Charlotte Posted May 11, 2012 Share Posted May 11, 2012 There is a notion abroad that I am a fuddy-duddy who is incapable of love when it comes to pop culture that has explosions in it. But this is not so! Because sorry ,Superman, but in terms of most anticipated films of 2013, you just dropped to #2: 20 years after attempting an epic pub crawl, five childhood friends reunite when one of them becomes hell bent on trying the drinking marathon again. They are convinced to stage an encore by mate Gary King, a 40-year old man trapped at the cigarette end of his teens, who drags his reluctant pals to their home town and once again attempts to reach the fabled pub, The World’s End. As they attempt to reconcile the past and present, they realize the real struggle is for the future, not just theirs but humankind’s. Reaching The World’s End is the least of their worries. This is the third and final film in the unofficial "cornetto trilogy," which started with Shaun of the Dead and continued with Hot Fuzz. (So named because a different flavor of Cornetto appears in each film.) I'm not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that Hot Fuzz is my favorite comedy since Ghostbusters and that its script should be taught in film classes or just held up to gaze at admiringly, a fully-complete fractal of callbacks, call-forwards, double-entendres and scenes where an 80 year old woman is jump-kicked in the face by Simon Pegg. I was a little worried there that Wright would be done making films after Scott Pilgrim was unjustly cast down from the box office, so I'm thrilled that this film is finally going to get put to film. It's fully worth it waiting a few extra years for Ant-Man to get made. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SalmonMax Posted May 11, 2012 Share Posted May 11, 2012 It does sound cool. And I don't think you're a fuddy-duddy. I think we're all adult enough to disagree civilly about things. When it comes to Avengers, you and I have different expectations going in...mine were satisfied, you had a few things you'd have liked to have seen. That doesn't make you wrong, or your judgement somehow impaired. We still agree on far more things than we disagree on, even regarding the Avengers. For example: I bet, for all the things you sort of wished Avengers had done, you still laughed at the 'hulksmash Loki' scene, right? Riiiiiiight? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jameson (ST) Posted May 11, 2012 Share Posted May 11, 2012 It does sound cool. And I don't think you're a fuddy-duddy. I think we're all adult enough to disagree civilly about things. When it comes to Avengers, you and I have different expectations going in...mine were satisfied, you had a few things you'd have liked to have seen. That doesn't make you wrong, or your judgement somehow impaired. We still agree on far more things than we disagree on, even regarding the Avengers. For example: I bet, for all the things you sort of wished Avengers had done, you still laughed at the 'hulksmash Loki' scene, right? Riiiiiiight? I second this. I respect your opinion, and I do agree that as a dramatic film Avengers was a little lightweight, but I also think that Avengers had more fun in it than both of Nolan's thus far released Batman films have. That doesn't make either of them bad, but they do appeal to different parts of my psyche, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight appeal to my more mature sensibilities whereas Avengers appeals to the same part of me that still watches more than a couple of cartoons on Saturday and Sunday morning with the goal of watching some well staged action and being gentle on my sleep (and possibly hangover) impacted brain. Now ... World's End ... I'm hopeful, I enjoyed Shaun and Fuzz quite a bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlotte Posted May 13, 2012 Author Share Posted May 13, 2012 Hulk Vs. Loki was a highlight, yep. "Dude, I survived a giant bubble filled with anger that was also Absorbing Man and my father too. What the heck are you gonna do." Film Critic Hulk - and by the way, I love Film Critic Hulk - has a great insight into why Wright's films resonate (link is in all caps as is Film Critic Hulk's style, so I used ConvertCase.net to make it less... loud) First off, when we think of references within genre movies, the laziest form tends to be "a send up." It's a spoof on Indiana Jones! Or Star Wars! Let's just reference those things and do what they do, only in our world or something! And add fart jokes! No, wait cock jokes! No, Edgar does not send up these worlds. The dialogue references are always within the context of conversation and response ("Jar Jar Binks makes the Ewoks look like fucking Shaft!"). Again, it's about the language people use as touchstones and not the references themselves. But the real genius comes in the stylization. Wright will suddenly change the tone and genre of the movie for any given situation at a moments notice. A shot will use horror sound cues, or suddenly it's a specific image from a movie to capture a similar emotional moment . The key thing to realize is he is not creating worlds of pop culture amalgamation (that's sort of what Tarantino does) where it's all sort of one big "anything goes" arena of reality, instead Edgar Wright balances this wild tones of differing film styles by solely using them to reflect how the character is feeling at the given moment. Isn't that sort of amazing? Characters feeling badass? Suddenly the cameras swirling as they spit back tough-guy one liners. Characters are feeling bad? Sad music cue in the rain of the guy holding a teddy bear. Character feeling scared? Darkness, horror beats and malevolent music cues. Character feeling philosophically unsure? Cue Woody Allen-esque Manhattan montage. He's not changing up the story, he's merely reflecting how the character (and thus the audience) is feeling at a given moment. Which means it's not genre jumping, but just amplification of what is already there. Better yet, it's all in the context of the story. That's why his movies are "high octane filmmaking" but never, ever feel out of control. If anything he's doing what most filmmakers do just to a highly literate degree. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Posted May 15, 2012 Share Posted May 15, 2012 I enjoy reading Hulk's articles on Badass, even though I do generally copy it into Word so that I can adjust the case. Perhaps that a little strange for someone that spent years playing a character that talked in Hulkspeak. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jameson (ST) Posted July 13, 2012 Share Posted July 13, 2012 Officially Greenlit!!! Plot Synopsis The film starts 20 years after five childhood friends attempted an epic pub crawl. The friends reunite when one of them becomes hell bent on trying the drinking marathon again. They are convinced to stage an encore by mate Gary King, a 40-year old man trapped at the cigarette end of his teens, who drags his reluctant pals to their home town and once again attempts to reach the fabled pub, The World’s End. As they attempt to reconcile the past and present, they realize the real struggle is for the future, not just theirs but humankind’s. Reaching The World’s End is the least of their worries. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlotte Posted July 14, 2012 Author Share Posted July 14, 2012 And here is the teaser poster: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jameson (ST) Posted August 23, 2013 Share Posted August 23, 2013 t'was good Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Posted August 25, 2013 Share Posted August 25, 2013 I enjoyed it a lot. I would probably rank it below Shaun & Fuzz, but still better than most. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jameson (ST) Posted August 25, 2013 Share Posted August 25, 2013 Yeah, I think Fuzz was the best of the three, but I think this one will actually get better with age and repeat viewings too, since this one has a more mature denouement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlotte Posted August 28, 2013 Author Share Posted August 28, 2013 I think Fuzz is the best of the three on pure technical merit, but World's End definitely felt like it has the most to say. ,, I had a horrible time in high school so I never pined for my youth the way Gary King did, so that might be why I never fully connected with his character - but it says a lot about the quality of the filmmaking that I still 100% got everyone's frustration with - and ultimate loyalty to - the man. Of course, it's an Edgar Wright movie, so it keeps those jokes coming and is immaculately well directed, and it really does feel like it's tying off not just the Cornetto trilogy, but threads with Wright, Frost and Pegg's work that date all the way back to Spaced and its portrayal of youth in search of meaning. ,, I heard people were confused about the ending, which, what the hell ever. I'll go into it a bit. ,, The End, Folks! I will admit that the shift to a post-apocalyptic wasteland was sudden - a pretty jarring shift from the "everything kinda works out" endings of the previous movies. But I think Wright and Co. were doing this deliberately, leaving the trappings of youth behind (well, sort of - really, if you're gonna direct a movie with Ant-Man in it, how grown-up can you really be) in a world that is in some ways destroyed by youthful rebellion and in other ways, freed by it. King gets to go on an adventure, wandering from pub to pub, with the idealized versions of all his friends, on his own terms. It's a happy ending, but not one that gives him much growth (asides from becoming teetotal.) It sort of says "yes, this was fun, but it can't grow past this point, so this is the end." ,, I was 100% sure they were going to reveal that King was a robot, stuck in a routine he could never quite break. I still think that he might be. If nothing else, if Wright were to reveal that there is a deleted scene with King finding out that he is a robot, and then snuck that into the director's cut? It would be the most amazing homage to Blade Runner in the history of film. ,, Someone on the Twitter machine made a connection to King Arthur, and it's obvious, looking at the film - King returning to his realm in its time of need. He even has his own Lancelot and the resultant love triangle. There's obvious connections to the names of the pubs - the Hole in the Wall gets a hole in the wall, the Mermaids, obviously, the twins in the Two-Headed Dog - and there will probably be Wright's usual love of numerical references and visual callbacks, such as King's AA meeting resembling the assembly of robots. ,, It's not a movie that panders. It doesn't elevate the lifestyle of Gary or his friends. So I predict that it'll be less popular in nerd circles that Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz was, but in the end I think that the World's End is the only way the trilogy could really conclude. ,, ,, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vivi OOC Posted August 28, 2013 Share Posted August 28, 2013 We watched it last night, and I absolutely loved it. On my phone so must be brief, but I think Mike's assessment is spot-on, but for one point referenced in the second paragraph of his spoiler- the broken mirror had red left behind, not blue, which leads me to a different conclusion. To be fair, I also think it would have been a great twist in the story, and still wondered about it after the smokehouse scene. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave ST Posted August 28, 2013 Share Posted August 28, 2013 The smoke house scene, he didn't want to show off the scar on his elbow because that would have shown them the bandages around his wrists, exposing to all of his friends that he'd recently tried to kill himself. ,, Honestly, I never thought he was a blank (remember, they're not robots). I pegged the suicide thing once they showed more of his life and how far a on spiral he was after the meeting he was in in the beginning of the movie. I did think he'd accept their offer though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vivi OOC Posted August 28, 2013 Share Posted August 28, 2013 No, I get that, but I still wondered about it up until the reveal of the bandages, in the scene with Andy at the World's End pub, and it still would have been interesting. Either way, I really enjoyed the movie. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlotte Posted August 29, 2013 Author Share Posted August 29, 2013 More Spoilers I honestly did not figure out that he'd tried to commit suicide, and thought that he'd kept the bandages on his wrists ever since the accident because his development was that arrested. ,, So obviously, he's not a blueblood, so there goes that theory. He is, however, simultaneously the perfect candidate for the process - wants his "perfect life" - and is the last man who'd really say yes, because perfection would mean going forwards, which Gary couldn't do. So that's probably why everyone thought he was a blank. And maybe there was some motivated reasoning as well - after all, if Gary's a blank, it's okay to hate him, because he's not an actual human being that screwed his life up. ,, Like I said. Probably Wright's deepest film. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jameson (ST) Posted August 29, 2013 Share Posted August 29, 2013 t'was good ,, I stand by my original statement Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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