Talk about your IRON MAN 2 and your KICK ASS and your JONAH HEX. There’s another comic-based movie that’s been flying under the radar and I think it’s already on track to be one of 2010’s sleeper hits.
The movie in question is SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD, Edgar Wright’s adaptation of the smash hit Oni comic hexalogy by Bryan Lee O’Malley, and its official synopsis goes a little something like this...
Meet charming and jobless Scott Pilgrim. A bass guitarist for garage band Sex Bob-omb, the 22-year-old has just met the girl of his dreams... literally. The only catch to winning Ramona Flowers? Her seven evil exes are coming to kill him…
Scott Pilgrim has never had a problem getting a girlfriend. It's getting rid of them that proves difficult. From the girl who kicked his heart's ass -- and now is back in town -- to the teenage distraction he's trying to shake when Ramona rollerblades into his world, love hasn't been easy. He soon discovers, however, his new crush has the most unusual baggage of all: a nefarious league of exes controls her love life and will do whatever it takes to eliminate him as a suitor.
As Scott gets closer to Ramona, he must face an increasingly vicious rogues' gallery from her past - - from infamous skateboarders to vegan rock stars and fearsomely identical twins. And if he hopes to win his true love, he must vanquish them all before it really is game over.
I’ve meaning to read the comic for a while, and that synopsis may have just lit a fire under my toosh to finally check it out. It sounds totally unpredictable. It sounds like it's genuinely treading some new ground. It sounds like my kind of brazen, wrecking-ball surrealism.
The flick drops on August 13th and it stars Michael Cera (the dude from SUPERBAD) as Scott Pilgrim himself and Mary Elizabeth Winstead (John McClain’s daughter in LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD) as his muse, Ramona Flowers. No trailer’s been released but there are some totally rad production stills floating out there in cyberspace. Seriously, that picture above of Cera wielding the blazing katana in that crazy geoemetric arena has sold me.
Pictures aside, it’s already been accumulating some mighty catchy blurbs of hype…
Jason Reitman (director of UP IN THE AIR & JUNO) talked it up on his Twitter account…
[This is] the first-all encompassing film of the joystick generation… It feels like a “Matrix” for love.
And co-star Anna Kendrick broke it down to the most unusual high-concept…
“There's nothing to compare it to. It's like the energy from 'Ferris Bueller' and the action from 'Kill Bill.' It's amazing."
Now, I’ve heard my share of crazy high concepts in my day, but KILL BILL meets FERRIS BUELLER in THE MATRIX of love (I imagine the code would be pink and have lots of heart-shaped emoticons instead of kanji) has that kind Reese's peanut butter cup style mixing-two-unexpected-ingredients-to-make-something-totally-satisfying-and-dare-I-say-game-changing ring to it that I enjoy whenever I'm getting my peanut butter and my milk chocolate at once. I've got a good feeling. I think this could be the next indy-comic-based movie to seize the zeitgeist like 300 and WANTED did.
So vouch for me, oh president-honoring Comic Vine community. How are the SCOTT PILGRIM comics? Should I check them out? And are you as jacked up for this movie as I am?
-- Tom Pinchuk is the writer of UNIMAGINABLE for Arcana Comics and HYBRID BASTARDS! for Archaia Comics. Watch out for the HYBRID BASTARDS! hardcover collection this March - - available for pre-order now on Amazon.com.