Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

I am really glad I own this movie. I’d meant to talk about Scott Pilgrim vs. the World before now, but there’s just way too much stuff on the Blu-ray for me to get through it all before I tell you about it, much as I tried.

Four commentaries! (Which took me a while to find — they’re at the end of the extras section.) Plus an on-screen trivia track that identifies all the real-life locations and music and design elements brought over from the comics. Or you can choose a picture-in-picture storyboard track to see how closely the movie fits the original plans.

The extras start with 21 deleted scenes and alternate cuts, with an option to play with commentary by director/co-writer Edgar Wright. They include the originally planned ending, where Scott ends up with Knives, which doesn’t work for me at all, but it’s interesting to see how different Scott seems in that approach. Next, there are almost ten minutes of bloopers, the usual breaking into giggles or getting lines wrong.

The extra scenes, bloopers, commentaries, trivia track, and photo galleries are also available on the DVD version. It’s when it comes to the documentaries and featurettes that we get into Blu-ray exclusives. The basic making-of lasts almost 50 minutes with lots of detail on production, casting, location, stunts, and much other visually interesting background. The music gets 16 minutes on its own, with an extra three minutes showing Mark Webber (Stephen Stills) learning guitar in “You Too Can Be in Sex Bob-Omb!” You can see some sample special feature clips here.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

I enjoyed seeing the four-minute Adult Swim cartoon, “Scott Pilgrim vs. the Animation”, which was new to me. This flashback features Scott meeting Lisa, which leads to the band’s original formation. There are also four minutes of TV-safe edits from the movie’s censored version. The blog section has 12 videos made by Edgar Wright during filming.

There are two sets of alternative edits with no explanation, almost 20 minutes’ worth, and over an hour and a half of pre-production footage, including casting, rehearsal, and hair and makeup. Four music videos and seven song remixes make up the music section, in addition to a short piece on the sound mixing, while the visual effects get their own area too. Trailers include the usual movie and TV spots (there were a lot!), plus those for the video game.

This set is so comprehensive (I haven’t even mentioned the included DVD or digital copy) that it quickly becomes overkill if you try to marathon it. Treat it as a buffet — enjoy in depth the areas to your taste, maybe try out briefly something new, but don’t feel like you have to watch all of everything. You’ll burn out. You’ll return to it later, maybe with different interests, and find different things to enjoy.

As for the movie itself, I loved seeing the characters again. I’d missed them. I still marvel at how amazingly they captured Bryan Lee O’Malley’s designs and the overall look of the piece. There’s an awful lot going on, and plenty to find on rewatching. The movie is so much fun in its action and humor and aesthetic that I loved having all these extras! You can learn a lot about what changes were made and why choices were picked.

There is so much more movie here! This will be hours and hours of exploration. I imagine I’ll come back to this film, as well as the books, multiple times over the coming years, finding something different in them every time. It’s an awesome video version of the graphic novel voice of a generation. (The studio provided a review copy.)



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