If you’ve read my review of Scott Pilgrim vs the World, you’ll know that I am a humungous fan of that film and that it resides in my top five favourite films of all time (as of writing). I tried to take a diplomatic approach during the review by highlighting the films flaws, mainly in its writing, despite the fact that those problems don’t particularly bother me enough to ruin my overall adoration of the film.
Anyway, since watching first watching the film in 2011 I went Scott Pilgrim crazy collecting multiple versions of the film, multiple versions of the graphic novels, a Limited Run Games collector’s edition of the videogame, and a handful of merchandise. So really, I just can’t get enough Scott Pilgrim and since the films tenth anniversary in 2020 there’s been a massive resurgence in demand for new Scott Pilgrim content, which happened to include a reunion of the films cast over Zoom to do a table read of the script. It was this reunion that fuelled rumours of a potential sequel, one that director Edgar Wright and franchise creator Bryan Lee O’Malley only seemed to encourage. Then suddenly earlier this year Wright and O’Malley suddenly announced that they’d partnered with Netflix to revive Scott Pilgrim as an animated series and that all of the film’s cast would be reprising their roles. This was massive news; a box office bomb being revived with all the cast returning and the director serving as producer! But exactly what Scott Pilgrim Takes Off was remained a total mystery right up until release day. A sequel? A remake? A more faithful adaptation of the graphic novels? The answer is all of the above, and yet also none of them.
Twenty-three-year-old slacker Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is dating a seventeen-year old Chinese schoolgirl, Knives Chau (Ellen Wong). But when Scott meets Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), the girl of his dreams, he must fight and defeat her seven evil exes in order to date her.
But when Scott is killed during the first battle the world is thrown into chaos. Suspecting foul play, Ramona refuses to believe that Scott is dead and begins an investigation to find him, reconciling with her exes along the way.
Anyway, since watching first watching the film in 2011 I went Scott Pilgrim crazy collecting multiple versions of the film, multiple versions of the graphic novels, a Limited Run Games collector’s edition of the videogame, and a handful of merchandise. So really, I just can’t get enough Scott Pilgrim and since the films tenth anniversary in 2020 there’s been a massive resurgence in demand for new Scott Pilgrim content, which happened to include a reunion of the films cast over Zoom to do a table read of the script. It was this reunion that fuelled rumours of a potential sequel, one that director Edgar Wright and franchise creator Bryan Lee O’Malley only seemed to encourage. Then suddenly earlier this year Wright and O’Malley suddenly announced that they’d partnered with Netflix to revive Scott Pilgrim as an animated series and that all of the film’s cast would be reprising their roles. This was massive news; a box office bomb being revived with all the cast returning and the director serving as producer! But exactly what Scott Pilgrim Takes Off was remained a total mystery right up until release day. A sequel? A remake? A more faithful adaptation of the graphic novels? The answer is all of the above, and yet also none of them.
Twenty-three-year-old slacker Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is dating a seventeen-year old Chinese schoolgirl, Knives Chau (Ellen Wong). But when Scott meets Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), the girl of his dreams, he must fight and defeat her seven evil exes in order to date her.
But when Scott is killed during the first battle the world is thrown into chaos. Suspecting foul play, Ramona refuses to believe that Scott is dead and begins an investigation to find him, reconciling with her exes along the way.
Following the first episode, I spend the next five episodes of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off confused as to how this was going to work. But once the pieces began to fall into place in the penultimate episode, I understood exactly what O’Malley was doing and it was really impressive. I won’t go into specifics but Takes Off manages to work as a standalone series, a reimagining of the graphic novels/film, and a continuation of those stories all at the same time.
What I liked most about Takes Off is how it gets under the skin of Ramona’s exes. What was quickly brushed off as the original story’s quirky unique selling point is given a whole new lease of life here. We explore their minds, see how Ramona broke them and how they came together to console each other. A consolation that ultimately turned toxic, but it started as something supportive and meaningful.
What I struggled with however was just how much it differed from the original story. I think that all comes down to expectations and the way that the show had been marketed. I was expecting a remake, perhaps a more faithful adaptation of the novels, but what is delivered is an entirely new story…sort of. It’s complicated and I won’t get into spoilers here, but the fact is whilst Takes Off is great, it took me a long time to actually get on board with it.
It took until the penultimate episode until I saw the brilliance of what O’Malley and co had done here, and the payoff is well worth the initial confusion. I think if I revisited the show knowing how it all plays out now, I’d be much more on board with the concept from the off.
It’s a brilliant reinvention of the Scott Pilgrim story that addresses a lot of the complaints that people, including myself, have against the original story. It’s been almost twenty years since the publication of Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life and a whole lot had changed in that time so the changes in social views on particular plot points have been altered to be in line with modern sensibilities. It’s not ‘woke’, it’s a new take on an old story.
What I liked most about Takes Off is how it gets under the skin of Ramona’s exes. What was quickly brushed off as the original story’s quirky unique selling point is given a whole new lease of life here. We explore their minds, see how Ramona broke them and how they came together to console each other. A consolation that ultimately turned toxic, but it started as something supportive and meaningful.
What I struggled with however was just how much it differed from the original story. I think that all comes down to expectations and the way that the show had been marketed. I was expecting a remake, perhaps a more faithful adaptation of the novels, but what is delivered is an entirely new story…sort of. It’s complicated and I won’t get into spoilers here, but the fact is whilst Takes Off is great, it took me a long time to actually get on board with it.
It took until the penultimate episode until I saw the brilliance of what O’Malley and co had done here, and the payoff is well worth the initial confusion. I think if I revisited the show knowing how it all plays out now, I’d be much more on board with the concept from the off.
It’s a brilliant reinvention of the Scott Pilgrim story that addresses a lot of the complaints that people, including myself, have against the original story. It’s been almost twenty years since the publication of Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life and a whole lot had changed in that time so the changes in social views on particular plot points have been altered to be in line with modern sensibilities. It’s not ‘woke’, it’s a new take on an old story.
One of the strongest aspects of the whole show is the return of the majority of the films cast, reprising their roles in a voice actor capacity. There are a few issues with this in that some of these actors clearly don’t have much voice acting experience, so the line delivery can be a bit flat at times. But Winstead provides an excellent leading performance, with similarly strong performances from Kieran Culkin as Wallace, Jason Schwartzman as Gideon, Anna Kendrick as Stacey, Brandon Routh as Todd, and a particularly good performance from Satya Bhabha as Matthew. In fact, one of the weakest performances was from Cera, he also didn’t really sound an awful lot like himself so I’m not really sure what was going on there.
The show is definitely a real treat from an audio/visual standpoint. It retains the visuals of the graphic novel whilst bringing them to life with movement. It feels heavily inspired by Japanese manga, and it moves at a slightly choppy pace as though it’s a flicker book style of movement which is a great touch. It then also retains a lot of the erratic visual stylings of Wright’s film, with plenty of visual gags that bleed into elaborate transitions and give the whole thing this feeling of constant momentum.
The music isn’t quite as strong as the film’s soundtrack, but Anamanaguchi and Joseph Trapanese have created a great sound here that gives the show its own identity without feeling too separate from the film. There are a handful of returning tracks such as Plumtree’s ‘Scott Pilgrim’, and Metric’s ‘Black Sheep’, but these are complimented with other licensed tracks such as Liam Lynch’s ‘United States of Whatever’, and Vampire Weekend’s ‘A-Punk’. It all comes together really well in what feels like the perfect combination of the film and the graphic novels, but crucially giving it an identity of its own as well.
I had astronomically high hopes for Scott Pilgrim Takes Off and I don’t think it was ever going to realistically match those expectations, but the show we got is still a blast from start to finish. It’s funny, heartfelt, and exciting. The inclusion of the film’s cast reprising their roles is a big selling point of the show, and it really does look and sound the part. Whilst the story changes may be a difficult pill for some fans to swallow at first, I promise if you stick with it it’ll pay off massively in the long run. Is it an ideal jumping in point for newcomers? I don’t see why not. Personally I’d start with the film as that’s the most ‘normal’ of everything, but Takes Off should be right up any Anime nerd’s street.
The show is definitely a real treat from an audio/visual standpoint. It retains the visuals of the graphic novel whilst bringing them to life with movement. It feels heavily inspired by Japanese manga, and it moves at a slightly choppy pace as though it’s a flicker book style of movement which is a great touch. It then also retains a lot of the erratic visual stylings of Wright’s film, with plenty of visual gags that bleed into elaborate transitions and give the whole thing this feeling of constant momentum.
The music isn’t quite as strong as the film’s soundtrack, but Anamanaguchi and Joseph Trapanese have created a great sound here that gives the show its own identity without feeling too separate from the film. There are a handful of returning tracks such as Plumtree’s ‘Scott Pilgrim’, and Metric’s ‘Black Sheep’, but these are complimented with other licensed tracks such as Liam Lynch’s ‘United States of Whatever’, and Vampire Weekend’s ‘A-Punk’. It all comes together really well in what feels like the perfect combination of the film and the graphic novels, but crucially giving it an identity of its own as well.
I had astronomically high hopes for Scott Pilgrim Takes Off and I don’t think it was ever going to realistically match those expectations, but the show we got is still a blast from start to finish. It’s funny, heartfelt, and exciting. The inclusion of the film’s cast reprising their roles is a big selling point of the show, and it really does look and sound the part. Whilst the story changes may be a difficult pill for some fans to swallow at first, I promise if you stick with it it’ll pay off massively in the long run. Is it an ideal jumping in point for newcomers? I don’t see why not. Personally I’d start with the film as that’s the most ‘normal’ of everything, but Takes Off should be right up any Anime nerd’s street.