so too are the sometimes static-sounding guitar riffs and occasional bass.  The dialog is presented cleanly and clearly through the centre channel, but there are plenty of times where out of frame characters chime in with their thoughts.  When this happens directionality works wonders.  The mix also features a seemingly endless variety of sound effects.  The directionality for sound effects works just as well as it does for dialogue.  The rear channels crash as the first evil ex blows through the roof. The front and side channels use panning effects perfectly as Scott runs into battle with a whoosh sound following him.  ‘Scott Pilgrim’ isn’t full of non-stop action, but when it gets to those parts this movie excels on every audio front. Seeing that this is coming from the guy who brought us the stellar sound design for ‘Hot Fuzz’ it should be no surprise here that ‘Scott Pilgrim’ also earns the highest, demo-worthy accolades.

Extras

This disc is bursting with extra features that you’ll be days sifting through.  You have to hand it to Edgar Wright as he really knows how to put to get a Blu-Ray/DVD set.  Let’s delve into these plethora of bonus content.

Audio Commentaries – In true Edgar Wright fashion ‘Scott Pilgrim’ comes with multiple commentaries just like ‘Hot Fuzz’ did.  The four commentaries included each focus on something different. The Feature Commentary features Edgar Wright, along with co-writer Michael Bacall and “Scott Pilgrim” author Bryan Lee O’Malley. The Technical Commentary features Wright along with director of photography Bill Pope. Then there are two different Cast Commentaries. The first cast commentary features Michael Cera, Jason Schwartzman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ellen Wong, and Brandon Routh. The second Cast Commentary features Anna Kendrick, Aubrey Plaza, Kieran Culkin, and Mark Webber.

The Feature Commentary is a great one. Here’s one of the very few commentaries where you’ll have both the original author and the director that took the author’s book and made it into a movie together.  This is a fantastic combination because you know that O’Malley completely embraces this vision of his work on screen.  This is a must listen commentary.

The Technical Commentary is all about the filming.  Wright and Pope discuss filming locations, cinematography and how they changed sets like the record store that Knives and Scott visit to make it look more minimalist.  Wright is obsessed with clean, distinct perspective lines and he made his crew re-decorate the record store so that he could have his vision.  You really get into how meticulous a director Wright is when it comes to attention to detail in his films.  Another must listen to commentary.

Cera takes over the track and kind of leads the way in the discussion in the first Cast Commentary.  There are a lot of dead spots in this commentary even though there are so many people.  Cera offers some insight into the filming and the reshoots that had to be done.  Most of the other actors don’t seem to have the insight that Cera does.  They just ask him questions about the filming and he answers them.

The second Cast Commentary is pretty bland and has a lot of dead spots in it.  This is why they should have spread out the main characters and maybe put a few of them in this commentary.  These actors don’t have much to talk about, and end up just kind of chatting for a few hours.

Trivia Track – Text pops up during the movie to clue us in on all the movies many video and comic book references.  This is a really cool feature as it allows you to catch pretty much everything you may have missed the first or second time you watched the movie.  It’s really easy to miss all the little hidden references.

Deleted Scenes – Each deleted scene is offered with optional commentary by Edgar Wright and there are a whopping 21 deleted scenes included here.  Most of them are pretty good and had to be cut just because of time.  Many of these scenes are actually in the movie, but here they’re just presented as slightly extended scenes that haven’t been edited down yet.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the Bloopers – This is a collection of goofs and line flubs that we’ve come to expect from these types of featurettes.

You Too Can Be Sex Bob Omb – Mark Webber, who plays Stephen Stills, learns how to play guitar for his role.

Bits and Pieces – Could have been included in the blooper reel since that’s essentially what is found here.

Galleries – If you like still galleries as extras then you’ll love this one.  You can check out all the different posters that were created to market the film, along with set photos from filming, and concept art.

U-Control: Storyboard Picture-in-Picture – A PiP track that plays along with the movie that allows you to access storyboards in a pop-up window as the movie plays.

Making of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World – Edgar Wright talks about how he was approached by a few producers who wanted him to make the “Scott Pilgrim” books into a movie.  This is a pretty extensive making-of feature that gives us insight into Wright’s vision compared to the source material.

Pre-Production – This is an extensive sub menu that’s divided into six different sections: “Pre-Production Footage,” “Animatics,” “Rehearsal Videos,” “Props, Rigs and Sets Montage,” “Casting Tapes,” “Hair and Make-up Footage.” This really is an even more in depth look at what exactly goes into the prep stage of a film.

Adult Swim: Scott Pilgrim vs. the Animation – A cartoon of Scott Pilgrim trying to form his band.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the Censors: TV Safe Version – This is just a bunch of scenes that are really awkwardly censored to be TV safe.

VFX Before and After – Fraizer Churchill, VFX supervisor, talks about the visual effects in the film and shows us how they created a lot of the effects like when Ramona skates away and the snow melts. Churchill is pretty bland to listen to, and he doesn’t really go into how everything was created he just shows the different elements put together.

Roxy Fight / Ribbon Version – See what this fight looked like before the effects were added in and how they had to film it with the post-production visual effects in mind.

Phantom Montage: Hi Speed Footage – This is a fun little montage that shows us the slow motion footage of the actors doing their own stunts against blue screens.

Soundworks Collection: Sound for the Film Profile – This featurette explores the movie’s demo-worthy audio mix.

Blogs – Edgar Wright offers 12 video blogs that he recorded during filming. The blogs talk about production, how things on the set were going, and how he felt about the film.

Trailers – This section contains numerous trailers for the movie, also TV spots and video game trailers. Not sure why they aren’t in HD though.

Alternative Edits – Shows a few scenes from the movie, but with alternate edits. These scenes could have been included with the deleted scenes, since many of those were alternate and extended cuts.

Music of ‘Scott Pilgrim’ – This interesting little featurette explores the original music that was used in the film.

Music Promos – There are a total of four music videos here: “Garbage Truck,” “Black Sheep,” “Threshold,” and “Summertime.” Also seven remixed songs by DJ Osymyso: “Prepare,” “Hey,” “Love,” “Ramona,” “Fight!,” “Yeah,” and “What?”

This is must see movie for an game, movie or music fan, it’s drenched in so many references that you’ll be thrilled for hours while you watch and rewatch it, then there’s the fun and heartfelt love story throughout.  With the film and the extras presented here I cannot recommend it enough.

‘Scott Pilgrim vs. The World’ is out to rent or buy on Blu-Ray and DVD now.