Sadly having actually watched The World's End I think I sort of got the right impression from the trailer. In it Simon Pegg plays Gary King, a man who never let go of his youth, who still wears the same t-shirts he did at the end of high school and fantasises over the greatest night of his life when he nearly completed a famous 12 stop pub-crawl in his home village - 20 years ago. Gary gets the old gang (who have all most definitely grown up) back together to return home and go on the same pub crawl once more. However he discovers that things are not quite the way he remembers them, and that the creeping standardisation that has affected so many of Britain's high streets as also infected his village. Not only this though, but the neutralisation of culture appears to be the work of an alien influence, here to apparently save us from ourselves.
Edgar Wright has said in interviews that the aliens in the film are meant to represent some sort of pan-galactic Starbucks, here to pacify tensions and ease people into a quiet happy numbness where all needs are provided for and all conflict is quelled. Of course the metaphor is a neat one. The film presents two opposing forces and contrasts the failings of each. Gary King, with his old band t-shirts and devotion to Primal Scream, represents the old school, the crazy recklessness of youth, optimism and nostalgia. The aliens are the corporate, the conservative force of conformity; they represent the idea that for society to work people must somehow suppress their own individuality to conform to an idealised norm. Should we root for Gary or the Aliens? Or perhaps neither?
I had less fun watching this than I did watching either Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz; a lot less fun. Now I don't know if this experience makes it a worse film than those, or if it has something to do with my over-inflated expectations of the Pegg / Wright output, but it was a fact none-the-less that I left the cinema underwhelmed by what I had seen. Perhaps it was the character of Gary King that left me cold. King is a dislikeable guy who doesn't really get any redemption or change, hardly a Shaun or Nicholas Angel for the audience to root for.
As Wright has indicated in interviews, it might be that the real enemy presented by the film is in fact nostalgia itself. Could it be that with this final part of a trilogy that once re-defined British cinema, that Pegg, Wright and Frost are in fact trolling their own audience? Does Gary King represent the vocal minority of Spaced fans still calling for a third series? Maybe he even represents fans such as me, the people harking back to Shaun of the Dead and lamenting Simon Pegg's ongoing move into the American mainstream? Perhaps Pegg and Wright are telling us that it is time to move on, to not end up being a Gary King living your life in a glorious past that existed so very briefly?
However you choose to look at it, and regardless of the fact that I felt it was a let-down, The World's End is still funny. It's a pleasant antidote to the endless churn of Holywood action blockbusters slugging it out for audiences this summer. I'm trying to heed the lessons of The World's End and not get too nostalgic here, but I think Simon Pegg's best work has always been rooted in a deep understanding of Englishness, nerd culture and the hilarity of the mundane. I hope that he, Frost and Wright all keep their feet on the ground and not get too carried away by their increasingly elevated statuses amongst the Holywood literati. I'm sure they've got a lot more to give to the cinema-going world; and I would like to see them making films together for a few more years yet.
Edgar Wright has said in interviews that the aliens in the film are meant to represent some sort of pan-galactic Starbucks, here to pacify tensions and ease people into a quiet happy numbness where all needs are provided for and all conflict is quelled. Of course the metaphor is a neat one. The film presents two opposing forces and contrasts the failings of each. Gary King, with his old band t-shirts and devotion to Primal Scream, represents the old school, the crazy recklessness of youth, optimism and nostalgia. The aliens are the corporate, the conservative force of conformity; they represent the idea that for society to work people must somehow suppress their own individuality to conform to an idealised norm. Should we root for Gary or the Aliens? Or perhaps neither?
I had less fun watching this than I did watching either Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz; a lot less fun. Now I don't know if this experience makes it a worse film than those, or if it has something to do with my over-inflated expectations of the Pegg / Wright output, but it was a fact none-the-less that I left the cinema underwhelmed by what I had seen. Perhaps it was the character of Gary King that left me cold. King is a dislikeable guy who doesn't really get any redemption or change, hardly a Shaun or Nicholas Angel for the audience to root for.
As Wright has indicated in interviews, it might be that the real enemy presented by the film is in fact nostalgia itself. Could it be that with this final part of a trilogy that once re-defined British cinema, that Pegg, Wright and Frost are in fact trolling their own audience? Does Gary King represent the vocal minority of Spaced fans still calling for a third series? Maybe he even represents fans such as me, the people harking back to Shaun of the Dead and lamenting Simon Pegg's ongoing move into the American mainstream? Perhaps Pegg and Wright are telling us that it is time to move on, to not end up being a Gary King living your life in a glorious past that existed so very briefly?
However you choose to look at it, and regardless of the fact that I felt it was a let-down, The World's End is still funny. It's a pleasant antidote to the endless churn of Holywood action blockbusters slugging it out for audiences this summer. I'm trying to heed the lessons of The World's End and not get too nostalgic here, but I think Simon Pegg's best work has always been rooted in a deep understanding of Englishness, nerd culture and the hilarity of the mundane. I hope that he, Frost and Wright all keep their feet on the ground and not get too carried away by their increasingly elevated statuses amongst the Holywood literati. I'm sure they've got a lot more to give to the cinema-going world; and I would like to see them making films together for a few more years yet.
I enjoyed World's End every bit as much as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. I especially liked the subtle jibes at the standardisation of pub culture.
ReplyDeleteA couple of the one-liners caused me to laugh out loud ( a rareity! ). My only real criticism was that I thought the ending was lame.
I await the next venture from Simon Pegg et al with enthusiasm.
I agree that the ending was lame. It had the feel of a bad Star Trek episode when the captain uses his superior charisma to talk down an entire alien culture. It's a lazy and overly-wordy way to finish a film that up until that point had been quite fast-paced and full of action.
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