The World’s End (2013)

 

#92: The World’s End (2013)

 

This is the final installment of the loosely connected “Three Flavours of Cornetto Trilogy,” sometimes called “The Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy.” They don’t have a continuing story-line or shared Characters, but they are connected, first and foremost by a few persons, Director Edgar Wright, his co-Writer and lead Actor Simon Pegg, another lead Actor Nick Frost, and Producer Nira Park. (The foursomes collaborations predate these films, going back to their TV days) There are also at least six other Actors that appeared in all three films in smaller, wildly diverse, Roles.

 

Beyond these persons as wonderful Commanders, there are obvious shared themes and jokes, like the ice cream (the Cornetto band provides some color-symbolism), they are all hyper-referential to popular media (this was also true of their TV work), are filled with passionate pub-talk, concern the challenges men face when they expected to become mature, and, if I’m allowed to be cynical here, the fact that most men will never pull that off.

 

(All the key contributors to this film were in their forties but the earliest version of this screenplay was written by Wright when he was 21. That bit of trivia almost makes you ache in recognizing how the themes must have changed over time.)

 

The first of the Trilogy was the Zombie-Spoof, “Shaun of the Dead” (2004), the second was Cop-Buddy-Spoof “Hot Fuzz” (2007) and finally this one, by far the most conceptually bold, an Alien Invasion film. It takes its own sweet time to tell us that is what it’s about, because it wants to generously mock we Earthmen first. It eventually allows the Earthmen Underdogs to triumph, but … well…

 

Starting in the 1950s, and never really ending, SF featured Aliens pretending to be Human, a combination of low-budget necessities and because the idea was inherently creepy. The metaphor represented a railing against Conformity, a mutable fear that could equally serve anti-Communism as anti-McCarthyism (no one has ever conclusively decided which side the classic from the USA, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956), is really on) but this film, in its hilarious epilogue, suggests that the Aliens Invaded only because that’s what we actually deserve.

 

Here, Pegg plays Gary King. Pegg had been a loser as the title character of “Shaun of the…” then a Super Cop in “Hot Fuzz,” but here he’s an even bigger loser than in “Shaun of the …” because he’s a decade older and has even less to show for his life than Shaun did. Before the SF elements are introduced, this permanent adultescent convinces his more mature friends to do something stupid. It has surprising consequences so, basically, everything is Gary’s fault.

 

Gary wants to rejuvenate his empty world by completing a formerly-abandoned 12-Pud-Crawl from twenty-years prior, as if getting stinking drunk will somehow correct the Universe for him. His friends are Frost, playing Andrew Knightley, Martin Freeman, playing Oliver Chamberlain, Paddy Considine, playing Steven Prince, and Eddie Marsan, playing Peter Page, and all carry deep resentments for this man-child, but also all are dissatisfied with their obviously better lives. Also, it’s only one night out socializing, it's not like it’ll be the End of the World, right?

 

Oh, I should mention, the last pub on the crawl, the one that that didn’t get to last time, is named “The World’s End.”

 

The whole cast wonderful in their roles, Pegg and Frost’s well-established chemistry is efflorescent, and Considine and Marsan especially shine in their straight-man roles. Like the first two films, the female characters are underdeveloped, but the Actresses in those roles are marvelous. Here, the main female Character is Oliver’s sister Sam, played by Rosamund Pike, who Gary once had a fling with and whom Steven loves her from afar.

 

Early on, it is much as one would’ve excepted. There is funny dialogue, poor judgement, and drunken declarations of shallow comradery. There’s a barroom brawl where Pegg displays his skills as a physical comic, engaging in the fight while trying not to spill his beer. The Actors did at least some of their own stunt-work, and the fight choreography was led by Bradley James Allan, a veteran of Jackie Chan movies. As the SF themes emerge, some of these fights also involve Prosthetics and Animatronics created by Waldo Mason and Matt Denton and Digital Animations created by the FX firm Double Negative.

 

This is the most obviously British of the trilogy. It cheerfully demeans that fallen Empire’s much-respected “Angry Young Men” Social Realism of the 1950s and ‘60s, and the same Empire’s fondly remembered SF from the same period. (You might notice how many characters’ names reference England’s past glories and the loss of the Empire is an unstated theme in both Angry Young Men and SF films from the post-WWII years). That being said, except for most of the music, the obsessive pop-cultural referencing is overwhelming from the USA, like Batman (comic book, TV, and film franchise that dates back to 1939), Lego (originally a Danish children’s toy first appearing in 1949, but now a major USA multi-media franchise) Wrestlemania (a sort-of sports franchise that dates back to 1985), and “The Matrix (yet another USA franchise, first film 1999). These prior films, both of which were drawn from cinema Genres born of the USA. Also, a particular song from the USA does work its way in with some poignance, Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days” (1984); when Gary finally realizes what the song is really about, I got all verklempt.

 

There are other bittersweet observances of the passage of time. Though Gary hasn’t changed, the town of Newton Haven has. There's oddly abstract art in the town square and the pubs along the “Golden Mile” are suddenly sanitary and conformist. Image cleaned-up or not, most of the patrons are glazed-eyed and later, out-right Robotic. Though the film blames the Aliens for the latter, they look disturbing realistic in context of contemporary conformities in the Real-World, so I don’t think Aliens are entirely to blame.

 

This film shares more with “Shaun of the …” than “Hot Fuzz.” One of the funniest bits in the Zombie movie is Shaun going shopping and failing to notice the Apocalypse unfolding around him. That one joke from the first film is part of the backbone of the first half of this movie, and though the story mostly unfolds in a single evening, this Apocalypse has apparently been unfolding for quite some time.

 

OMG! Are the Aliens a metaphor for American Hegemony?!?!?!?!?

 

Even after our Protagonists realize they are surrounded Alien Robots disguised as Humans, they keep drinking and the hilarious, and sometimes observant, banter continues. It is only when they are face-to-face with the faceless the Alien Overlords, called the Network and voiced by Bill Nightly, the film falls into the same trap as most of its SF predecessors do -- The odds are impossible, but the Heroes are obligated to win. Any Philosophical point that the Writers might have in mind must be stated in the form of a clunky exposition before the film’s running time expires. At least, unlike most its SF processors, “The World’s Ends” had the option to mock its conceits:

 

The Network: "Just what is it that you want to do?"

Gary: "We wanna be free, we wanna be free to, to do what we wanna do...we wanna get loaded, and we wanna have a good time!"

 

Gary’s quoting the song "Loaded" by UK Rock Band Primal Scream (1991), which was in turn sampling dialogue from the USA film “The Wild Angels” (1966), and the hedonism and irresponsibility expressed in those words worked out badly works out badly for multiple Characters in that film.

 

Yeah, Gary isn’t the guy you want to Save the World for you.

 

All three films are so dense in detail allowing for new discoveries with repeated views. This is the densest of them all, like how all the pub names foreshadow the events that happen within them.

 

All three films are comfortable like sitting down at a bar with your buddies and this one is the best at that. I could watch stuff like this forever, but maybe it is good that the series has come to an end. We continued to watch Bud Abbott and Lou Costello long after the stopped being actually good, and in fact, long after the two actors decided they hated each other.

 

Making someone like Gary the Hero could only be pulled off by an actor as powerfully charismatic as Pegg because, less face it, in the Real-World, guys like Gary are to be avoided. Pegg’s been playing these characters since his TV days and Gary is by far the most disreputable, and the end of the film might hint that Pegg is putting this schtick to bed. Gary’s extreme despicableness, which Pegg conquers with casual a plumb, is the strongest connection the earlier eras Angry Young Man films. Though those dramas retain their power, they came before the protagonists’ raging narcissism became a cultural cancer in the whole of the English-speaking world. Looking back, Jimmy Porter, from “Look Back in Anger” (play 1956, film 1962) and Colin Smith from “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner” (short story 1956, film 1962) they were assholes. Compelling assholes, but assholes none the less.

 

Also, maybe, he and co-Writer Wright will also be less hyper-referential in the future. Critic Ian Buckwalter wrote, “I'm sure Pegg dreamed as a child of one day being in a ‘Doctor Who’ episode or a ‘Star Trek’ movie [two TV and film franchises, the former first airing in 1963, the latter 1966] , and now he's done those things.” All three films are about the foibles of adult immaturity, and all are obviously in love with the immaturity they condemn. It might time to declare, “Been there, done that,” embrace comedy more along the lines of “Up in the Air” (2009) or “Death of Stalin” (2017).

 

Also, bring in better written female Characters, they clearly have the Actresses, now give those women something to do.

 

Trailer:

The World's End Official Trailer #1 (2013) - Simon Pegg Movie HD - YouTube