Gary thinks we should keep up with the crawl, because they
know what we're doing, but they don't
know that we know what they're doing.
And basically no one else has a better idea.
So [BLEEP] it.
[GLASS SHATTERING]
Trilogies come in all shapes and sizes.
From the deep character examinations
of The Godfather movies to epic morality tales like Lord
of the Rings, the final films in those series
can often be divisive, sometimes collapsing under the weight
of built up expectations.
Somehow Palpatine returned.
Within the Cornetto trilogy, The World's End
showed us not only how to wrap up ideas and themes
but also how to subvert our own expectations.
Released in 2004, Shaun of the Dead
is technically the first in Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's
Cornetto Trilogy.
It was what the two had lovingly referred to as a rom zom com.
It was followed in 2007 by Hot Fuzz, a loving
tribute to buddy cop action movies
with a folk horror twist.
This is about to go off.
Each were career making movies for Wright and Pegg.
The two understood comedy in film
wasn't just a matter of well written jokes.
It was a bit earlier on that you missed when I distracted him
with the cuddly monkey.
And then I said play time's over.
And I hit him with the peace lily.
You're off the [BLEEP] chain.
It was its own unique visual language
dependent on sight gags and audio cues.
You go red on you.
And with co-star Nick Frost working opposite Pegg
in each movie, the three had carte blanche
to continue Shawn's tradition of telling very human stories
wrapped in a love of genre.
Which brings us to The World's End.
Released in 2013, The World's End
was tasked to wrap up a trilogy that was never intended.
At least, from the beginning.
Wright had stated that the original Cornetto
reference in Shaun was simply a real life experience.
Do you want anything from the shop?
Cornetto.
It was, in fact, Edgar Wright's hangover cure.
And he thought it'd add a touch of realism and a slight Easter
egg to his friends.
While on the press tour for the film's release,
Wright and Pegg were both elated to see Cornetto supply ice
cream to the film's after party.
The two joked they should add some Cornetto
to their next movie in hopes for more free ice cream.
While their plan came up short, a journalist
did ask about the Cornetto connection
while doing press for Hot Fuzz.
Wright made a quick joke that it was a reference
to famous polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski's three
colors trilogy.
It was a textbook Wright gag.
It shows a knowledge of world cinema
while also being self deprecating.
But the idea wormed into his head.
What would his three colors trilogy be?
More importantly, how would it end?
Let's do this!
The World's End follows Gary King, played by Simon Pegg,
reuniting with his old high school friends
to finish a pub crawl referred to as the Golden Mile
they had started 23 years before.
One night, five guys, 12 pubs.
Let battle commence.
While that sounds like a light comedy,
Wright and Pegg upend what could have
been a nostalgic romp by making King a man on the edge.
To even get his friends to tag along,
King lies about the death of his mother
in order to garner their sympathy for one last hurrah.
Wright has stated that all of the Cornetto trilogy movies
are Trojan horses.
Simply put, he takes a kernel of emotional weight, a heavy idea
that might come across as too serious,
and then wraps them in genre.
The rom zom com of Shaun of the Dead
is just genuinely a romantic comedy
akin to High Fidelity wrapped in Dawn
of the Dead complete with a pun title.
The adult view of platonic friendship in Hot Fuzz
could very well be My Dinner with Andre via Michael Bay.
But with The World's End, the duo
wanted to make a broader statement,
not just on the youthful ideas of the former two movies
but the way we approach nostalgia.
King is a man stuck in the past, completely obsessed
with the idea that his younger days, the hookups
and friendships, were the best times of his life.
Only as we watch his interactions back
in their hometown of Newton Haven,
we learned that he was always lying to himself.
It's this bit of depth that makes
King an interesting character different from Shaun
or Sergeant Angel.
The protagonists of the Cornetto trilogy
have always lied to themselves, believing
everything is fine in a spiraling relationship
or that you're beloved for your steadfastness.
With King though, the lovable goof aspect
is immediately torn away when we see
the adult King for the first time in a rehab support group.
This character is actively self-medicating to the point
of self-harm because deep down, a voice
he's desperate to silence with alcohol
knows he doesn't have control of his life.
Towards the end of the movie, we see the fallout
of King's addiction when the bandages on his wrists
are revealed and King shouts--
They told me when to go to bed.
Me!
It is genuinely heartbreaking to see the wall shatter.
Not because people are finally telling him something
he never realized.
It's because we see him admit it to himself.
That idea of admitting something is wrong
is perfectly encapsulated in the aforementioned Trojan horse
Wright and Pegg built around The World's End--
Its sci-fi trappings.
While Shaun and Hot Fuzz have direct parallels
like Dawn of the Dead or Point Break,
World's End is more content to rest on the overall genre
of science fiction.
Even the idea of King lying to himself
is cleverly worked into the idea of the body snatching aliens.
As the crew begins their trek along the Golden Mile,
King wonders why nobody recognizes him.
When it's revealed the majority of the population
has been replaced, it fuels the lie he tells himself.
Everybody's been replaced by one of these.
That's why no one recognized us.
You could draw a loose connection between Invasion
of the Body Snatchers or The Thing,
but the antagonists there were more agents of chaos.
Here, there is a clear end goal to the invaders, known
as the Network, who want to connect the world of Earth
to their intergalactic empire.
Oh, [BLEEP] off, you big lamp.
It's an authoritative voice that we know King will reject.
For the entire movie, we have watched him rebuke authority
again and again, usually at the expense of his friends.
It's a more broad stroke than the previous movies,
but it feels like a natural progression.
Wright first stepped into the spotlight with his show Spaced.
Also starring Pegg and Frost and directed by Wright,
Spaced was a nerd culture mecca of comics and films.
The show often featured direct homages
to things like Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy or the twins from The Shining.
When Wright and Pegg made Shaun, the homages
were still there, but less direct than Spaced.
By the time they were making Worlds End,
the two are championing the idea of genre as a whole.
Wright is a creator with a seemingly endless knowledge
of cinema.
It's clear from any interview that he
has a deep love for what movies and particularly genre can do.
No matter how Wright's career has evolved,
there's always been a clear love of wild and weird cinema.
More so than directors like Tarantino or Rodriguez who use
genre more stylistically, Wright uses the trappings
to tell stories about humanity.
Worlds End more than any other in the Cornetto trilogy
hits on humanity as a whole.
While Shaun touches the same way Romero
did on ideas like what is living,
Hot Fuzz didn't really comment until it
turned into a full horror and the idea of the greater good
was brought into focus.
The greater good.
But when we reach the climax of World's End,
King gives an empowering speech on the beauty of mankind.
Our messiness, our ability to love and fail, and above all,
our choice.
It is our basic human right to be [BLEEP] ups.
This civilization was founded on [BLEEP] ups. And you know what?
That makes me proud.
That choice again ties back into the overall theme of Gary King,
choosing whether or not to idolize and cling to your past
or move forward.
Not because we know things will work out,
but because we chose to do so.
And there's a clear connection between that idea and this
being the last of Wright and Pegg's trilogy.
There's a safe path they could have
taken where they could have continued the formula they
each knew would work.
But this is the film where we see them make a choice
to push themselves.
In doing so, we got movies like Baby Driver, Last Night
in Soho, Star Trek Beyond, and the TV series The Truth
Seekers.
The World's End has some of Wright
and Pegg's sharpest writing.
The two have been known to outline
tightly using giant pads to plot and track their screenplays.
Here, the course they established with King of--
It's pointless arguing with you.
Exactly.
Is repeated by the Network.
It's pointless arguing with you.
Much has been said about the one line declaration
of Frost's character that sums up
the plot of Shaun early in its runtime.
We'll have a Bloody Mary first thing.
Have a bite at the King's Head.
Couple at the little princess.
We'll stagger back here, and bang.
Back at the bar for shots.
And the team do it again here.
Each bar they enter is a direct comment
what will happen in every scene, from The Mermaid
to The Hole in the Wall.
Even the opening retelling is a broadcast of the movie
to come, revealing where each character will disappear,
be taken, or turned into a blank.
It's a writing tick Wright has become known for,
not just to show off a level of cleverness,
but to entice us to watch again and again, to get something
more out of the experience every time we come back.
And this movie warrants a return.
While Pegg had traditionally played the straight man
with Frost being the wild card in previous movies,
the two smartly choose to switch archetypes here.
King is unbridled with Andy teetering on the edge.
It works with our understanding of the actors.
I don't believe this.
A man of your legendary prowess drinking [BLEEP] rain.
We know the chaos Frost can bring.
And when we finally see him lose it, we cheer.
We feel rewarded because we knew this was inevitable.
And there's something beautiful in that.
And there is something wonderful in what Wright and Pegg
accomplished here.
Something that teeters so close to a failure,
it hops the fence to become one of the most successful trilogy
finales in film history.
So what do you think?
What other trilogies landed or failed for you?
Let us know down in the comments below.
And as always, thank you for watching.