Big thanks to my friend ST for hooking me up with an advance screening ticket to Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. You should check out ST’s blog Dear Times Square, which deals with the utter ridiculousness that is Times Square.

I loved the Scott Pilgrim movie. I read all six Scott Pilgrim books, but I don’t think they’re a prerequisite for watching this movie. It definitely stands on its own. The screenwriters did a great job of condensing all six books into a 90 minute movie and keeping the quality very high.

The casting was phenomenal. Top to bottom, every role was cast perfectly, especially the evil exes, who were so perfectly over the top.

Little Things I Liked Best About The Scott Pilgrim Movie:

The black bar over Julie Powers’ mouth every time she cursed. This made me laugh each time. And I love that one of the characters asked her how she did that thing with her mouth.

The vegan police. This was one of my favorite bits in the comic and I’m glad that it made its way into the movie largely intact. Evil ex #3 is a vegan and gains mental abilities from it. The extent of his betrayal of Envy Adams was cut down, but this whole fight was great.

Scott vs. Nega-Scott. I think they improved over the book in this case. The Nega-Scott fight in book 6 was a little too new-agey and a little too expository. But the movie scene of Scott and Nega-Scott walking out of Club Chaos together and making plans to hang out was perfect. And the explanation made perfect sense; it turns out they have a lot in common.

The lady I overheard while walking to the bathroom after the movie. She was yelling at her friend “Scott’s sister! The whole time I’m watching the movie, I’m asking myself where I know her from! Where?! The whole movie! Where do I know her?!? Who is she?” I made it to the men’s room before she finished her story, but after I got out my friend let me know she finished by yelling “TWILIGHT!!!” I was hoping she’d yell “UP IN THE AIR! That was totally George Clooney’s coworker!!!”

The pixelated Universal logo at the beginning of the movie. As soon as that popped up, with the accompanying 8-bit version of the Universal theme, a smile crossed my face. Weird thing though…In the credits, a line read “Animated Universal Logo copyright 1997 Universal Films.” What film used this logo in 1997? Does anyone know?

The 8-bit music score. Maybe I’ve been listening to The Nerdist podcast too much recently, but I really dug the 8-bit score playing throughout the movie.

There is a Scott Pilgrim vs. The World video game that was released for the Playstation Network. It’s great. It’s an old-school side-scrolling action game in the same vein as River City Ransom or The Simpsons Arcade Game. You can play as Scott, Ramona, Steven Stills or Kim. The character select screen is straight out of Super Mario Bros 2 and the world map is in the style of Super Mario Bros 3. It features HD 16-Bit graphics, which sounds a little oxymoronic, but I’ll go with it.

There’s also a secret survival-horror Scott vs. Zombies mode in the game if you enter the following code at the title screen: down, up, right, down, up, right, down, up, right, right, right. Fighting zombies is always fun, but I can’t help but think it would be more enjoyable to have Scott and friends beating up glittery, abstinent vampires instead.