[COLUMN] Netflix's Scott Pilgrim Takes Off Isn't a Remake, It's a Conversation | by Darren Mooney (Patreon)

SPOILER WARNING: This piece contains fairly massive spoilers for Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, streaming now on Netflix. Seriously, massive spoilers. If you want to check out the show – and you should, it’s fun and gorgeous – bookmark this piece and come back after you’ve had a chance to watch it.

For most of its first episode, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off feels like a fairly straightforward adaptation of Bryan Lee O'Malley’s beloved indie comic book, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

Indeed, it also seems like a direct adaptation of Edgar Wright’s live action adaptation, with most of the film’s cast reprising their roles for this eight-part anime series. Over the course of “Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life”, viewers get a strong sense of déjà vu. Lines are repeated. Shots are lovingly recreated in gorgeous animation. There are a few sly tweaks here and there – Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) now delivers for Netflix rather than Amazon – but it is very familiar.

The bulk of “Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life” unfolds as viewers might expect. Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is a young man living in Toronto, Canada with his roommate Wallace (Kieran Culkin). He is also dating a high school student, Knives Chau (Ellen Wong). Scott is bassist of the band Sex Bob-omb and is besotted by Ramona. However, things escalate quickly. At a local battle of the bands, Scott is challenged to a duel by one of Ramona’s ex-boyfriends, Matthew Patel (Satya Bhabha).

There is an argument for making an animated adaptation of the source material using this cast. Wright’s film was beloved by critics, but it floundered at the box office. Its reputation has grown in the intervening years, and there’s obviously a great deal of affection for it. The cast reunited during the pandemic for a charity script read. There is something appealing about bringing these actors back together, particularly with a gorgeous animation style closer to the source comic’s aesthetic.

However, “Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life” takes a sharp swerve in its closing moments. In the source comic and the feature film, Scott defeats Matthew. He goes on to battle the other six members of Ramona’s League of Evil Exes: Lucas Lee (Chris Evans), Todd Ingram (Brandon Routh), Roxie Richter (Mae Whitman), Kyle and Ken Katayanagi (Julian Cihi), and Gideon Graves (Jason Schwartzman). Scott and Ramona learn a lot about each other and grow through the experience.

However, in “Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life”, Matthew defeats Scott. Scott vanishes into thin air, the game over sound effect plays, and a couple of coins hit the floor of the venue. It’s a shocking moment. Even the characters themselves seem surprised. “KO???” the announcer (Bill Hader) declares, the question marks appearing on screen. “I won?” Matthew responds, shocked at the outcome of events. The bulk of the series unfolds in the aftermath of this dramatic twist.

Bryan Lee O’Malley credits his co-writer BenDavid Grabinski with the particulars of the idea. “I think, pretty quickly, he came up with that idea, because in 2023, or whenever we were writing it, how do you talk about Scott Pilgrim without Scott Pilgrim the character taking all the air out of it?” recalls O’Malley. “People like to complain about Scott Pilgrim, the character, and we thought: what if we could take him off the table and just see what happens?”

To be fair, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off signposts that it will be doing something different. In his first waking conversation with Ramona, Scott muses on alternate continuities. “You probably know this, but in the early 90s, there were two different Sonic cartoons airing at the same time,” he explains. “One was dark and dramatic. The other was a hilarious comedy about chilli dogs. And the same guy played Sonic in both shows. Isn't that wild? The same guy playing two different versions of the same guy?”

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is built around this premise: the same guys playing (and writing) two different versions of the same guys. Those fans looking for a more literal adaptation of the source material have plenty of options: there is the original comic book, the feature film adaptation, the script read, a video game, and even a mobile comic. Even by the standards of the modern intellectual property boom, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World has been thoroughly mined. Why not try something new?

After all, many of those other versions are more readily available than ever before. Fans can buy and download the source comics with a few taps of their fingers. Wright’s film adaptation is streaming on Netflix in the United States. It isn’t as if the existence of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off displaces or erases earlier versions of the same story. If anything, it is safe to assume that the overwhelming majority of people watching the animated show have some experience with at least one earlier iteration.

“I wrote this stuff almost 20 years ago,” acknowledges O'Malley. “I couldn't go back and rewrite it word for word. I kept thinking, I have to tell the story of Scott Pilgrim in a world where the story of Scott Pilgrim has already been told and people know it. I had to kind of splash a new coat of paint on it and fuck around with it.” While many modern franchise multiverses are just an excuse for empty fanservice, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off invites the viewer to actively think about Scott Pilgrim.

In this era of multiverses and alternate continuities, audiences understand that new versions of familiar properties are no longer burdened with the weight of being the “definitive” or “ultimate” take on the concept. Instead, they can exist in a broader context, engaging with earlier takes on the work and with the audience’s relationship to those earlier takes. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off isn’t a remake or an adaptation. It is a conversation.

Scott Pilgrim is in conversation with itself. The show is recursive, containing multiple takes on the Scott Pilgrim story. Scott’s friend Young Neil (Johnny Simmons) is credited with writing a screenplay based on a reality where Scott beats Matthew, which was adapted into a film directed by Edgar Wrong (Kevin McDonald). Ramona is cast as a stunt double for Scott’s ex, Envy Adams (Brie Larson), who is playing the film’s version of Ramona. Wallace plays himself. “I decided the only thing better than me was being paid to be me,” he explains.

The show’s fifth episode, "Lights. Camera. Sparks?!", is a behind-the-scenes documentary about the production of the film based on an alternate version of the events of the first episode. Although the film collapses into itself, the source material is then adapted into “Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Musical”, a Broadway show by Knives and Scott’s old bandmate Stephen (Mark Webber). Lucas, Todd, and Matthew all play some version of Scott in these adaptations. Everybody gets to be the hero.

One of the goals was to turn Scott Pilgrim into a true ensemble piece. “Before we came up with the premise, we both agreed it would be really great if it could be Ramona’s story,” Grabinski recalls. O’Malley acknowledges that this required a complete and fundamental restructuring. “The original story is episodic,” he explains. “Each character kind of dies at the end of their episode. This way, we can have them all stick around and see what happens.” There is something very sweet in this.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off remains true to the themes of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, particularly its interrogation of a certain kind of masculinity. However, it also feels more mature. It gives characters like Todd, Lucas, Gideon, Roxie and Ramona room to breathe and grow, escaping the gravity of the title character. “Me?” Matthew gasps. “The main character?” Lucas finds contentment. The Katayanagi twins read a book titled “How to Redeem Yourself.” Returning to Toronto, Gideon accepts his birth name Gordon Goose and briefly becomes “the adult formerly known as Gideon Graves.”

Growing up is a major theme of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, and not simply in a biological sense. The show literalizes the idea of Scott as his own worst enemy, revealing that his death was actually an abduction by a future version of himself (Will Forte) who never recovered from the breakdown of his marriage to Ramona. This older version of Scott has failed to learn the lessons of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. “Me versus the world,” he boasts to the ensemble at the climax. “I have to destroy all of you.” He’s grown older, but he hasn’t grown up.

Instead, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off embraces the idea of reconciliation. Roxie’s confrontation with Ramona at the local video store becomes an opportunity for the pair to talk about their feelings. When Julie Powers (Aubrey Plaza) returns home to find Gideon and Lucas have destroyed her house while forging an unlikely friendship, she prepares to “battle” them. Ramona steps between them. “Stop,” Ramona declares. “This is stupid. Let’s all be adults for once, okay?”

At the climax, while Scott remains divided against himself, the past and future versions of Ramona combine to form a “Super Ramona.” Addressing the younger version of Scott, Ramona has a moment of clarity, “What I’ve done in the past doesn’t have to define me. Help me keep remembering that, okay?” This feels like a crucial moment for the show, one arguing that personal development (like storytelling) is an iterative process. It’s a constant cycle of reinvention and evolution.

Explaining the changes that he made to Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, Bryan Lee O’Malley conceded, “I'm older now, looking at a different scope of life.” In some ways, this feels similar to what happened with Hideaki Anno’s Rebuild of Evangelion, a series of films that began as direct theatrical remakes of his anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, but gradually shifted into a portrait of how profoundly Anno had changed in the decades since he created his earlier masterpiece.

It's good that people change and grow, including artists. Everybody is a work in progress. It’s possible to see writers and filmmakers evolve across their careers, with later works often existing in conversation with their earlier projects. In this modern era of remakes and reboots, artists can do something even more compelling. Rather than engaging with their earlier works abstractly, creators can grapple with them head-on, exploring how the world has changed in the intervening years – and how they have changed as well.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off exists as a companion piece to earlier takes on the source material, finding a fresh angle on an old story. It doesn’t negate or erase anything that came before. Instead, it enriches it.