Why Scott Pilgrim Takes Flight is a Fascinating (Fake) Adaptation
Conceived as a meta-reflection on the comics and the film by Edgar Wright, Scott Pilgrim Takes Flight is full of surprises. Warning, spoilers to follow on the very concept of the series.
The series news is really busy at the moment, we won’t blame you for missing the broadcast of Scott Pilgrim takes flight. At the end of last week, Netflix put online the entirety of this project, which is much crazier than it seems, until then sold as a simple adaptation. The reality is much more complex and exciting: instead of simply transposing the comics to the screen Scott Pilgrim or the film Edgar Wright made from it in 2010, director BenDavid Grabinski and Bryan Lee O’Malley (the author and artist of the comic strip) decided to revisit the story from top to bottom. A kind of ” what if? », a perfectly unpredictable alternative version. Here, Scott does not continue fighting against Ramona’s seven evil exes but mysteriously disappears upon his confrontation with the first, Matthew Patel.
From there, everything changes, and the storyline focuses on Ramona’s investigation, who tries to understand what happened to Scott. “ This is neither an adaptation of the books nor an animated version of the film. It’s almost a sequel in an alternate reality“, explains executive producer Edgar Wright to Variety. “ It is both faithful to the source material of the comics and at the same time it is a commentary on the books and on the film. »
A meta rereading of our relationship to works of the past (the series seems to cry out to nostalgic people to go fry an egg) as well as a thorough deconstruction of the hero’s journey, full of levels of reading and delirious mise en abyme. Developed by the Japanese studio Science SARU (Star Wars: Visions), Scott Pilgrim takes flight examines all forms of Japanese animation (shojo, shonen, yuri, etc.) with quite astonishing panache.
Always at VarietyBryan Lee O’Malley says he had never considered an animated series, but was well aware of the power of fascination that Scott Pilgrim continues to practice: Wherever I go in the world, people are constantly talking to me about Scott Pilgrim. They’re still twenty-somethings, except that I’m not getting any younger. » A fact that the series of course digested and whose consequences it examines through fiction. O’Malley finally let himself be charmed by Grabinski and his crazy idea, blurted out over a drink: “‘‘What if it starts out as the same story, but actually Scott loses the fight to Matthew Patel and appears to die? And then why wouldn’t there be a movie? Scott Pilgrim in the middle of the series with Lucas Lee as Scott?” It was a bit of a joke, but it awakened something in Bryan’s brain, which immediately went, ”Oh, what ‘is interesting.” »
Edgar Wright then took it upon himself to contact all the actors in his film via the email chain that has existed since the shooting. Everyone accepted within a minute: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Evans, Kieran Culkin, Brie Larson, Jason Schwartzman, Alison Pill, Brandon Routh… The voice cast of Scott Pilgrim takes flight is impressive. “ There was no way we could do it if everyone wasn’t there. “, recalls Winstead, who obviously knew nothing about the script. It was only when she was recording her lines of dialogue that she realized that Ramona had become the heroine. “ It was a great thing for me to be able to continue her story and show lots of new sides of her. »
And if the series is sufficient in itself (we will obviously say nothing about the ending), the question of a potential season 2 of Scott Pilgrim takes flight arises. “ I literally can’t think of a sequel », assures Grabinski. “ We’ve been obsessively focused on every aspect of this season for years. We never had a concrete discussion about anything after that. » O’Malley confirms: “ I want to put the toys in their box. If we decided to do more episodes, of course we could. But we didn’t think about it at all. »
Scott Pilgrim takes flighteight episodes to watch on Netflix.
