Over the weekend Christina and I, like all of you SHOULD have done, attended the midnight premiere of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. I’ve written about how awesome Scott Pilgrim is several times so I’ll refrain from repeating myself and just talk about the movie.

It was fantastic. It far exceeded my expectations, and my expectations were higher than they’ve been for any other movie. They absolutely NAILED it. Director Edgar Wright really had a vision for bringing the comic to life and he didn’t let the ball drop once.

The best thing about the movie is that it didn’t try to be the comic. It’s hard to take a book or graphic novel and make a 100% accurate transition into a movie. It just doesn’t work. The mediums are too different and what works in one won’t work in the other. They took the basic framework of the Scott Pilgrim saga, along with the majority of the characters, and told their story as a movie.

It really worked, too. When I go see a movie based on a book I’ve liked, I try not to compare the two or complain about things that were left out. Usually I just think “well, they made it into the best movie it could be, but the book told the story better.” With Scott Pilgrim, there were things that I think the MOVIE actually did better. The fight between Scott and Lucas Lee was a lot more exciting in the movie, and I actually liked Lucas as a character better in the movie as well, but that’s probably just because Chris Evans is awesome.

Speaking of casting, I cannot think of a single character who wasn’t cast perfectly. Well, except Kim. Alison Pill did a fine job ACTING as Kim, but c’mon, Kim should be way better looking than that. Anyway, when I first heard about the movie starting production, I was very skeptical about the casting of Michael Cera as Scott. Now, I’m certainly not a hater of Michael Cera. Superbad is one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. The thing with Michael Cera is he only really plays one type of character (which really isn’t his fault) and I didn’t think that his style would do the character justice. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that he was actually perfect as Scott. He doesn’t look much like his comic counterpart, but he’s able to convey that “I’m such a loser that everyone likes me” that defines Scott. He also doesn’t really seem that uncomfortable with the fight scenes, which was nice.

My favorite character from the comics is Scott’s roommate Wallace, and Keiran Culkin was phenomenal. He stole every scene he was in. They gave him a lot more chances to be funny than in the comic and it was time well spent.

The whole point of the movie (and the comic, actually) was presenting this fantastic mish-mash of reality and a video game, and it worked amazingly well on screen. There are countless references to games, including Zelda music, the bass line from Final Fantasy II, and people bursting into a pile of coins when defeated. Your heart will swell with nostalgia at each scene change! Honestly though, the best reference they used wasn’t even from a video game, and it was so out of nowhere I couldn’t stop laughing for at least 30 seconds. I won’t spoil it!

If you’ve read the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels you really don’t need me to tell you to go see the movie. You’ve already seen it at least once. Christina and I have plans to go see it with a friend of mine from work this weekend, and Christina insists that it’s too long to wait and we need to see it sometime during the week as well. Honestly, it may even eclipse Star Wars as my favorite movie of all time. Seriously.

We made shirts for the premiere of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World! We’re nerds so we like dressing up for things. We decided to do homemade band shirts for all the bands from the comic, and did them with fabric paint so they would have that real indie band vibe to them.

I went with The Boys!! and Crash! because I love how it completely disregards grammar rules (and AutoCorrect is giving me hell right now). It doesn’t come across very well in the picture, but you can see little extra brush marks on the bottoms and side of the letters from where I had too much paint. I think it makes it look pretty rad.

Christina made the Gideon shirt because she has a crush on him or something. I don’t know. I think it looks great regardless. The white letters have a bold black paint outline around them, which really makes the shirt itself look like it’s from the comic.

Christina’s sister made one for The Clash at Demonhead. I love how the word “Clash” came out and how she worked in the skull from Todd Ingram’s shirt in there.

Christina’s friend Eryn made the shirt for Sex Bob-Omb. There’s official Sex Bob-Omb t-shirts for sale now, so I like how she made it very different from the ones you can buy from Hot Topic or wherever.

Dressing up for things is like some kind of geek calling. It’s hard to resist! If we’re in a situation that calls for it, we can’t help but want to show off our enthusiasm for the event. We go to Anime Boston every year, and in ’09 we went as Dawn and Ethan (then still called Gold) from Pokémon. We got a lot of good feedback, and a ton of people wanted pictures of us.

Last year we didn’t really have the time or money to put together a cosplay, but we made hoodies based on our favorite Bleach captains. Christina did Squad 6, Byakuya Kuchiki’s squad, and I did Squad 10, Toushirou Hitsugaya’s squad. Christina even wore barettes and a scarf like Byakuya does.

Do any of you cosplay? Or are you more of an admirer than a participator?

I don’t really know how to start an article about how awesome Scott Pilgrim is so I’ll start it by saying that I don’t really know how to start an article about how awesome Scott Pilgrim is.

Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour, the sixth and final volume of the Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series was released on Tuesday. I’ve read it a couple of times now, and really, it was a great ending to what is honestly one of the best things to happen to comics in the past decade.

For those of you who don’t know (all five of you) Scott Pilgrim is a graphic novel series written and drawn by Bryan Lee O’Malley about a guy named Scott Pilgrim who falls in love with a girl named Ramona Flowers. In order to be with Ramona, though, Scott first has to fight, and defeat, her Seven Evil Ex-Boyfriends. Hilarity and video game references ensue.

The Scott Pilgrim saga (we can call it a saga, right?) is just… I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s geeky, it’s trendy, it’s down to earth, and it’s mind blowing. It really has something for just about everybody. I haven’t met anyone who’s read the books and NOT loved them. Even people who I figured would be kinda “meh” about them have loved them.

It says a lot about author Bryan Lee O’Malley. His art style is deceptively detailed, the simple character designs playing host to a surprising amount of emotional depth. Even better than his art is his writing, where he manages to take these people that these fantastic things are happening to and make them just like people we all know in real life.

We all know I’m a huge nerd so it’s obvious why I love Scott Pilgrim so much. The books are essentially pages and pages of fan service. Each fight with an evil ex-boyfriend is basically a boss fight from a video game. Scott levels up. He gets extra lives. Defeated enemies leave coins behind.

I was looking forward to Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour with equal parts excitement and dread. I was excited because I have been waiting FOREVER to see how it all ends, but I was really bummed out because after I finished reading, that was it. No more Scott, no more Ramona, no more Kim, Stephen Stills, Young Neil, Knives, Wallace, or Stacey. The story was over.

LUCKILY I found out that since the final volume wasn’t written when they started work on the movie that the movie and the books have two different endings. I think this is awesome because I get to experience the end of the story twice, and neither time do I know what’s going to happen.

More people are becoming aware of Scott Pilgrim due to the heavy marketing for the movie, and I think that’s pretty awesome. Usually when they take something I like and turn it into a movie I think it’s going to turn out dumb, but everything I see from the movie (called Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) just gets me more and more pumped. I wasn’t sure about casting Michael Cera as Scott at first, because A) he doesn’t look like Scott and B) Michael Cera really only knows how to play Michael Cera, but from what I’ve seen he pulls it off well.

With Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) directing, you know it’s going to be awesome. The trailers are showing us that he’s really taken the comic and put it on the screen. Every outlandish thing that happens in the panels are happening in the movie, from the pee meter to the extra lives to Lucas Lee whipping Scott into a distant building like Mario throwing Bowser by his tail.

I’m stoked about people getting excited about the movie because that means they’re going to read the books. We have a whole bookcase full of manga and graphic novels and there’s a lot of books on that shelf that mean a lot to me. I have my mint condition Dragon Ball Daizenshuu guide. I have my Akira Toriyama art book. I have my PVP volume 7 signed by Scott Kurtz. Even with all those things, seeing all six Scott Pilgrim volumes lined up really makes it all feel complete.

And then, to top it all off, we get a VIDEO GAME. It’s a 2D classic sidescrolling beat ‘em up with art based on the comic and music by chiptune rock band Anamanaguchi. So we have a video game based on a movie which is based on a comic which is influenced by video games.

I will have every achievement in that game. Mark my words.

Today, Bryan Lee O’Malley showed off on his Twitter pictures from Comic Con, and we’re getting Scott Pilgrim action figures and plushes in August to coincide with the movie.

Seriously, all of this is so mind-blowingly awesome I almost can’t handle it.

When I picked up Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life from that tiny, dank hole-in-the-wall comic shop in Cambridge, I had no idea that I was going to love it so much. I had no idea it would get as popular as it is now. I’m not one of those losers who gets mad when something they like gets popular. It’s a wonderful story and the way I see it, the more people who experience it the better.