Facebook has finally unveiled the new trailer for Edgar Wright’s adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” after a somewhat tedious social networking campaign, offering its release in exchange for 100,000 Facebook fans.
The trailer kicks off on a similar note to the first teaser but then begins to delve deeper into the romantic story at the film’s core surrounding Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) and his quest to defeat the seven evil ex-boyfriends of Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) — all of whom are again featured in this trailer, none more so than Satya Bhabha’s Matthew Patel who sets Pilgrim off on his journey and Jason Schwartzman’s Gideon Graves who is, of course, the last boyfriend standing.
Scattered throughout are plenty of video game references (including flashing text and a neat little “getting a life” nod), the odd Edgar Wright-ism as well as better looks at characters not seen in the first teaser including Kieran Culkin as Wallace Wells, Ellen Wong as Knives Chau, Aubrey Plaza as Julie Powers, Alison Pill as Kim Pine and Mark Webber as Stephen Stills.
It also sounds like yet another taste of what promises to be a jam-packed soundtrack that includes the likes of Beck, Metric, Broken Social Scene and Dan “The Automator” Nakamura among many, many others. The last teaser, of course, unveiled two new songs written specifically for the film by Beck, but this one’s a little more mainstream, featuring The Ting Tings’ “Great DJ,” Blood Red Shoes’ “It’s Getting Boring By The Sea,” The Prodigy’s “Invaders Must Die” and “Black Hole” from Wright favorite Be Your Own Pet. (The latter feature in the graphic novels, and were rumored to be contributing music to one of the fictional bands within the film, although their break up two years ago seemed to scupper that one).
The film obvious looks like a crowd-pleasing, bucket load of fun but it’ll probably remain to be seen whether it’ll resonate with general audiences, particularly those who have no great affection for the graphic novel by O’Malley, for director Wright and his relatively unknown young up-and-coming cast (other than “that guy from ‘Superbad,'” Superman and the Human Torch), or for the music, which is a massive selling point, for us at least.
This trailer doesn’t exactly help either, with the concoction of hectic action scenes — exciting as it may be — coming across as a bit juvenile without the contextual romantic tale seen earlier; Pilgrim’s courtship of Flowers takes a backseat by the end and the trailer is only partially saved by the charismatic Anna Kendrick as Stacey Pilgrim. And let’s not even get started with “it’s on, like Donkey Kong.”
That said, we’re confident Wright can connect with the film which, at heart, is just a genre-infused romance tale a la his popular zom-rom-com “Shaun Of The Dead” and his action-comedy “Hot Fuzz.” “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” hits theaters August 13th.
