Epic Blog Post of Epicness

Have you seen Scott Pilgrim vs The World(WARNING: Horrible, horrible Flash site awaits for all who click.) yet? If you haven’t, go see it right now. There’s probably several showings in your area right this very minute. Don’t worry, we’ll wait for you. Go on. If you don’t go, I’ll just sit here and look at you disapprovingly until you go. :::Glare::: See, I told you you’d enjoy it.

We here at Ret-Conned had really high hopes for the movie, but at the same time were really afraid that it wouldn’t live up to the graphic novels, either because of the time constraints of film or Hollywood screwing up something that we loved. We’re glad to report that we all thoroughly enjoyed the movie. It was just enough like the books that it stayed faithful, but just different enough to make us re-read the books to double check how things were originally portrayed. We’ve seriously talked about going to to theater to see it again, which really says something based on how resistant we are to actually go to the theater instead of wait for the DVD to come out.

They certainly changed some things from the original story because of timing or it was too complex to film or in some other way prohibitive. The ending is definitely different then the book, but it works. Kris felt the original ending in Volume 6 was too abstract and thinks that the movie ending was more succinct and accessible. The only thing I was disappointed they changed was the Knives-Ramona fight in the Toronto Reference Library. It was a really cool setting and I’m a sucker for cool things happening in libraries. I understand that it would probably have been prohibitive to film that in the TRL and they did include the fight itself, but it felt a little forced and awkward where they put it.

Relationships are complicated, and each one in a very different way. That was the main message of Scott Pilgrim and something that Bryan Lee O’Malley did such a remarkable job capturing. That was also the message in the film, but since they couldn’t delve into the past relationships of Ramona with any of the Evil Exes, Scott/Kim, or Scott/Envy as deeply as the books that message was definitely weaker. I don’t think that’s a bad mark on the movie; it did the best it could with the time that it had. I would definitely recommend reading the books
if you have not. I’ll even give it a Comics You Should Read stamp of approval. So, go read it before I have to pull out the :::glare::: again.

If you hadn’t figured out, the Gnome and I were on vacation last week. We ended up in Toronto, so saw Scott Pilgrim at the opening day midnight showing there. The thunderous applause as the movie opens announcing the magical land of Toronto, Canada was absolutely incredible. While we didn’t go to Toronto because of Scott Pilgrim, we did go to a lot of places mentioned in the book and movie as part of our Scott Pilgrimage.

I’ve already mentioned how I was disappointed that they didn’t have any scenes in the Toronto Reference Library, mainly just because it looks so awesome:

The next stop on the Scott Pilgrimage was to Casa Loma. Since the Casa Loma scenes in the movie are at night, it’s really hard to capture how majestic it looks:



They’re doing some renovations on Casa Loma and it was really cool to see how they worked the renovation construction into the film by making it look like it was some of the construction from the movie set:


The final stop on our Scott Pilgrimage was to Honest Ed’s, which is another location in the book that was cut from the film, although you see it briefly in one scene of Scott and Knives walking down the street:


On the one hand, I could see why they wouldn’t want to film something inside the very large, but jam-packed store. On the other hand, the only thing that would make an Epic Epic of Epicness more Epic would be a scene in front of the Wall of Elvi: