Some spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched through the third episode of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, so be warned!
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: 10 Behind-The-Scene Facts You Might Not Know About The Movie
While many Netflix viewers thought Scott Pilgrim Takes Off would be a complete rehashing of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novel series, the first episode’s conclusion made it clear this isn’t the same world that fans are used to. Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s Ramona Flowers drew the spotlight this time around, and rather than keeping the focus on Michael Cera’s slacker facing off against a bunch of exes, this remixed storyline allows for a bunch of new brawls, such as the location-jumping battle between Ramona and Mae Whitman’s Roxy in Episode 3, “Ramona Rents a Video.” Co-creator BenDavid Grabinski talked to CinemaBlend about how that sequence changed from conception to the final product, and how a reference to all-time great horror sequel Evil Dead II factored into the original version.
I brought up that Ramona and Roxy’s rumble in the third ep was likely my favorite out of all the square-offs in the season, and asked Grabinski if that was the same for him. He excitedly agreed, and started explaining how that idea came around, saying:
Man, that was so fucking fun. One of the first ideas I had - I didn't know it was gonna be them at first - but I just was like, we have to have a fight in Kim's video store where somehow at that point, they get thrown into a shelf, and next thing you know, they're just going from movie to movie to movie. Because the world that Brian created, you can really push. Brian wasn't sure at first, but I was convinced that no one would question the logic of it. And I think that I was right, but you know, not up to me. But I felt like in this world that he's created, where people solve conflict by having these big video game fights and all these insane things happen, why wouldn't that happen if you got in a fight in a video store? And it felt like another thing, too, that if you did that in a live-action movie, it would be impossible.
While it technically would be filmable as a concept, given a big enough budget and schedule, BenDavid Grabinski said the idea would get shot down by studio execs long before that would happen. But animation was obviously the more preferable format for it, and allowed them to take things wherever they wanted, which initially included the use of familiar movie references. After reflecting on the pros and cons of that approach, though, Grabinski said he and Bryan Lee O’Malley opted to scrap the specifics so that the animators could bring their own influences into it. In his words:
When we wrote that, in our first draft, I wrote exactly: 'In here, they're in this movie, and here, they're in this movie.' And then before we showed it to the animators, Brian and I were like, 'Wait, we shouldn't do that, because [the animators are gonna have ideas that are even better than ours.' So I removed all the specific references, and I was just like, 'These are the kind of movies that they could be in. A chase, or whatever you guys think.' I literally just wrote on a page, 'It doesn't matter where they go. We just want to make sure that it's feeling that they're periodically switching at this point.' And then we gave some examples, and then they sent us back storyboards and concept art, and it was so cool.
It’s around this point when Scott Pilgrim Takes Off’s two co-creators took a trip to Japan to touch base with the animation team, which sounds like a total blast for them to experience. Especially since the artists involved had, without being prompted, designed part of Ramona and Roxy’s fight as a homage to Bruce Campbell’s iconic work in Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II. Here's how he explained it:
I mean, when we visited Japan, I saw some stuff that they hadn't even shown us. Which is that part of the fight was originally in a cabin inspired by Evil Dead II. And they had like art of Roxy with a chainsaw and stuff. It was like holy shit. So they really clearly explored the idea a lot, and ended up coming back to us with what their favorite stuff was.
Oh man, oh man, oh man. A Scott Pilgrim and Evil Dead crossover is the pop culture event I didn’t know I’d want so bad. And I love the idea of Roxy being the Ash Williams surrogate in this universe, as opposed to Ramona, Scott or anyone else.
Evil Dead II would have been even more of a perfect reference if Ramona had been fighting someone named Dawn, tying into the film’s Dead By Dawn subtitle that has largely been ignored over subsequent years. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. But here’s hoping that art makes its way public in some form or another.
Realistically, bringing other recognizable properties into that big fight scene, as opposed to more broadly familiar film settings, might have taken away from the emotional core of the brawl. BenDavid Grabinski talked about how much he loved the former lovers’ moments inside the war plane, and how their big emotional moment needed to be yelled out so that they could hear each other over the plane’s engines. I would have watched the same situation play out over the sounds of moaning and groaning Deadites. Just saying. Maybe in Season 2.
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is available to stream in full with a Netflix subscription. While waiting to hear whether or not Season 2 will happen, check out more series on the way with our Netflix TV schedule.
