Spelly Goes to the Movies: THE WORLD'S END

Would you keep drinking to the end of the world?

Well, would you? Do you have what it takes, kid?

The final film in Edgar Wright's end-of-the-world trilogy, THE WORLD'S END pulls together so much of SHAUN OF THE DEAD and HOT FUZZ; it’s not even funny… Wait, no. What’s the opposite of that? Oh yes, it’s REALLY funny.

How do I put this without spoilers? Well, let’s see…

Simon Pegg plays Gary King, the former leader of a youthful crew of punkass rebels who, 20 years ago, attempted a 12-tavern pub crawl. To hear him tell the tale, it was the best night of all their lives. Half true. It was the best night of Gary The King’s life. The first we see of Gary, he’s telling the epic tale…in a meeting in rehab.

Cut to Gary convincing his four former compatriots – Oliver (Martin Freeman), Steven (Paddy Considine), Peter (Eddie Marsan), and Andy (Nick Frost) -- to go for it one more time, to go hometo Newton Haven, to make it happen. As he makes the rounds, though, we find they’ve all grown up. They all have jobs, wives, maybe ex-wives…

Through his schmoozing and truth manipulation, as you might have guessed, Gary convinces all four of them to meet him to re-attempt The Golden Mile – making it to The World’s End pub…. They meet at 3:00 sharp at the station, and, of course, Gary is almost an hour late, but he has an excuse. Because Gary’s never wrong.

That’s about as far as I can go with the plot without spoilers, so I’ll say this before the break (where you will most definitely get some SPOILERS AHEAD), but I will say this before then… It was a real pleasure to see Simon Pegg play the delusional, gung ho (misled) dreamer and to watch Nick Frost as the unwilling badass. This really is Frost’s moment to shine.

Now, on to the SPOILERS…

Drink up, boys. You've got at least five more bars before the World's End.

Newton Haven has been taken over by robot alien slaves. Their purpose? Bring Earth into the ever so cooperative “Network” of the galaxy. They kill as few people as possible and recycle them into the ecosystem. It’s incredibly efficient and super green. And how do we win? How does humanity survive and evade the invasion/cooperation? Well, we’re assholes. “To err is human,” and we stand by our right to err. Gary, Andy, and Steve argue with the giant alien light thing – in the final confrontation – like children to a teacher (and trust me, that analogy was made really clear with Pierce Brosnon’s cameo as the boys’ old teacher).  They wear the giant lamp alien down, convincing it that we just can’t be “saved”. We aren’t part of the “Network” because we are – as a species – a bunch of free-willed punkasses, and we’re proud of it…

…Which brings me to a few of points and ponderings…

1. For a British film, this shit is AWFULLY American. We are the rebellious teens of the world. We demand our freedom, be it our freedom to do better or our freedom to be fuckups. Cloudy recently gave me a piece of metal with the Bill of Rights printed on it from a Penn and Teller show. The point is to try to carry it onto a plane and, when TSA inevitably questions me, I will boldly proclaim, “OKAY FINE! FLYING IS SO IMPORTANT TO ME THAT I WILL SURRENDER MY RIGHTS!!” This is so very close to what Pegg, Frost, and Considine say to the Giant Talking Lamp… Except they say no. Their rights to be human and to fuck up and not cooperate is more important to them than anything in the galaxy. The ensuing explosion gives off an EMP blast so big, it knocks out the whole world, and y’know what? We’re okay with that. Because our freedom is that important. When that shit went down, I applauded. I wanted to yell, “AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!” In all seriousness. Like, really. Not even joking.

2. Doesn’t every nearly (or potentially) apocalyptic movie about aliens taking us over come down to, “We’re individuals, and we’re human, and fuck you!”?? Isn’t this what OBLIVION was about? (SPOILER) Granted, the aliens weren’t so benevolent there, but still…  In THE MATRIX, we’re fed, clothed, and employed, but we’d rather take our chances… In the TERMINATOR and ALIEN films, our invaders/attackers aren’t quite as pleasant. The one wants to use us as a warm spot to lay eggs, then kill us. The Terminators just want to kill us. Either way, fighting for survival is still fighting for a right to humanity… The good of the many does NOT justify the sacrifice of the few (the human race as we are, no matter how fucked up we are). Edgar Wright just comes right out and says it. More honestly than any film or book I’ve seen in… Well, ever.

3. If you were on a mission to finish a pub crawl, and you found yourself chased by alien zombie robots, what would you do? Would you high-tail it out of town? Or would you continue, running to the next bar, with all your might? Would you stay on task? A few of the scenes – when Pegg is urging his friends on to The World’s End – I found myself grinning. Something about the whole thing felt…familiar. Cloudy, Tasky, and I have all been there, and we’ve been there together. We’ve chased each other down streets and alleys, tried to convince each other not to climb fences (okay, I was always down for the climbing. Maybe somebody else was doing the convincing)… I think, given the same circumstances, these three human punkasses would’ve continued our crawl, guns blazing, shots flying, blasting through our foes, never pulling punches, drinking to the end of the world… (Teaser: look forward to my blog post on Monday about my first force-on-force tactical class. We’re gonna be shooting at targets that shoot back Sunday night, what!).

As always, there’s a lot more that I could get into here, but those were the biggies for me. Anything else you wanna talk about? Let’s take it to the comments!

-Spelly Scribe