by Mike Favila, Editor

The World’s End, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright’s final chapter in the so called ‘Cornetto Trilogy’, has just been released on Blu-Ray.  We at ComicsOnline.com, and me personally. love the previous two, so I was pretty excited for this last collaboration to be released.  I still remember the first time I finally checked out Shaun of the Dead,  after all my friends had recommended it.  The odd, but loving, send up of the now ubiquitous zombie genre was fresh and hilarious, continuing where Army of Darkness left off, but taking it to in a slightly more British direction.  Would The World’s End live up to the high standard they’ve set?

Before I delve completely into this review, I have to give full disclosure.  After obsessing about the first two movies, I tried to lower my expectations for this installment.  Although I’m a true blue sci-fi/horror/comic fan, I’ve recently started to suffer from a bit of apocalypse fatigue.  I’d been waiting for this movie to come out ever since I lost countless days watching Hot Fuzz.  Then, This Is The End came out, and that turned out to be one of my favorite movies of the summer.  While there really should be room in my heart for two comedies involving the end of the world, I couldn’t help but make some very obvious connections.  Funny guys weathering an apocalypse and handing it in different, but laughing generating ways?  Could it really be that different?

Simon Pegg plays Gary King, a 30 something loser that’s perpetually stuck in the past.  He was a badass in high school and never quite lived up to the glory of those halycon days.  The movie opens with him stuck in what’s obviously some kind of rehab circle, forced to divulge what his main grudge in life is.  This scene immediately clues the viewer in that it’s not going to be the same old same old.  For this movie, Pegg’s character looks definitely worse for wear.  Of course, I assume that’s the point, but I am really floored by the visual transformation he’s undergone for The World’s End.  His dirty, matted black hair, somewhat weathered face, and overall hard living persona makes me imagine what Pigpen would look like if we saw him age.  Gary’s appearance could have been a quick laugh, but it makes perfect sense in the context of his character.

A part of why his look and attitude is so jarring is because Pegg has almost typecast himself as a nice guy. I’m almost revolted with Gary King, which is supposed to happen, but my reaction is compounded by my general love for Pegg. In the commentary, Pegg even admits that Gary is kind of a ‘bad guy’.  Nick Frost, traditionally the goofy and hilarious one, really gets a chance to expand his palette of acting colors.  Everybody already knows he’s an amazing comic actor, but the amount of empathy he draws in The World’s End really makes me feel like he would be a force, even separated from his two movie partners.

In rehab, Gary comes to the conclusion that the reason why his life has gone astray is because he never completed ‘The Golden Mile’, a pub crawl around his hometown at the time of his graduation.  He reunites his four friends through trickery and makes them attempt to finish the circuit with him.  Sounds like a standard bro movie right? Only problem is, people in his hometown have been replaced by robots! That doesn’t interrupt the drinking of course, but that’s part of the fun.

For action movie fans,  the fights between our heroes and the zombie village people are packed to the gill with frenetic energy.  I loved the intensity and quickness of the boss scenes in Scott Pilgrim vs The World, and Edgar Wright has taken the blitzkrieg to the next logical level.  If this is what we have to look forward to with Ant-Man, I’d be more excited than I already am.  Brad Allan, the fight choreographer, is part of Jackie Chan’s regular team and trained them for four weeks and helped design the sequences with Wright.

Special Features

The special features are pretty packed.  The combo pack comes with the Blu-Ray, the DVD, and an Ultraviolet or iTunes copy.  The Making of The World’s End really helped me to appreciate the nuances of the film.  It’s very obvious that all parties involved (the director, the actors, the crew, everybody) really cared about the message. The flip chart feature, where Pegg and Wright go through their flip chart for brainstorming The World’s End is a revealing look at how a script gets made.  The rehearsal footage not only covers the action scenes where the actors are going through the different choreography steps, but also the practical visual effects that went into animating the robots.

Overall

The tone of The World’s End is much darker than its predecessors.  Suicide, alcoholism, painful accidents.  Nothing is off limits.  Tonally, the shift was really unexpected.  While the filmmakers have covered meaningful subjects as growing up, commitment, and making lasting relationships, it seems like Wright and Pegg are really trying to say a lot here.  While overall I really enjoyed the movie, the mixture between the hilarious and the thoughtful is a little intense here.   Though the dark, bittersweet notes were an interesting contrast, I wish it didn’t feel as heavy handed as it did.  In the special features, they described the genre as ‘British social science fiction’.  It’s possible I just haven’t been fully indoctrinated in that type of movie.  Either way, I can tell I’ll enjoy this more with each new viewing.  In fact, maybe I’ll put it on again right now….

Rating:

ComicsOnline.com gives The World’s End 3.5 out of 5 amber pints in a pub!

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