With Comic-con finally coming to a close, discussion of what was seen is in no short supply. Going into the show there were two major announcements I was really hoping for: News on the Fables TV-series or any word on the Scott Pilgrim movie. Considering Fables was announced back in 2008 and slated for a 2009 fall premier and Scott Pilgrim only started filming this past March, I was anticipating more from the former than the latter. I was a little taken aback to find no news on Fables, and at least some worth while info on both the final installment on the Scott Pilgrim comic in addition to news on movie production as well. The biggest Scott Pilgrim news to come out of Comic-con though was the announcement of Ubisoft developing a Scott Pilgrim game to coincide with the release of the film and final comic in the series.
The Scott Pilgrim series follows the series’ namesake as he slacks through a life mediocre in everything he does. His living situation, his love life, his band, and his non-existant job are all testaments to his just-get-by attitude towards life, until he meets Ramona Flowers. Falling head over heels for her, Scott must defeat her 7 evil ex-boyfriends in order to earn the right to date her.
I’m pretty pumped for the film adaptation, though extremely skeptical. The Scott Pilgrim character, despite being something of a loser, is extremely confident and outgoing, the polar opposite of the typecast characters Michael Cera, who will be playing Pilgrim in the big-screen adaptation, usually portrays.
I seem to be fairly optimistic however, towards the video game adaptation, which seems to be in direct conflict with the rest of the Internet community’s reaction. The casting of Michael Cera doesn’t seem to be bothering many folks a lot of people are crying ‘Flop’ towards the video game adaptation, which really makes little sense to me. The comics are set up in classic serial fashion with references to classic video gaming built right into the story lines with elements like ‘dropped items’ and learning ‘broadsword proficiency’ in 5th grade. Even the natural progression of the story is built for a video game, progressing from more difficult bosses to the next. Hell, there’s even in-game sprites on the back of some of the graphic novels for what a video game port would have looke like. It just translates all around better into a video game then a movie.
The basic buzz on he gameplay style is it being a side-scrolling beat-em’ up available on XBLA and/or PSN. This seems like a solid choice considering the success of Behemoth’s Castle Crashers, a game we’ve made no small talk up of here at MGW.
To be optimistic though, the fact that Edgar Wright, director of Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, is directing and co-writing the adaptation is something worth being more than slightly giddy about. His slapstick and indeed impressive action scenes from his previous films fall right into line with the style of the Scott Pilgrim series. The speculated release date for both the final installment in the comic series and the film Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is somewhere in early summer of 2010
The full story can be found here at IGN.
