After going back about a hundred years for Sherlock Holmes in my last article, I figure it’s time for something newer and more local. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, the movie, was released in 2010 starring Michael Cera in the title role. The story itself was based off of the series of 6 graphic novels written and illustrated by Brian Lee O’Malley between 2004 and 2010.
For those of you that don’t know the basic premise, here is a quick synopsis: Scott Pilgrim is a 23 year old living in Toronto, Ontario, who instantly falls in love with Ramona Flowers, a delivery girl who recently moved to Toronto. Scott is attacked by Ramona’s first ex-boyfriend, and subsequently learns that to date her, he must defeat her seven evil exes. The major differences between the book and the movie are the simplification of the story timeline: where the movie takes place over a couple of weeks, the graphic novel spans almost a full year. In addition a couple of minor characters are glossed over in the movie to focus more on the relationship between Scott and Ramona, skipping over his reconciliation with friend Kim Pine and the story arcs of his fellow Sex Bob-omb band members.
The thing I appreciate most about the book and movie conversion is the attention to detail in converting O’Malley’s drawings back into the real world for filming. O’Malley based most of the locations off of real locations around Toronto, and characters off of family and friends. Scott’s sister Stacey, for instance is based on O’Malley’s sister (named Stacey). Both characters work at a Second Cup, so for the filming of the movie the crew went and found a similar Second Cup and the actress wore her actual name tag. Another well-known location in the book is Casa Loma, which was used for filming to accurately match the comic. O’Malley has a great art style, in that he seems to watch the world around him and simplifies it into such a distinctive style – then the filmmakers made the effort to reverse engineer his drawings back into the ‘real’ world for the movie.
If you want to read a great comic, and watch an awesome movie adaptation take a look at Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (there is an 8-bit style video game as well). Also keep a lookout for all the hidden easter eggs throughout – this is a book/film that a lot of detail went into, and it definitely shows.
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