Scott Pilgrim vs. The World :Blu-Ray / DVD

Review by Jamie Coville

I'll just start off by saying Scott Pilgrim was a fantastic movie. It's pretty well known that the movie bombed at the box office. Most movies bomb because they are horrible, but this is not one of them. I want to console everybody who worked on this movie and tell them they've got nothing to be sad about. They made a really good movie, it was just too different for it to be easily marketed. It's wacky action/comedy/romance/musical with heavy video game and manga influence. If you've watched a lot of movies and would like something different than the neatly defined genre movies, this is it. If you haven't read the books I'll give you a quick synopsis. Scott Pilgrim is an unemployed musician who needs to defeat the 7 evil ex-boyfriends of his dream girl Ramona Flowers in order to be with her. Scott is played by Michael Cera (Arrested Development, Superbad), Ramona is Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Die Hard 4, Death Proof).

The editing of the movie is incredible, how they manage to put everything together and make it all look good is astounding. The directory Edgar Wright can forever use this movie to showcase his talents, as can the crew that worked on it. When I first heard about this movie I had a difficult time believing they could put on screen with real people what creator Bryan Lee O'Malley did with Japanese influenced drawings. They managed to do it in spectacular fashion though. The actors also all put in great performances as well. For those familiar with other superhero movies, Brandon Routh (Superman Returns) and Chris Evans (Fantastic Four, Captain America) have roles as bad guys and shine in them.

I bought this in Blu-Ray because of all the special effects in the movie, plus all of the extras.

 

Extras:

Deleted Scenes

There are a number of these and well, they were deleted for good reason. Interesting to see. Added bits of conversations making some scenes longer, added scenes that weren't totally necessary, interesting to see but it highlights that the theatrical version of the movie is best. Although there are a couple of killer lines that were cut out but I think cutting them out was the right thing to do.

Bloopers

A lot of flubbed lines, some stunt accidents, also over 30 quick takes of Micheal Cera trying to throw his amazon box over his head behind him and into a wastebasket.

Documentaries

  1. Making of Scott Pilgrim. This is a good bit about the amount of training the actors had to go through for the action part, there is also a lot of Bryan Lee O'Malley on screen, giving an interview about the movie and his work. They also talk about training the actors to play sing/play music or at least look like they are doing it believably. Other neat bits include Bryan's sister (who is a character in the movie) loaning her actual work name tag to the actress to wear during her scene. A chunk of this is devoted to staff telling us how great the director Edgar Wright is.

  2. Music Featurette. This is about the musicians brought in and the work they did for the movie. A lot of the actors are looking very unglamorous in here, literally looking like they just got out of bed.

  3. You too can be a Sex Bob-Omb. A little bit with actor Mark Webber learning to play a guitar.

 

Alternative Footage & Bits and Pieces:

Different than Deleted Scenes. These are alternative takes where the camera angle and/or dialogue was different.

Pre-Production

This is a very long sequence, first showing a mix of animated version of the fight scenes made from Bryan Lee O'Malley's art. Mixed in are live action rehearsals with the stunt doubles working everything out and sometimes the actors as well. They go through all the fights and actually reveal a fight they had planned but didn't make it into the movie. Some of it is funny with the martial artists/stunt people dressed up as the female characters.

Also in there are audition tapes, with characters trying out for the parts before they got the roles, reading script. You get to see their acting chops when they are just in a plain room.

There is a part regarding props and testing to make sure they work like they are supposed to.

At the end there are makeup and costume tests where the actors come out one by one and act as the boiled down essence of the characters. This is done with montage style with some slow, important sounding music. It does a good job of making you fall in love with the characters again.

Music Promos

Music Videos: These are the 4 songs in their full version in music video style with clips of the movies to fill it out. I liked 2 out of the 4 songs, the other two weren't that bad either.

OSYMYSO Remixes:

These are like trailers but focused on a single element of the movie or a word commonly said throughout it (two examples are What and Hey).

Visual Effects

FVX: Before and After. Talk of what the actors did, stuntmen and CGI and how they were mixed together.

Roxy Fight / Ribbon Version: The Roxy / Ramona fight but with Roxy holding a ribbon instead of a metal thing shown in the movie.

Phantom Montage Hi Speed Version: Showing the main actors doing their stunts on blue screen in slow mo.

Sound Works Collection

Talk about the various sound effects done in the movie.

Trailers

Adult Swim, Scott Pilgrim vs. The Animation. This is an animated short telling of how Scott and the drummer Kim met, got together and broke up. It's done in Bryan Lee O'Malley art style. It's short, but nice as it added something that was left out of the movie.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the Censors, the safe TV version. This shows clips from the movie with other words dubbed over the swear words.

Blogs

This is a series of video blogs that were made during the movie. A lot of them are narrated by Edgar Wright. They used a bunch of material from this from for the Making Of.. documentary.

Galleries

A bunch of pictures that were taking during the filming of the movie.

There are also numerous ways of watching the movie too. The various versions are:

    Pop up trivia track.
    UControl Version where with coloured boxes show up, telling you what buttons on press on your remote to have the storyboard and other stuff pop up as you watch the movie.
    Commentary with Edgar Wright and Bryan Lee O'Malley
    Commentary with Edgar Wright and Director of Photography Bill Pope
    Commentary with different members of the cast.
    First one is with Micheal Cera, Jason Schwartzman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ellen Wong and Brandon Routh.
    The other has Anna Kendrick, Aubrey Plaza, Kieran Culkin and Mark Webber.

Also coming with it is the option of watching a bonus movie in streaming blu-ray. The choice is Pitch Black and Tremors. It is good until 5/31/2011.

Along with the blu-ray disk you also get the regular DVD disk as well. You have the option of downloading a free digital copy as well as a slip of paper shows the website address and code you would use to download it.

And of course there is advertising for other movies if you'd like to see them.

Going through the extra's you see the actors did a LOT of work on this movie that didn't make it to camera. From physical work outs, to music training, to a lot of rehearsals and more.

I should note I saw an exclusive version of this DVD with a Scott Pilgrim T-Shirt at Walmart.

 


[Back to Collector Times]
[Prev.] [Return to Reviews] [Disclaimer] [Next]


Text Copyright © 2010 Jamie Coville

About the Author

E-mail: jcoville@kingston.net