If I hadn’t already decided this would be my last disc purchase, this whole experience would have pushed me hard in that direction. The reality is, discs are a niche product at this point. There’s only one replication facility left in North America that can produce UHD Blu-rays, as far as I know, and when they get backed up, or when there’s more demand than expected for a title like Scott Pilgrim, getting your hands on a copy becomes a frustrating affair. 

But you’re not here to read a treatise about the current state of a dying format. You’re here to read about Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and whether the new Dolby Vision remaster was worth the wait. And indeed it was—but not quite in the ways I expected. 

I’ve always just assumed that this, one of my favorite movies, was shot digitally. But about ten seconds into watching the new remaster, I jotted a quick note on my notepad: “This looks like 35mm!” Indeed, the movie was shot on photochemical film and as good as the old Blu-ray was, it just wasn’t revealing enough to deliver the nuance of fine film grain. 

There’s just no denying it in 4K. And mind you, this is a remaster, not a full-on restoration. The original 35mm camera negatives weren’t rescanned. This is an upsample of the old 2K digital intermediate. But it still represents enough of a boost in resolution and fine detail that the film’s analog origins are there to be seen, clearly and unambiguously.

And as subtle a difference as that is, it’s enough to change the entire vibe of Scott Pilgrim for me. It’s a weird movie, if you’ve never seen it—it’s another one of those films that is simultaneously a thing and a critique of that thing. It’s a pop-culture-reference-packed comic book movie that playfully mocks all of the shortcomings of pop-culture-reference-packed comic book movies. It’s a sendup of everything ridiculous about video games, made by and about people who completely adore video games. It’s a takedown of hipsters despite being hipsterish as heck. It sort of takes the piss out of vegans and feminists and the LGBT community but with complete and utter love and respect for anyone who falls under any of those umbrellas. It walks the fine line of laughing with rather than laughing at. 

But perhaps the biggest seeming contradiction at the heart of the film is that it’s a grungy garage-band rock-and-roll picture (with, by the way, the single best original motion-picture soundtrack since Almost Famous, thanks to the songwriting talents of Beck and the vocal and musical talents of the actors, all of whom performed the music seen in the film themselves), but it’s also a super-slick special-effects extravaganza. 

And again, that element has always worked on Blu-ray, but it works so much better in Dolby Vision, since you can see the grit and organic chaos of film stock under the computer graphics and other special effects. It’s not simply that Dolby Vision makes Scott Pilgrim look better—it legitimately allows it to work better as a piece of art, as a story about the weirdness of nostalgia, as a big old bag of very intentional contradictions. 

There are still one or two brief moments where you can see the consequences of the 2K digital intermediate—a bit of lost resolution here and there in the backgrounds or in quickly panning shots. But they’re so fleeting I’m not sure it would be worth the effort to do a ground-up restoration. 

One thing I want to be very clear about is that the Dolby Vision color grade and dynamic-range expansion are very rarely in your face. By and large, the chromatic character of the imagery remains the same. There are a few splashes of color that ring through with more vibrancy and purity. There are also some nice specular highlights on display from time to time. But the new color grade really keeps those splashes of color and brightness in its back pocket and only pulls them out for punctuation. The biggest difference in terms of dynamic range is that blacks are blacker, shadows are better resolved, and the overall image has a more natural dimensionality and depth. 

The new Dolby Atmos remix, on the other hand, rarely shows similar restraint. It’s big, bold, loud, and an outright violation of your subwoofers’ rights. Normally, I would hate this kind of mix, but for such a ridiculous spectacle as this movie is, it just works. I wouldn’t change a single thing about it.

Of course, none of this will make a lick of difference if you’re not a fan of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. And if you’ve never seen it, all I can say is that a quick watch of the trailer will tell you whether you’ll love it or loathe it. (I’ve never met anyone who thought it was “just OK.”) 

But if you’re already a card-carrying member of the Scott Pilgrim fan club, this new Dolby Vision release is an essential upgrade. Just maybe skip the hassle of trying to get it on UHD Blu-ray. I spot-checked the disc against the Vudu and iTunes streams and there’s virtually no meaningful difference between them in terms of picture quality. Level-match the soundtracks and there’s no real difference in audio fidelity, either.

So, yes, grab this new Dolby Vision remaster at your earliest convenience. But if you don’t have a Kaleidescape, just go ahead and buy it via MoviesAnywhere. I’m glad I have the disc on my shelf, since I know it’ll be there when my internet service is out and I need my Scott Pilgrim fix right this very now. But if I had to do it over again, I would have just bought the digital copy and saved myself a massive headache.