“Scott Pilgrim: Takes Off” (Netflix) S1 Review by Rafy Mediavilla (@Rmediavilla) #ScottPilgrimTakesOff #Netflix
After meeting the woman of his dreams, a charming musician finds himself contending with an army of her ex-boyfriends.
And with that minuscule minimum synopsis of the way and by just looking at the trailers and the promos I want to start by saying that yes this is a bait-and-switch story-wise but to me, it worked out perfectly acid brings something new and fresh to the franchise that I absolutely agree a lot of people will not agree upon mainly if what you’re expecting is a frame by frame reimagination in animated form of the Edgar Wright film.
Story-wise, The pilot episode mirrors exactly the story as we know it but it ends up in a cliffhanger that gives you something else that you may be were not expecting and every single episode following the first one develops a story that is spoiled mainly by the title of the series Scott Pilgrim takes off, by in essence focusing the story on Ramona trying to find Scott Pilgrim and why he took off. Something that I have to admit will prescribe our way from people to Hidden Play on The Following episodes just because they don’t see the story following the negative that we saw on the film but I would encourage you to continue to follow the story as his place alone in this series because to me I absolutely enjoyed how the focus was put on Ramona and how the whole story develops with her evil exes,
Performance-wise, I absolutely love that they were able to bring the original cast of actors to rephrase the characters in this animated version. I truly believe that fans of the actor right movie are going to enjoy hearing these actors return to their roles. I truly believe that Nostalgia would play a huge role in how you enjoy seeing these actors again replacing the roles in their animated versions. I absolutely loved the way the story changes the perspective of the characters and how we can hear the changes in tone with the actors rephrasing the roles. Satya Bhabha as Mathew Patel, Kieran Culkin as Wallace Wells, and even Chris Evens as Lucas Lee, these subtle changes to the story truly add new depth to their characters. And when It comes to Romona, Mary Elizabeth Winstead continues to give awesome new life to this character.
When it comes to the art styling of the animation is also a nostalgic blast, as it uses a combination of hand-drawn animation, and occasional throwbacks to 8bits styles. Even the fighting scenes add a lot of sparks to the story and how it unfolds. I truly believe the fans of the comics and the video games will be extremely happy with how the voice actors and the animators give new life to this new Scott Pilgrim/Ramona story.
Ultimately I completely agree that story-wise people will not be okay with the changes that the filmmakers made to the story even though I did enjoy this “What if” take on Scott Pilgrim. But no doubly the blast of Nostalgia when it comes to the voice actors and the art styling of the animation will be one hell of a joy to watch.
