Netflix’s Scott Pilgrim anime Scott Pilgrim Takes Off brought many of our favorite characters back to us in a brand new format from creatives Bryan Lee O’Malley and BenDavid Grabinski, and Lucas Lee went through some interesting changes in the transition.
The series is a fun and exciting new look at the world of Scott Pilgrim, including a fun fictional movie within the show that puts some of our favorite characters into a new light, which I asked Grabsinski and O’Malley about when I spoke to them before the series’ launch.
“We kind of came up with the whole movie within the show thing early on and that really appealed to me,” O’Malley said. “Because the movie really changed my life in so many ways. I used to be able to go online without hearing about Scott Pilgrim and that just has not happened in over a decade. People were just constantly talking about Scott Pilgrim. So to have that invade the world of Scott Pilgrim was really appealing to me. And then the whole movie arc within this show is such ripe territory for stupid stuff. So we just put in so much, so many little details like that.”
Grabinski went on to talk about how it led to them having all different kind of episodes within the anime. “To have an episode to me that is like Tony Hawk Pro skater, the Muppet movie, PeeWee’s Big Adventure adaptation, all of these things at once. But also feeling like Scott Pilgrim, you just kind of, you can make jokes about everything and it doesn’t feel wrong as long as we still have an emotional center to it. We can get meta and we can kind of take the piss out of things. And that was just super fun to do.”
One of the things that they did “take the piss” out of that was beyond fun for me was Lucas Lee.
Changing the dynamic of Lucas Lee
When we talked about the episode with Lucas Lee and Gideon Gordon Graves becoming best friends and destroying Julie Powers’ (Aubrey Plaza) living room together in the process, O’Malley instantly got excited because I said that I just imagined that Chris Evans and Jason Schwartzman must have had the best time filming that sequence even though it was just a vocal performance for them as Lucas and Gideon respectively. “I mean, who wouldn’t want that? I love that scene,” O’Malley said.
Grabinski went on to admit that out of all the things in the show, the sequence between Gideon and Lucas is one of the things he wishes were in live action. “The only things I wish were live action, and I also know some of the actors do, is the scenes between Jason and Aubrey,” he said. “And then to me the scenes with Jason and Chris, which is like those are the two things that I do kind of wish I could see both versions of is just like the weird rom-com trading places stuff of Jules and Gordon. And then just the idea of Chris and Jason being Stepbrothers-level best friends is so funny.”
This new kind of take on Lucas Lee, where he’s besties with Gideon and just trying to not be the best action star in the world, is genuinely funny and a new kind of Lucas that I enjoyed seeing—one that I would actually enjoy seeing again.
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is on Netflix now.
(featured image: Netflix)
