I just went to a second viewing of Scott Pilgrim and came back with some new thoughts and nitpicks. MAJOR SPOILERS are ahead, so you should only read further if you’ve seen the movie. And if you still haven’t seen the movie, then I really need you to either get to your nearest theater immediately or go find a pen.

***

Shocker of shockers, I still love the movie and all the praises I heaped on it before still apply. I still maintain, for example, that Jason Scwartzman’s interpretation of Gideon Graves was a simpler, slimier and stronger character than his comic book counterpart. I also stand by my remarks about how the Katayanagi twins were given short shrift. It’s time, I think, to go into greater detail about the other four exes.

1. Matthew Patel is considerably stronger in the movie, though he may have been a little too strong. He’s the first boss, after all, and the first boss in any video game is a pushover.
2. The movie’s Lucas Lee is so much better than the one in the graphic novel. In fact, the comic book Lee wasn’t really that bad a guy: He stopped fighting Scott to share baby carrots and Ritz with him, for God’s sake. Making the character into a total asshole was the obvious move to make and giving him stunt double minions was a great move.
3. Todd Ingram is a touch hammier in the movie than he is in Volume 3, but that’s par for the course in this picture. Lynette Guycott is tossed completely by the wayside and Ingram’s character suffers a little for it, but I’d put the two interpretations as roughly equal to each other. On another note, the moment in which Scott slips Ingram the half-and-half was rather clumsily executed, but it was still miles better than the poorly-set-up deus ex machina of the comics. Also, that Thomas Jane cameo was awesome.
4. Giving Roxie Richter a southern accent was an interesting choice, but I didn’t like how inconsistent the accent was. I’m also quite fond her belt weapon and I’m glad that her ninja motif was considerably played up. However, as awesome as her fight with Ramona and Scott was, I think it needed more subspace.

Subspace was a huge part of the book, appearing at least once in each volume, but it’s almost entirely absent in the movie. Hell, the movie went so far as to neglect mentioning that Ramona’s handbag was powered by subspace and thus had unknown capacity. I personally feel that this weakened the ending, as seeing Scott and Ramona walk into subspace might have carried more heft if we had a better idea of what was behind that door.

But what if Scott and Ramona had taken the fight through a door as they did in volume 4 and continued the fight in subspace? I don’t know if that would have illuminated exactly what subspace is or how it works, but I’m salivating at the thought of how awesome it would have been.

And now it’s time to address Brie Larson. So many of my correspondents were insistent that I had Larson’s performance all wrong that I had to see the film a second time just to get another look at Envy Adams. While watching Larson a second time, I still thought that I was perfectly justified in saying that she overacts in the role. This time, however, it occurred to me how stupid it was to ding her for that, considering all the scenery that Chris Evans was chewing just minutes prior and Brandon Routh was chewing next to her.

That’s when it hit me: Was Brie Larson playing Envy Adams as an Evil Ex? If that really is what she and Edgar Wright had in mind, then… wow.

I’m frankly amazed that I hadn’t thought about the character in that way before. The Exes were principally a metaphor for emotional baggage and God knows that Envy falls under that heading. Moreover, Envy does get a match against Ramona in the comic, which makes for a nice symmetry against all of Scott’s fights against Ramona’s Evil Exes.

Unfortunately, movie-Envy’s status as an Ex is mitigated because she doesn’t get nearly enough conflict with Ramona. The script does its best to squeeze interaction between the two when it can, but there still just isn’t enough. What’s more, I still think that Envy was far more nuanced in the book and her arc had closure in Volume 6 that is completely missing from the movie.

Envy wasn’t the only one, either. Despite the film’s best efforts to the contrary, Kim Pine didn’t nearly get her due. Of all Scott’s ex-girlfriends, Knives is the only one whose arc gets a really satisfactory ending. This makes sense from a moviegoer’s point of view, as Knives’ relationship with Scott is the only one we can see from start to finish without resorting to flashbacks. Alas, as one who reads and loves the source material, I know all about Scott’s relationship with Kim and how important they are to each other. Again, Michael Bacall and Edgar Wright clearly worked to illustrate the Scott/Kim history as best they could and I applaud them for it. Nevertheless, when Knives kissed Scott and gave her blessing to him and Ramona, I couldn’t help but think “That should be Kim!”

Of course, the movie does give a noble try at compressing the characters’ arcs while keeping the beginnings, middles and endings intact. A lot of this comes from the wonderful way in which this movie utilizes the “1-UP” plot point. I touched on this in my earlier write-up, but it really does deserve further mention. The 1-UP in the comic book was a way for Scott to continue the fight, but that’s really not how extra lives work in most games (especially older games). Extra lives have always been do-overs. When the player loses, the extra life resets everything and sends the player back to an earlier point in the game, now with knowledge of what’s ahead and how to beat it. Taking that concept and applying it to the story of Scott Pilgrim was a truly inspired move.

Speaking of the ending, as much as I loved the big climactic battle, I can’t help but think that Ramona should have done more. She only gets a double-cross appropriated from comic-Envy before Gideon knocks her out and that just isn’t right. In the comics, Ramona was every bit as active in the final fight as Scott was and that’s as it should be. Gideon turned Ramona’s life into a living hell more than all the other Evil Exes put together and she deserved the chance to make him pay for it. It really should have been Knives that got knocked out and Ramona who fought Gideon instead of the other way around. I wonder how the film might have been different if this was how the final fight played out.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll notice that pretty much every complaint and nitpick I’ve listed here has some basis in comparison to the source material. Surely, you’ll forgive me for making such observations. Every adaptation has its own improvements and deficiencies against its source material and nobody knows this better than lovers of source material. If I say it myself, I wouldn’t be much of a Scott Pilgrim fan if I didn’t notice these things after a couple of viewings. At the same time, I’m not so much a Scott Pilgrim fanboy that I can’t see how the movie works perfectly well — perhaps even better! — entirely on its own merit.

Additionally, a lot of the above complaints would have interfered greatly with pacing and taken up more screen time. I’ve no doubt that the movie would have been damaged if I’d gotten my way, because the film’s brief length and relentlessly fast pacing are two of the things that I love about it.

For all my petty fan gripes, I still have absolutely no problem loving this movie, mainly because — as with Watchmen — despite all of the little things it got wrong, it got all of the big things right. The comic book had heart and intelligence that are superbly copied by Bacall and Wright. The characters are all perfectly cast and wonderfully played. The visual effects, music and fight choreography are all astounding.

Edgar Wright took the wonderful Scott Pilgrim comic books and made a beautiful cinematic monster out of them. Go read the books. Go see this movie.