Here’s the first teaser trailer to Edgar Wright’s The World’s End, with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost returning to complete their Blood and Ice Cream, aka Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy.
Not technically a real trilogy, as Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End have the same actors but playing different characters.
Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but the movie opened this weekend. Did anyone else see it?
I liked it, but have to say Hot Fuzz is still my favorite. I actually liked the first part more than the second, and wonder what kind of film it could have been had the whole blank element been removed.
As an aside, Martin Freeman is just adorable.
Fun movie, lots of laughs. Pegg and Frost are one of the truly great comedy duos in film today. (not to mention the rest of the gang)
“WTF!?!?” What the fuck does that mean?"
“Fuck it.”
boggle The movie took forever to get going. I was seriously considering walking out when the blanks finally showed up and made it worthwhile. That was a great effect.
It’s mildly entertaining. Better than many recent so-called comedies* but you’ll forget it as soon as you walk out the theater’s door. Your enjoyment will depend on your fixation on the small moments in the background rather than the grinding one-joke nature of the foreground.
*Americans will probably notice how remarkably similar in concept it is to Hot Tub Time Machine.
Gary never did get his last pint.
I loved it, probably slightly more than Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead. So many great moments, and lots of stuff to chew over afterwards with my husband. I’ll certainly see it again, and will own it along with the other two.
Bill Nighy can do no wrong.
Just fantastic. I’d probably put “The World’s End” between “Shaun” and “Hot Fuzz” on my personal ranking of the Cornetto trilogy, though all three films are great.
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost both give the best performances of their careers in this one, though. Gary King is an incredible character - just this side of intolerable, but Pegg gives him just enough of a glimmer of searing pain under every douchetastic moment. As Andy, Frost gets to project serious authority in way that I never would’ve guessed he could. The supporting characters were great, as well. Loved the way Peter’s and Oliver’s stories each wrapped up.
And Edgar Wright’s direction is beautiful to behold, as usual.
I really liked the film - especially the end - though it was a bit close to the bone in having the main character as a late thirties English bloke who grew up in a boring country town still smoking, drinking and refusing to properly grow up… Quite unnerving.
And it was a bit like this-century Dr Who for my sci-fi tastes at times.
I just saw it. I enjoyed it. Though I thought it was going to be funnier than it was, the story was better than expected with some great twists at the end. Some great acting there, and the humor was there, but my expectations were likely too high ;).
It’s kind of similar to the setup of Shaun of the Dead. The Pegg character (King) started as the “cool” one of his friends but quickly went nowhere, and didn’t get his opportunity to un-fuck his life via zombie invasion or something, so he became the druggie fuckup and everyone else managed to at least hold down stable, well-paying jobs.
Just as I started getting really depressed about how badly King was spiraling out of control, the blanks started in and it got fun finally. Frost’s character totally breaks the “lovable chubby schlub” mold, and I even cheered for the relationship that was forming. Well-done ending.
Not the one I’d choose to go with out of the trilogy if I picked one to watch again, but a nice capper for the “series.”
I think that the two big reveals in Gary’s (Pegg) and Andy’s (Frost) life could’ve been much better done. As much as I love my “Hollywood boyfriend” Simon Pegg, the Gary King character’s a tough one to like. I think that putting his reveal in a different place and giving it some more gravitas would’ve softened that, would’ve had more punch, and would’ve been much more effective. Likewise with Andy’s reveal - we already really like Andy, but we’ve known for the entire movie that something bad caused their falling out. Because they wait so long to reveal what it was, it loses something. I don’t know where else I’d have put these two reveals, but it seems like both came kind of too late to really have the impact they should’ve.
I liked it, for sure, but for me it’s the weakest of the three. I’m a huge zombie movie fanatic, so I love love love Shaun of the Dead (it’s one of the finest examples of the genre), but Hot Fuzz is simply genius. The World’s End comes third, easily.
I think I would put Shaun slightly ahead of this one, but not by much. It did take a while to get going, but it was a real fun movie once it hit its pace.
Toward the end, I was sure that:
Gary was going to wake up in a mental hospital, with the events being his imagination, and a way of hiding from reality. The large electro-fireball that the aliens sent out was electroshock therapy. Glad I was wrong.
I was disappointed that Andrew Eldritch didn’t make a cameo (at least, AFAIK he didn’t). Funny thing is that back in the 90s, I knew someone who was ready to get that same tattoo, only smaller.
I liked it. I’d rate them Shaun/World’s/Fuzz. Loved the tattoo being the same as the shirt. Loved Andy’s moment when he falls off the wagon and drinks 5 shots, also when he dual wields the bar stools. “I hate this town”. Gary was a character I could imagine as one of my college buddies, if he never grew up. (fortunately, he did)
I agree, easily the worst of the three and the only one I have no interest in revisiting. There are some funny moments, and I agree about what others say about Frost (not to mention the generally good support the other characters provide).
But honestly, I couldn’t stand Gary, and for that character to work, it needs a better actor than Pegg. The comic stuff Simon nails, of course–but he is exactly the kind of person you’d want to stay a country mile from: narcissistic, thoughtless to anyone’s concerns other than his own, completely self-absorbed, not as fun or funny as he perceives himself, and prone to pervasive and consequence-free acts of self-destruction, pulling as many people in the void with him as possible.
In short, a royal grade-A asshole. And to make an asshole likable, you need a better backstory than “sniff, my pub days were my peak, wah” and you need someone with more charisma than Pegg can muster. In the brilliant Sean he was great as a meek-but-resourceful shlub. In the entertaining Fuzz, he plays a character that’s unliked by others, but has a code of conduct that’s perversely admirable, if quite extreme.
But Gary is all Id, so I very quickly had no sympathy for him and no interest in him achieving his “goal” (it should be noted, at the expense of his friends). Most of the sympathy we muster for him is courtesy of the terrific Frost, and nothing to do with how he is written or played.
Plus, quite frankly, it really did feel like they painted themselves in a corner with the finale and just decided to blow stuff up good.
So the whole definitely is far less than the sum of its parts (some of which are quite fun). A disappointment.
I just saw it today. Were Gary King’s wrists bandaged? Were they implying a suicide attempt? And actually, I kind of liked the idea that Gary was the guy back in school who never grew up, while his friends got jobs, wives, children and so forth.
I really enjoyed seeing them essential swap characters. I really wish the trailers didn’t spoil the genre shifting plot twist though. :mad:
Yes that’s exactly what they’re implying, and if you think about the ending…
…Gary’s challenging the men in the pub to a fight can be interpreted as him still being suicidal. The Blanks are too fragile to be effective back up, they’re outnumbered, & Gary will probably end up either getting beaten to death or lynched. At least now instead of dying alone he get’s to go out “in a blaze of glory” with facsimiles of his mates; an adolescent death wish fulfilled. His character isn’t much different sober than he is drunk.
In one of the pubs, Andy asks if Gary realized how much balls it took to walk into a pub full of rugby team members and ask for a glass of water. He’ll survive this.
Excellent catch–I totally missed that callback gag!
We saw it tonight, and I loved it. Pegg’s pure loathesomeness earned the movie many points in my book. I get so tired of the manchild whose inability to grow up is adorable and wins him the hot girl, whom he teaches not to be so uptight all the time (I’m looking at you, Judd Apatow). Gary’s a manchild who can’t grow up, and his unwillingness to do so is at best tragic and at worst contemptible, and that’s just right. I never felt I was supposed to empathize with him as a protagonist: rather, he was a vehicle for a sharp satire of a comedy trope.
This was linked to in the IMDB discussion of the movie. It’s a comparison of The World’s End and Hot Tub Time Machine.