Everything about the comic series is perfect representation of a new idyllic lifestyle – a world where you’re with your friends all the time, where everyone’s a slacker but it all works out, and where every accomplishment is greeted with a tangible reward.

If the movie is half as good as the graphic novels, it will still be the best offbeat release since “Shaun of the Dead” (not coincidentally also an Edgar Wright directorial). The casting is literally perfect, though I would question Cera as the upbeat optimist Scott Pilgrim if he wasn’t so established in the “nerdy cool” typecast.

The reviews have been generally incredulous – a fine example being from Ain’t It Cool: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/46023

Cheers!

One thing you point out is how deftly O’Malley is able to take the visual language of games and incorporate it into comic form, probably the most famous being when Scott, drunk at a bar, needs to go to the bathroom and the panel progression indicating his “urine bar” decreasing as he relieves himself. It’s irreverant, hilarious, well-plotted, and just plain fun.

But, since O’Malley’s taken an an interactive, multimodal medium like the videogame and then reduced it to the purely visual juxtaposition of panels in a comic, I’m curious to see how Edgar Wright takes these same gags and expands them back into audio-visual gags. What kinds of gaming sound effects will Wright rely on — sounds largely drawn from real games, or some kind of abstracted game sounds? What about the gaming iconography?

There is at least one hint to this with Wright announcing that the The Legend of Zelda theme will appear in the movie, and had to be approved by Shigeru Miyamoto himself. I’m curious to see in what ways Wright ties his adaptation of O’Malley’s book to existing gaming franchises, and how that changes the feel of experience.

Can’t wait for this, and I’d suggest this post get tagged “Games” as well — so much of O’Malley’s work is about moving games into the comics world, and it seems to be a concern for Wright as well. Great post!!!