Franchise Friday: The World’s End (2013)
Wrapping up the Cornetto trilogy with a robot-infested pub crawl.
It’s almost disappointing when the robots show up.
Like the other films in Edgar Wright’s Cornetto trilogy, The World’s End was sold on its comedic take on genres. The film combines a raucous pub crawl and paranoia-laced robot sci-fi, with just a hint of Arthurian quest thrown in for good measure. Like Wright and Simon Pegg’s other collaborations, it’s fast-paced, witty and great fun.
But the truth is, when the robots appear about 40 minutes in, they interrupt a perfectly good comedy.
Getting the band back together
Gary King (Simon Pegg) lives in the past. June 22, 1990, to be exact. That was the day he and his high school chums left class and attempted to conquer The Golden Mile, a collection of 12 pubs in their small hometown. It was a night of debauched drunken revelry, according to Gary. And although they didn’t complete the Golden Mile, it was still the best night of his life.
The fact that Gary is telling this story in the midst of a support group is the first inkling that it might not have been as great as he remembers. But Gary can’t let it go; it’s his big regret and now, pushing 40, he aims to get the boys back together for one last go at the Golden Mile. They don’t share his excitement. Pete (Eddie Marsan) is perfectly happy as a milquetoast family man and Oliver (Martin Freeman) is content to be a successful realtor. Steven (Paddy Considine) is divorced and in a relationship with a young fitness instructor and Andrew (Nick Frost) hasn’t spoken to his former best friend since a mysterious accident put a wedge between them. All of them seem perfectly content to have Gary out of their lives.
After playing the lovable slacker in Shaun of the Dead and the no-nonsense hero of Hot Fuzz, it’s surprising to see Pegg steer into unlikable territory as King, a man so wrapped up in nostalgia that he dresses in the same leather jacket, drives the same beat-up car, and still listens to the same mix tape he was listening to in high school. For him, the Nineties never ended, and he’s kept the party going in a way that wreaks of sweaty frustration and self-delusion.
The World’s End might be Pegg’s best and most mature work, as he walks a line of making Gary King immensely irritating and scuzzy while still deploying the charisma that made the others follow him anywhere. When he shows up at their places of work to lure them back for adventure, Gary’s pushing too hard, the humor coming not because anything he says is truly funny but because of the desperation behind it (there’s a lot of The Office’s David Brent in Pegg’s performance, which stands out even more alongside Freeman). It’s also a bold move for the film to once again change the Frost/Pegg dynamic, making their relationship more fraught, and allowing Pegg to play the screw-up while Frost plays the frustrated Everyman.
The film’s first hour works as a light comedy about the perils of nostalgia and the annoyance of gentrification (a running gag, which comes to play even more blatantly in the back half, is the idea of bars being “Starbucksed” – taken over by a larger entity that robs them of any unique charm and defect in pursuit of perfection). For Gary, this is his chance to finally accomplish what he feels has eluded him his entire life, but for the others, the return to Newton Haven is more of a mixed bag. Andy pushed it away to pursue a happier life with a wife and kids. Pete is haunted by the memories of a bully who tormented him, and crushed to encounter him and find the punk who ruined so many of his days doesn’t even remember him. Steven still pines after Oliver’s sister (Rosamund Pike), who also has a complicated history with Gary.
This isn’t the last time Wright will deal with the dangers of nostalgia; last year’s Last Night in Soho delved a bit deeper into that theme. But The World’s End’s first hour is a lively, funny and yet often thoughtful exploration of growing up and our inability to let go. The cast has fantastic chemistry; Marsan’s befuddled innocence always earns a laugh and Freeman’s better than many others at playing smarmy self-satisfaction. And the baggage we bring from the previous two films in the Cornetto trilogy creates added tension to the divide between Gary and Andy; even though the characters aren’t getting along early in the film, our affection for the actors fuels a desire to see them eventually work out their differences. Plus, the entire ensemble is skilled at playing various states of inebriation, and it’s good fun to watch them get slightly more tipsy as the night goes on (this movie somehow tackles the dangers of addiction while also making viewers want to get a pint). Wright and his ensemble have so much fun pub-hopping that it’s easy to forget this will eventually turn into a sci-fi adventure.
But when that first robot’s head pops off, it’s a reminder that shit’s about to get surreal.
Blanks and no-bots
I mentioned at the outset that it’s almost disappointing when the robots show up, but it’s not that disappointing. There’s foreshadowing throughout the film that things aren’t what they seem in Newton Haven, and Wright does an outstanding job transitioning the film from its more grounded premise to the outlandish by rooting that moment in Gary’s frustration that a young boy isn’t regaled by tales of his former glory. What follows quickly is a brawl in the men’s room between the main characters and a gang of young men revealed to be blue-blooded robots.
Wright’s choreography in the film’s many fight sequences and chases is fantastic, which wouldn’t have been surprising coming off the fantastic Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. But even now, after the meticulous chases of Baby Driver and the intricate choreography of Last Night in Soho, the action stands out. Wright, working with editor Paul Machliss, creates fast-paced, up-close brawls punctuated not with the bright red blood of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz but blue, ink-like goo. The chase sequences are incredibly paced, laced with shots of the hive mind-linked robots with their eyes and mouths glowing bright blue; the world-building is efficient and effective. At one moment, a giant statue-esque beast joins the fray, and while it’s never overtly explained, we know exactly what it is and what threat it poses.
Still anchored to the pub crawl theme — both a joke and a key hook in Gary’s addiction to getting one more pint — the film moves quickly, stopping to take a breath only to provide exposition. Pierce Brosnan shows up as their former guidance counselor to clue them in on the situation, while more light is shed on the predicament during a sequence in which a group of sirens try to seduce the men. Wright and Pegg’s script deftly lays out the details without stalling the momentum; the 12-pub journey gives a framework for them to keep moving on, and the film balances the laughs, action and exposition well.
There is a sense that Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz work best as genre and stylistic devices, without too much subtext (although zombies in Shaun, the village preservation society in Hot Fuzz and the no-bots here suggest Wright has some things he’s working out about groupthink and conformity). But The World’s End has some deeper issues on its mind, and it becomes the most mature film in the series by tackling mid-life resentment and malaise, alcoholism, and personal failure. Gary isn’t a comedic screwup; he’s a man with real demons and issues he needs to confront, and by the end of the film he’s admitting that even though the world is ending around him, he can’t break himself of his addiction to get to the World’s End and get that last drink. When Gary’s true plight is revealed, there’s genuine pathos to it. Gary’s a man who grew up desiring freedom and a good time; he ended up in an alcoholic depression, committed to a hospital where they told him when to go to bed. Pegg nails the desperation and despair that fuel Gary’s obsession, likely drawing on his own battles with addiction that he revealed a few years later. It’s a fantastic performance, heartbreaking and pathetic without sacrificing any humor, and the film is surprisingly moving when he and Andy eventually reconcile.
And then they end the whole world.
At world’s end
Spoiler alert for a 9-year-old film.
The big reveal in the climax of The World’s End is that the alien robots don’t have hostile intent. Rather, they are beings sent to assimilate a portion of Earth’s population in order to serve as a guide, bringing us the latest technology and helping to create a more civilized planet that will one day be aligned with the rest of the cosmos. The patient, rational voice that reveals this to Gary (provided by Bill Nighy) admits that they’ve had to take over more bodies than they hoped (turning the left-over shells into mulch), but it was all for the greater good, bringing together subtext from Shaun of the Dead (the empty-brained blanks) and Hot Fuzz (excusing evil for the greater good), and bringing thematic coherence to the Cornetto trilogy that it, honestly, didn’t need, but I’m thankful for anyway.
Gary, Andy and Steven argue that it’s humans’ right to be screw-ups, that we have the right to do what we want, even if what we want to do is flush it down the toilet. It’s a stance against conformity (and the Starbucksing of the planet, to use the film’s parlance) while also being perhaps the biggest screw-up of Gary’s life; in refusing the aliens’ offer, he basically sends Earth back into the Dark Ages.
I can understand why the film’s final moments, which showcases a world moving on from modern technology and learning to fend for itself, feels like a bridge too far for some viewers. It’s a bleak ending, not a comedic one (although everyone is doing okay for themselves in this new world), and it feels tonally at odds from what came before. What started as a celebration of raucous behavior before shifting to paranoid sci-fi conspiracy ends on a note of apocalyptic adventure, with Gary leading his re-created younger friends on a new adventure.
But the film’s ending is a potent metaphor for overcoming addiction and for untethering Gary from the demons that plagued him. His fatal flaw was his refusal to let go of the comforts of the past and step into a new world, where he could enjoy life without the encumbrance of his addictions. Now, he has literally burned his old world down and has no choice but to move on in the wreckage he’s created; which, in the film’s final shots, he seems to be doing with renewed vigor and joy (and pointedly, no alcohol, asking for waters instead). The film never puts too strong a point on it; the final moments can be read as an extended joke for Gary’s big screw up in spurning the aliens. But it works as a metaphor for overcoming addiction and dealing with the messes you’ve created. It ends the Cornetto saga on a note of maturity and hope, solidifying it as one of the great cinematic trilogies.
Wright, Pegg and Frost have all gone on to success outside of these films. Pegg’s just as vital to the Mission: Impossible franchise these days as Tom Cruise is, and Frost has turned into a capable character actor. Wright continues to grow as a director; Last Night in Soho was his first foray into non-comedy territory, and I’m very curious to see what he does with his adaptation of Stephen King’s The Running Man. Still, the Cornetto trilogy remains a high point of their careers, and I’d be first in line to see what they do together again.
Previous entries in this series:
Hot Fuzz
Coming next week:
We start a brand-new Franchise Friday series with another loosely-connected batch of films. So let’s head to Red Bank, New Jersey, because we’re entering the View Askewniverse next week with Kevin Smith’s Clerks. Snoochie bootches.