Darkwing Duck, the terror that flaps in the night, is getting a dark and gritty reboot that no one asked for… especially not Darkwing Duck.
This is your spoiler warning. This episode is on Amazon right now. Spend the 2 dollars. It’s worth it.
BACKGROUND
Within the reboot of DuckTales, Darkwing Duck is a television show from the 90s which starred a stuntman named Jim Starling (Original Darkwing voice Jim Cummings), famous for doing all his own stunts. Most of the world appears not to remember the series, but Launchpad McQuack (Beck Bennett) is a huge fan of the character. His passion is so great that it tends to infect others with an affection for the show. It’s also mentioned repeatedly that the show ended on a cliffhanger.
WHO WOULDN’T LOVE THIS?
SUMMARY
Jim Starling, the former Darkwing Duck star, is signing autographs. Launchpad, along with another nameless die-hard Darkwing fan (Chris Diamantopoulos) tries to get an autograph, aided by Dewey Duck (Ben Schwartz), but keeps fainting from nerves. When Dewey tries to tag the pair in a photo, he discovers that Darkwing Duck is trending online, because they’re making a movie of the series. Believing that he’s naturally going to be asked to reprise the role, Starling heads to the studio making the movie, which happens to be McDuck Studios owned by Scrooge McDuck (David Tennant).
I hope this doesn’t happen at actual celebrity signings, but I’m sure it does.
Scrooge and the director of the Darkwing Duck film, Alistair Boorswan (Edgar Freaking Wright!!!), are having creative issues. When Louie, Launchpad, and Starling bust into the meeting, they’re shown the trailer, which portrays it as a grim and gritty reboot which satirizes a number of terrible superhero movies. Everyone agrees that this movie is terrible, including Scrooge, who puts Dewey in charge of directing the finale of the film. Starling is willing to be in it anyway, only to be surprised when the fan from earlier is introduced as the actor now playing Darkwing Duck in the movie. Starling attacks him, resulting in his and Launchpad’s expulsion from the studio. Starling talks Launchpad into helping him get back in so they can get him in the movie, with Launchpad trying to lock the new actor in his trailer. They fight briefly, but it’s revealed that the actor was inspired his entire life by Darkwing Duck and, while he knows the movie’s bad, wants nothing more than to try and help give another generation of kids the same hero he had. He and Launchpad quickly become best friends. The actor tries to confront Starling and suggests they work together to make the movie great, but Starling refuses to let anyone else be Darkwing Duck. He locks the actor in a closet and goes on set to film the finale.
It’s literally looking at your own reboot. Stylistic differences, but same core character.
When told that Darkwing surrenders in the last scene, Starling refuses to follow commands and instead starts wrecking the props, before grabbing the fully functional lightning gun that the film’s villain Megavolt (Keith Ferguson) was using and attacking the crew. The actor, now dressed in his Darkwing Duck costume, shows up to stop him. The two fight, with Starling growing increasingly more insane and villainous, until finally Launchpad tries to convince them to stop. A prop starts to collapse, and after the actor tries to save him, Starling jumps in and saves them both, sacrificing himself.
Again, you can tell them apart, but you know they’re still the same.
While the final fight was filmed, it’s revealed that Dewey recorded over it with a video of himself dancing. Scrooge declares that there will never be a Darkwing Duck movie. The actor is saddened that he can’t bring Darkwing Duck to a new generation, but Launchpad tells him he should just do it for real. The actor, revealed to be none other than Drake Mallard, agrees to give it a shot. Unbeknownst to the rest of the cast, it’s revealed that Jim Starling survived the explosion, but now is insane, with the colors being washed out of his costume to reveal that he is now Darkwing’s arch-nemesis: NEGADUCK.
To quote Mrs. Beakley: “That was a surprisingly suspenseful twist.”
END SUMMARY
When I first reviewed DuckTales, I mentioned that I consider it one of the more successful reboots I’ve ever seen. It takes everything that was good about the original, adds in some more source and expanded universe material, but also updates, enhances, expands, and, let’s be honest, sometimes corrects the source material (particularly some of the female characters). It strikes the perfect balance between nostalgia and originality, while also being clever and funny. This episode exemplifies that balance even better than the rest of the series.
And this is a series that finally animated Huey, Dewey, and Louie’s mom, unseen since 1938.
The concept of Darkwing Duck as a show within the show was an interesting way to reintroduce the character, though it seemed like it mostly closed the door on the actual character ever appearing in the series. However, it seems like, in retrospect, much of this was a carefully planned build-up to this episode. When the original surprise announcement that Darkwing Duck would appear in the new series was made, one of the producers, Frank Angones (who is the best at Twitter), mentioned that it was difficult to introduce Darkwing Duck, because once you put Darkwing in an episode, he just naturally becomes the focus. Despite, or perhaps because of this, they put relatively little of Darkwing Duck in the first season, limiting it to a single scene in a cold open, a fun gag about the catchy closing theme song to the show, and a bobblehead that said “let’s get dangerous.” It was extremely restrained, making this episode even more impactful.
The Bobblehead actually crashes fewer planes that Launchpad while flying.
The brilliance of this episode is that it is a reboot of a character within a reboot of a series and the episode is a parody of bad reboots. The most obvious part is the “trailer” for the film, which contains explicit references to the gratuitous slo-mo pearls falling from Batman v. Superman as well as the strange flaming letters scene from Daredevil, both of which have been mocked by everyone who has seen the films. The movie that Alistair Boorswan is making is dark and desaturated, much like Batman v. Superman, and Boorswan’s primary concern is conveying his dark and edgy “study of man’s inhumanity towards man.” Boorswan doesn’t actually care about what made Darkwing Duck good, only about his “artistic vision.” He also dislikes even presenting a heroic character as heroic, thinking that making someone darker and more morally compromised makes them automatically better. I’m not saying that’s a shot at DC films, except that of course I’m saying that. Meanwhile, Scrooge himself is a parody of studio interference in film, being so out of touch that he admits he didn’t see a movie since 1938 and says that “color’s all the rage nowadays.” He then gives the movie to Dewey, who tries to insert a musical number just because he likes it.
And yet, still better than BvS or Daredevil by virtue of brevity.
The core to this episode, though, is Drake Mallard. In the original series, Darkwing Duck was a hero because he wanted to be one. Sure, he wasn’t perfect, often egotistical, fame-hungry, histrionic, and sometimes just flat-out selfish, but he did have a strong moral center and a desire to be a hero. In this series, Drake Mallard is a hero because he wants to give children something to look up to, the way that he looked up to Darkwing Duck. This is the strongest rebuttal to the type of movie that this episode was satirizing: A movie where the heroes aren’t really heroic. This version of Darkwing wants to inspire the good in the world, rather than just combat the bad, like the well-written versions of Superman, Captain America, Spider-Man, or even Batman. These heroes are supposed to show us what we can do if we believe in fighting for justice and they’re not tied to a person but to an ideal because people fail, ideals don’t. This isn’t a new concept – hell, it’s one of the books of Plato’s Republic – but that’s why even if we have the “grittier, more realistic” heroes, it’s still important to have heroes out there who are focused on inspiring and presenting a better version of the world to fight for. Real heroes make us want to be better.
And they come in many, many forms.
Just a few more notes: Much like in Into the Spiderverse, the focus in this episode is on the hero always getting back up when they get knocked down. It’s genuinely moving to watch Drake continue to take a hilarious beating and keep fighting to protect everyone, and that’s one of the few things that anyone can relate to: the desire to just fight one more time for what’s right. It’s also appropriate that this would happen in a show featuring David Tennant, a man famous for being such a superfan of a character that inspired him that he grew up to be one of, if not THE, best versions of that character. If you don’t know what character I mean, please read this.
Overall, I loved this episode, if that’s not obvious. I think it gave us a bunch of solid gags, the set-up to a whole bunch of potential storylines and maybe even a spin-off, and it reminded me of why I love some superheroes over others. Plus, it got me to re-read part of the Republic, so that’s fun.
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So, per Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB and Metacritic and every other rating thing I can find, this is the lowest rated of the movies Edgar Wright directed (granted, it’s still favorably rated). There are a couple of reasons for this: It’s got a lot more jokes that require specific outside knowledge, it’s based on an indie comic that wasn’t even finished at the time, and it’s much more styled towards a particular culture. But, more than that, I think it’s that people didn’t know exactly how to feel about the main character.
To be fair, he doesn’t seem sure either.
SYNOPSIS
This movie takes place in the mysterious land of Toronto, Canada. However, even compared to the normal Canada, this one is particularly odd in that it obeys “video game rules.” 22-year-old bassist Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is dating a high-schooler named Knives Chau (Ellen “Watch GLOW” Wong). One night, however, he sees Amazon delivery girl Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) rollerblade through his dreams before meeting her in real life. He starts dating her, but doesn’t break up with Knives.
Admittedly, they’re both amazing.
When Scott plays at the Battle of the Bands with his band Sex Bob-Omb (Members Stephen Stills (Mark Webber) and Kim Pine (Alison Pill)), he is attacked by Ramona’s ex Matthew Patel (Satya Bhabha), who tells him that, in order to date Ramona, he has to defeat Ramona’s Seven Evil Exes. Scott is revealed to be an amazing fighter who ends up defeating Patel. Scott finally breaks up with Knives, but she blames Ramona and vows vengeance. Scott then tricks her second evil ex, Lucas Lee (Chris “You know who I am” Evans) into defeating himself, defeats her third ex, Todd Ingram (Brandon “You know who I am, but a little less” Routh) by tricking him into drinking cream which leads the Vegan Police (Clifton Collins, Jr. and Thomas Jane) to remove his “vegan powers,” and defeats her fourth evil ex, Roxy (or Roxie) Richter (Mae “Her?” Whitman) mildly pornographically.
I regret nothing.
Scott and Ramona have a fight, leading her to dump him. At the next Battle of the Bands, however, Scott and Sex Bob-Omb are pitted against Ramon’s fifth and sixth exes Kyle and Ken Katayanagi (Shota and Keita Saito), who they defeat, earning Scott an extra life. It’s then revealed that the Battle was sponsored by Ramona’s seventh ex, Gideon Graves (Jason Schwartzman), who she has now gotten back with. Scott quits the band when they sign with Gideon.
I’d go to more concerts if this happened.
After a pep-talk (consisting of “finish him”) from his roommate Wallace Wells (Kieran Culkin), Scott resolves to win Ramona back and heads to the Chaos Theater, where Gideon and the band (now with Young Neil (Johnny Simmons) are. Scott challenges Gideon but is defeated. He then uses his extra life to try again, this time being honest and mature about everything he’s done, finally defeating Gideon. He’s then confronted by Nega-Scott, who ends up being a nice guy. Ramona starts to leave, but, with prompting from Knives, Scott goes with her, walking into a doorway to somewhere new.
The doorway to somewhere.
END SYNOPSIS
Unlike the Cornetto Trilogy or Baby Driver, this movie was actually based on an existing property, the excellent Scott Pilgrim comics by Bryan Lee O’Malley. Because of that, a lot of the plot elements were kind of locked in, although they were adapted to film by Wright and Michael Bacall (21 Jump Street). A big thing is that the comic series wasn’t over at the time the movie was being made, so they had options as to how to end it. Unfortunately, they picked an ending, then found out that they’d picked the opposite of the comics and also the one that the audience didn’t like, so they reversed themselves. In the alternate ending, Scott actually picks Knives, which is weird because that’s basically undoing a lot of the growth of the film.
To be fair, Akira wasn’t done when they made the movie, and it’s amazing.
Now, again, this is the lowest rated film by Edgar Wright, and the main thing I think people don’t like about this movie is that Scott Pilgrim is not a great guy. In fact, that’s pretty much the point of the last volume of the comic series, which hadn’t come out yet. It’s a bit more explicit there, where it’s pointed out that much of the comic is just from Scott’s viewpoint and accepting the objective truth of what he’s done to people in the past allows him to finally realize that he’s a dick. In this movie, the realization isn’t as pronounced and is basically accomplished as part of a montage, which kind of hurts our appreciation of his growth.
Even though it’s LITERALLY A LEVEL-UP.
It’s not really abnormal to have a protagonist who’s a bad person, tons of movies have done it, but it’s the kind of bad person that Scott is. Scott’s really just kind of a selfish asshole who doesn’t realize it. He dated Kim and treated her so badly that during the movie, she doesn’t even break her gaze most of the time. She constantly insults him and when he claims to be offended, she seems skeptical that he’s even capable of caring what she thinks… which he usually ignores and moves on.
Kim doesn’t think well of him.
He doesn’t have a job, he mooches off of Wallace, he doesn’t have any aspirations, he dates a high-schooler despite being 22, and he cheats on her the minute he finds someone else. Unlike Shaun from Shaun of the Dead or Gary King from The World’s End, Scott doesn’t really have that many redeeming qualities. He’s cowardly, he’s not particularly loyal to his friends or his band, he’s not even that funny. You’re just not supposed to like him. At the end of the movie, we even meet “NegaScott,” who is revealed to be, if anything, slightly nicer than regular Scott, meaning Scott is actually the evil twin. But, since he’s played as being somewhat adorable, a great bassist and fighter, and is the protagonist, you find yourself naturally kind of wanting to like him, so the movie is kind of confusing your feelings. I think that turned a lot of people off.
The point of Scott’s journey isn’t actually to be a better person in the heroic cycle where he ends up completely different and changed by the journey at the end. Scott’s story is just him realizing that he needs to change and accepting that he isn’t the awesome person he thinks he is.
Meanwhile, Ramona is portrayed pretty straightforwardly. She’s not a great person either, but she’s more honest about it and doesn’t like it. She even tries to keep out of other people’s lives to spare them her the trouble of dealing with her. However, she’s not much braver than Scott, trying to run or hide from any issue, symbolized by her ever-changing hair.
And they’re the colors of the three goddesses of Zelda
Since I’m apparently doing characters, I will have to pause and say that I think this is among the best supporting casts ever placed in a film. Yes, most of them seem like exaggerated caricatures, but it’s a video game world inside a comic book, that’s actually nailing it. I particularly love Kieran Culkin as Wallace Wells, who manages to be both supportive and also undercut Scott’s bad habits constantly. The villains also carry sufficient weight, particularly given that most of them are only on film for a few minutes.
I didn’t make an Igby Goes Down joke. I’m proud of me.
Now, to get into the most impressive part of the movie, the style. Since Wright was following the comic, he didn’t get as much control over the plot and characters, but more than made up for it in his choices of music, costume, and settings. The amount of effort put forth in the film is ridiculous, with almost every shot having some sort of secondary meaning.
This after he’s beaten two of them.
The biggest one is probably the style of the villains. Each one is given elements that reflect what number they are in the league. Matthew Patel appears to only have one eye due to his hairstyle and has one chevron on his shoulder. Lucas Lee uses stunt doubles and has a 2 tattooed on his neck. Todd wears a 3 on his shirt and loses due to his third strike violation of Vegan Law. Roxie fights Scott in a club called “4” and is defeated by “foreplay.” The Katayanagi twins have an amp that goes to 11 (5+6). Gideon’s fight is filled with sevens. In contrast, Scott wears a shirt saying “zero,” drinks Coke Zero, and draws zeroes when he’s nervous.
The transitions in the movie are impressive, with the characters constantly shifting from scene to scene, often in one fluid motion, which makes it feel more like a comic book or a video game transition. Likewise, there are a ton of quick-change cuts that almost feel like the character just changed their equipment rather than getting dressed. Even a lot of the actions have visual cues, ranging from motion lines to outright verbal sound effects.
The music in the film is amazing, as you would expect, but the sound effects are also perfect. In a sitcom scene, they play the Seinfeld theme. In a bathroom scene, they play the Fairy Fountain theme from The Legend of Zelda series. Video game sounds are repeatedly used to punctuate actions, including the famous “KO” effect from VirtuaFighter.
Overall, I love this film. It’s got great re-watchability, it’s visually stunning, and, mostly, it’s one of the only movies that actually feels like a video game, far more than any video game movie.
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We’re at my favorite. Yes, that’s right, out of the entire Cornetto Trilogy, this one is the one that I will re-watch most. Now, that’s not to say I don’t like the other two immensely, I love the hell out of them, but this is one of the most perfect action movie parodies out there while still being meaningful, intelligent, and freaking hilarious. The World’s Endimpacts me more on a personal level, Shaun of the Dead is funnier to me, but this one struck the balance that I think works best.
Most bad ass cover, too.
Based on feedback, I’m using my new format for movie reviews, so, if you want a full annotated summary of the film, go to the bottom and click the link.
SYNOPSIS
PC Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is removed from the Metropolitan Police Service in London due to being so dedicated to his job that he makes all the other officers look bad. He’s also not particularly social or fun, due to constantly being “on duty,” which doesn’t help. Since firing him would draw attention, they instead promote him to Sergeant and transfer him to Sandford, Gloucestershire, a small village known for being peaceful and quaint.
Fewer Santa stabbings in the countryside.
When he arrives, he is partnered with PC Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), son of Inspector Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent), the head of the local police service. Danny is a huge fan of action movies and is disappointed that most of police life, according to Angel, is paperwork and regulations. The two eventually start to bond with Danny showing Angel Point Break and Bad Boys II as examples of “proper action,” before finally becoming friends as they investigate cases together.
I’d watch a show of this.
Meanwhile, a series of murders (shown to the audience but framed to the characters as accidents) start claiming members of the town, leading Angel to suspect there’s a serial killer. He eventually accuses local obviously evil guy Simon Skinner (Timothy Dalton) of killing everyone as part of a real estate scheme, only for it to be revealed that Skinner clearly couldn’t have done it. He then theorizes that Skinner could have done it with help, since he employs much of the town, but Frank dismisses it as paranoia, because murders don’t happen in Sandford.
In no way does he look like he totally 100% did it.
Nicholas returns to his hotel room, only to be ambushed by Lurch (Rory McCann), Skinner’s supermarket cart boy (trolley if you’re British). Angel fights him off and goes to confront Skinner, only to find out that most of the town, including Frank, are part of a “secret” society, the Neighborhood Watch Alliance. Even crazier, the murders weren’t part of a grand, logical scheme, but just based on thinking the people were annoying or inconvenient to have in the “Village of the Year.”
Killed for Bad Acting and an Annoying Laugh, respectively.
Danny helps Nicholas escape, but he comes back, armed to the teeth. Together with Danny and, later, the rest of the police force, Angel engages in a shootout that destroys much of the town and ends with everyone in the NWA in jail or dead. At the end of the film, Nicholas and Danny are still partners, now having fun being bad ass on the streets of Sandford.
Most bromantic moment in film.
END SYNOPSIS
Part of the reason why this movie is my favorite is… well, I’ll Venn Diagram it.
I love The World’s End, but the humor was a little too dense the first time.
The first time I saw Shaun of the Dead, it was amazing. The first time I saw The World’s End, it was just good. The second time I saw Shaun of the Dead, it was much the same. The second time I saw The World’s End, it became one of my favorite films. Hot Fuzz started at amazing and moved into epic on repeat viewing.
Part of it is that the foreshadowing in this movie is more subtle and spread-out than in the other films, but, because it’s based on action movie clichés, you really already know what’s going to happen. There’s one sequence where Danny asks Angel about all of the “action” he’s had in London which lists all of the things that are going to happen during the final sequence, including shooting a gun into the air and going “Aaaargh” a la Point Break. There’s another sequence where Angel is identifying potential threats on the street that turns out to be accurate, even though it’s portrayed as being paranoid.
Jumping through the air while firing two guns. Life goal achieved.
The foreshadowing is also combined with Wright’s wonderful use of recontextualized repetition (apparently the Trope is called Ironic Echoing), with most of the lines in the first act being repeated, or repeated with a slight variation, in the second or third act, including “Get a look at his arse/horse,” which is one of my favorite uses of regional dialect wordplay. Yes, there are others. Probably. The point is, I find the way they compare harmless and dire situations in dialogue to be hilarious. They discuss catching a serial killer and a swan in almost the exact same tone, compare Angel’s initial hazing with his moment of broken spirit, and compare a firefight with solving a crossword. The last one brings me to all of the brick jokes.
When you ride in on a white horse, everyone wants to take a look at it.
A brick joke is when you make a mediocre joke which later turns out to be the set-up for a bigger joke. If you want examples, Arrested Development is filled with them and I even pointed out that Bob Newhart once set-up the joke in one episode and paid it off in another series. This movie, similarly, sets up some goofy lines that later pay off into absolutely ridiculous scenes, ranging from the revelation that there IS an Aaron A. Aaronson living in the village (Angel thought that was a fake name to mock him) and that an armed farmer and his equally armed mother are the first people that Angel takes out when he comes back (having been told that everyone and his mother owns a gun in the countryside). Actually, most of the jokes that are made at Angel’s expense seem to later come true.
Took me like 3 times to get this joke.
Similar to Shaun of the Dead, the movie does a lot of sharp, dramatic cuts accompanied by music to show Angel going through all of the boring parts of police work as opposed to the kind of action sequences that usually are associated with them. While Shaun of the Dead used it to draw comparisons between Shaun’s life and zombies, Hot Fuzz uses it to subvert the usual cop movie trait of ignoring the procedural parts of policework, which reminds us of Angel’s absolute rigidity about his policework. And that brings us to the big theme of the movie.
Done to “Here Come the Fuzz” by Jon Spencer and the Elegant Trio.
All three of the Cornetto Trilogy films are about the dangers of perpetual adolescence. In Shaun of the Dead and The World’s End, it’s fairly obvious what the main characters are. Shaun’s given up on really living life and Gary has never done anything with his life. Nicholas Angel, however, is not an unsuccessful police officer, but an absolutely amazing one. He is dedicated to the law to an almost absurd degree and that’s the problem: he’s got nothing in his life except for his job.
This is his “leisure” activity.
It’s a very different kind of immaturity from Shaun or Gary, because Angel is actually doing exactly what he wants to do: Be an amazing police officer. It’s just that, in pursuit of it, he has never learned how to do anything else or have a real connection with any other human. He is just his job, not a real person. In existentialist terms, I guess he’d be avoiding engaged agency (if this is wrong, please correct me, it’s been a while). So, his journey is to discover that there is more to life than just being the thing you thought you wanted to be when you were five. You also have to enjoy life and the movie points out that one of the best ways to do that is to be a little bit less uptight and a little more immature. Having never really been connected to anyone, at the end of the movie, Nicholas actually does have a successful relationship, it’s just not a romantic one.
And clearly has gotten into gardening.
Just like in Shaun of the Dead and The World’s End, the main character is a reflection of the antagonist (Shaun: Zombies, Gary: Network), in this case the Neighborhood Watch Alliance, who, just as Nicholas is dedicated to policework to his own personal detriment, are dedicated to their cause of being “Village of the Year” to the detriment of the citizens. This is represented best by the fact that Nicholas constantly repeats idealisms like “the law is the law,” while the NWA constantly repeat “the greater good.” Both of these are unforgiving maxims, enforced with no regard to what might be more humane. They even show that most of the people that Nicholas arrested without considering being more lenient are subsequently murdered by the NWA. It’s a great way to highlight the protagonist’s flaws, by showing that a slightly more absurd version of the same flaw would lead to something horrifying. Granted, it’s also that Angel wants to be superlative through hard work and exceptionalism whereas the NWA wants to be superlative by eliminating all which would drag them down (and, for the record, based on how many fatal “accidents” people mention in the movie, they’re doing it more than Murder, She Wrote). Basically, Angel wants to make the trains on time, while the NWA will kill everyone that makes them late.
The word “Fascism” is literally defined in the film. I’m sure that’s unrelated.
Similarly, Nicholas has wanted to maintain the same image of himself from when he was five and decided that he wanted to be a police officer. The town, likewise, appears frozen in the past, having a rustic aesthetic, even with an Apple computer from the 90s. They both have tried to maintain the image they had in the past, to the point that they strongly resist anything that would change it.
The doctor still makes house calls.
The music, too, deserves a nod, and it’s always wonderful to watch a director that understands that the soundtrack and the score are a big part of the film experience. Granted, as well as it’s done here, it does pale in comparison to Wright’s song use in Baby Driver and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Still, the songs are well used and they tie in thematically, something that adds a lot to the experience.
The movie really does blend style and substance perfectly, an amazing example of exactly what film can do as a medium. It’s not too artistic to be watchable without effort, but the more effort you put into watching it, the more it rewards you. Hell, until the third or fourth watching, I didn’t notice that almost everyone’s name in the village is actually a profession (Skinner, Cooper, Hatcher, Staker, Treacher, Blower, Draper, Wainwright, Cartwright), yet another way to mirror that Angel is just his job, while the fact that they’re all archaic professions reinforces the village’s frozen nature. I imagine the only reason “Butterman” isn’t a profession name is because Nick Frost named the character as a condition of doing the film.
Additionally, the posters in the background change throughout the film, indicating which characters replace the functions of others, or how the NWA is manipulating the population in subtle ways. There’s probably still stuff I’m missing. I even had to have someone point out to me that N.W.A. was also the band that did “Fuck tha Police,” a great hidden joke. Seriously, the amount of effort that must have gone into this movie is mind-boggling.
To summarize, I love this movie. Aside from maybe Ghostbusters, Pulp Fiction, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I watch annually, this is the movie I’ve probably re-watched the most. Since it came on Netflix, I’ve probably watched it half a dozen times just when I want something fun on in the background. I’m glad that Edgar Wright has moved past the Cornetto Trilogy, but these films will always have a special place in my heart.
I’m going to do the rest of his films, but I think I’m going to make a special page just for these three reviews.
If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.
So, it’s happening. I’m doing all of Edgar Wright’s movies, though I guess not in any particular order. There aren’t that many, since Fistful of Fingers never got distributed and he got kicked off of Ant-Man, and I probably won’t review Spaced unless it’s requested. I do like the show, though not as much as the subsequent films, I just am already regretting the shows I’m currently set to review… especially since I plan on doing an actual live review of the next season of Doctor Who. But, for now, I’ve got some more amazing movies by a visionary director to review.
You should see him do “Blue Steel.”
This was the first of the Cornetto Trilogy and also the least-earning one at $30 Million, though on a $6 Million budget, it still was profitable… though it earned less money that year than Christmas with the Kranks, Fat Albert, or Catwoman, a fact that should kill your soul.
For many reasons.
Slight format change: I’m putting a synopsis here, and a full summary after the “read more” page, so you can just read the analysis and not have to wade through the movie. If you want the summary, just go to the bottom and read it first. Let me know if you think this is better.
SYNOPSIS
Shaun Riley (Simon Pegg) gets dumped by his girlfriend, Liz (Kate Ashfield), because he’s so dispassionate about life that he only wants to drink at the same pub, the Winchester, with his slovenly roommate, Ed (Nick Frost). Shaun decides he’s going to get his life together, but unfortunately he’s been missing the fact that the zombie apocalypse has come. Shaun and Ed form a plan to get his mom, Barbara (Penelope Wilton), kill his step-dad Philip (Bill Nighy) who has been bitten, rescue Liz, and head to the Winchester.
Who you gonna call?
However, things don’t go as planned. Shaun can’t bring himself to kill Philip, Liz brings along her flatmates David and Dianne (Dylan Moran and Lucy Davis), Ed screws up most of the plans by being reckless and irresponsible, Barbara is bitten, and Philip becomes a zombie. They finally make it to the pub, but are surrounded by hordes of zombies. Eventually, David, Dianne, and Barbara are killed, Ed is bitten, and Shaun and Liz prepare to go out fighting, but are rescued by the military. Six months later, Shaun and Liz are engaged and Shaun keeps zombie Ed in the shed to hang out with, their relationship mostly unchanged.
END SYNOPSIS
Something painfully occurred to me during this re-watch: In terms of re-watchability, this is the worst of the Cornetto Trilogy. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still fun to watch again, but Edgar Wright’s films are notoriously good to watch a second, third, or tenth time. Hell, the other two movies in the trilogy, Hot Fuzz and The World’s End, are arguably BETTER when you see them a second time. This one is about the same. Still good, but about the same.
Good, I got to re-use this.
Part of that is that this movie has less of the foreshadowing and repetition that are in the other two films, because this was the first one. Sure, they’re in the film and they’re done great, but they just aren’t as polished as they are in the others. But, none of that makes this film any less amazing, because when you consider that this is an underfunded first outing of a director who had previously only done television, this is basically watching Babe Ruth’s first home run.
Or some cricket guy’s first cricket home run in a cricket game
Like the best zombie movies, the point of the movie is to use zombies as a metaphor. In Night of the Living Dead it’s Vietnam-era America (and a dash of racism from the living), in Dawn of the Dead it’s consumerism, in Day of the Dead it’s a lack of communication, in Land of the Dead it’s the nature of power to eventually be countered, and in Dead Alive it’s so that someone can kick ass for the Lord (if you don’t get this reference, ask me to review the movie). Shaun of the Dead actually takes it a step further and just points out that so many people are effectively already zombies that the actual zombification is really secondary. Hell, at the end, Noel (Rafe “I was the bad guy in Jurassic World 2” Spall), the jerk that worked with Shaun, is basically doing the same job now that he’s a zombie.
Tie, collar, what’s the difference?
Shaun feels the way that many people feel. He’s given up doing anything he’s passionate about (like his deejaying) because he has bills to pay. He instead chooses to just do the same thing over and over again, drinking with Ed and Liz at the same bar, never trying to be stimulated, because when you know your dreams are dead, what the hell’s the point in doing anything else? And, like many of us, he’s just existing, he’s not really living. He’s not depressed or suicidal, he’s just dispassionate and doesn’t know what to do since he can’t do the thing that he actually wanted. It’s like most people whose passions are art or theater but aren’t lucky enough to do them for a living, you end up just working a job to keep a roof over your head, and you don’t want to dedicate all the energy for a hobby. You know that you could, but you also know it’d be super hard for little reward, so you don’t, and then you’re even more miserable by choice.
Pictured: Not zombies, yet.
To summarize: You’re not living, but you’re not dead.
I’m going to add a clip from the show Steven Universe here, because there is a song that perfectly encapsulates what I’m saying.
The key to the movie is stated by Liz at the end: ” You did something. That’s what counts.” When Shaun actually starts to do something instead of just going through the motions, everything goes wrong, which is exactly the thing that most people fear so much that it stops them from doing anything. But, that’s also exactly what allows Shaun to start being a more complete person at the end of the movie. He hasn’t stopped hanging out with Ed, hasn’t stopped going to the Winchester, but he’s also doing other things that have some risk and discomfort. And that’s how you really feel alive.
As for the technical qualities of the movie itself, the foreshadowing and repeated dialogue is amazing, partially because it almost all functions as clever wordplay and partially because recontextualizing things is an easy way to convey meaning by inherently drawing comparisons. The big one is Ed’s speech about what they’ll do the next day:
“… Have a Bloody Mary first thing. Get a bite at The King’s Head. Grab a couple at The Little Princess, stagger back here and bang! We’re up at the bar for shots. How’s that for a slice of fried gold?”
Aside from Ed’s speech telling the plot of the movie (Bloody Mary is the first zombie they kill, a bite at the King’s head is Philip getting bitten, grab a couple at the little princess is picking up David, Dianne, and Liz, back to the Winchester for shots is… self-explanatory), there’s also Ed telling his other roommate Pete (Peter “I’m the Tick” Serafun… Seramichelle… Serafinowicz) that the next time he sees him he’s dead and Pete telling Ed to live in the shed.
He died doing what he loved: Being naked.
The repetition is pretty great, too. Shaun’s dialogue to Ed when he’s playing the game is mirrored with Ed saying the same to Shaun when he’s shooting zombies. There’s a shot in the beginning of the film when Shaun closes his bathroom mirror and Pete is there as a jump-scare parody, which later is duplicated with the zombie Pete. “You’ve got red on you” naturally takes on two meanings. Shaun’s walk to the bodega near his house is similar both times, except the second time the apocalypse has happened. When Shaun tells David to turn the jukebox off, he says “kill the Queen,” (because the song is by Queen) which becomes a conflict when David tries to kill Barbara, who, as the King’s wife, would be the Queen. Additionally, almost every character seen in the first half becomes a zombie in the second.
Before and After the Night of the Living Dead
Another hallmark of the film is that there are sharp, dramatic cuts with powerful sound effects for the most mundane things, like adjusting a tie or washing hands. Like with the repeated dialogue, this actually helps to convey the metaphor by saying that the scenes that normally would feature the zombies feature the mundane aspects of Shaun’s life.
There are tons of references to other zombie and horror movies, with businesses being named for George Romero, Lucio Fulci, John Landis, and their films. Much like in the original Night of the Living Dead, the zombies are never actually explained, although the proposed causes are borrowed from other zombie movies.
An A-Mary-can Werewolf in London. Shut up, I laughed, you should too.
Other than that, the movie’s just funny as hell. Every performance is pretty much spot on, although I have a special love for Penelope Wilton as Barbara. She was always so gentle and loving that it was honestly heartbreaking to watch Shaun kill her.
Also, last thing, I finally looked up what Noel’s dialogue means when he says he only has an “Henry.” That’s Cockney rhyming slang for pot, because it’s Henry the Eighth -> An Eighth of Pot. Cockney rhyming slang is always fun.
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So, most of you who read regularly may have noticed that I have a full-on heavy-duty man-crush on Edgar Wright. He’s my go-to guy for proving that most people don’t want quality films, by pointing out that, until Baby Driver, he didn’t have a movie crack $100 million, despite them being some of the most clever and thought-out movies I’ve ever watched. Because of the amount of detail put into the films and the layers of storytelling, imagery, and dialogue, Edgar Wright makes the most consistently re-watchable films I’ve ever seen. I’ve probably seen Hot Fuzz as many times as I’ve watched epics like The Godfather, classics like Ghostbusters, and cinematic marvels like Jurassic Park, because I always find something new to love about the film. He’s like Kubrick, except I don’t think he would murder me if we met in real life, until I refused to ever stop hugging him.
Quit making me love you.
The World’s End was the last entry in the “Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy” beginning with Shaun of the Dead and continuing through Hot Fuzz. The movies all star Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (actually, a lot of the cast is the same), they’re character dramas hidden within the framework of a classic genre film (in this case, alien invasion), and they’re all about perpetual adolescence, though I think this one hits that theme hardest.
I’m inevitably going to do the other two movies, probably next week because I now have it stuck in my head, but this was the one that got requested, so I’ll do it first.
SUMMARY
The film starts with Gary King (Simon Pegg, Thomas Law as teen), recounting his high-school years. He was part of a five-man group, consisting of himself, Peter Page (Eddie Marsden, James Tarpey as teen), Oliver “O-man” Chamberlain (Martin Freeman, Luke Bromley as teen), Steven Prince (Paddy Considine, Jasper Levine as teen), and his best friend Andy Knightley (Nick Frost, Zachary Bailess as teen). In their senior year, the group attempted to conquer “The Golden Mile” by having one pint of beer in each of the 12 pubs in their hometown of Newton Haven.
As Gary recounts it, the group slowly lost focus and never did succeed, quitting after the ninth pub, with Gary watching the sunrise, seeing a shooting star, and thinking that life would never quite be as good as it was that night. It then shifts to the adult Gary talking to a support group of some kind, who confirms that, indeed, his entire life has never again been as fulfilling as it was that night in Newton Haven. Another member of the group asks if Gary is disappointed that he didn’t finish the “Golden Mile,” to which Gary says that he isn’t. However, the look on his face clearly says otherwise, before becoming contemplative and then, finally, happy at having figured out what he’s going to do.
During the opening sequence, it’s shown that while Gary’s friends are all now successful, Gary himself is living in a tiny, trashy apartment and dressing like he did in high school. Gary visits each of them in turn, trying to convince all of them to join him again in completing the “Golden Mile.” He ends up succeeding through a hastily-crafted series of lies, including telling each member that the others had already agreed and that his mother has just died. It’s notable that Gary tends to use information from the previous person to manipulate the next one, clearly approaching them in order of perceived resistance. Andy, who used to be Gary’s closest friend, is the most resistant, due to some undisclosed incident in the past, but he finally gives in.
Suckers, one and all.
As the five make their way to Newton Haven, it becomes more apparent that Gary is basically trying to live the same life he has since High School. He wants to have a good time and doesn’t particularly care for anything more responsible. He still drives the “same” car, the Beast, though, through his monologue, he reveals that literally everything in the vehicle has been replaced at some point. He even has kept the title in his friend Peter’s name for more than 20 years, updating it periodically to ensure that Peter had to pay for all of his tickets. Gary also is apparently doing some form of drugs, as he admits to snorting something on the toilet when he’s worried that the police will find it. When they actually reach the town and start the trip, Gary still has the same map from the original trip.
At least most of their outfits have changed.
At the initial stop, “The First Post,” Gary makes a speech about how it’s a quaint pub that used to be a post office, only to go inside and find a generic pub that has been recently refurbished. Gary tries to find nostalgia in it, even though the others make it clear that it used to look absolutely nothing like this. The four have their first drink, aside from the teetotalling Andy, then make their way to the next pub.
Seen one quaint English pub, seen ’em all.
At pub two, “The Old Familiar,” they enter only to find that it’s identical to the last pub, due to the “Starbuck-ification” of the UK. The group is joined by Oliver’s sister Sam (Rosamund Pike), who Steven has a crush on and who Gary had sex with in the bathroom of the same pub back on the original pub crawl. Gary tries to get in Sam’s pants again but fails due to being Gary. Sam leaves and the group heads out.
Everyone rises but the King.
At “The Famous Cock,” they run into Basil (David “I am also Doctor Who” Bradley), the conspiracy theorist of Newton Haven, but he avoids talking to them. Gary is then thrown out due to his behavior at the pub on the original crawl. While everyone else says that 11 pints is still enough, Gary secretly combines three leftover beers he finds outside into a pint and downs it.
Still counts.
At “The Cross Hands,” most of the group wants to abandon Gary after he callously ignores them talking about actual problems and keeps trying to re-live his glory days. Eventually, as they’re about to leave, Gary heads to the bathroom, leaving his phone. They answer it, finding out it’s from his mother, who he had told them had recently died of cancer. In the toilet, Gary sees that there’s still a hole in the wall from the original crawl. A high-schooler joins him but ignores Gary’s attempts to talk about the past. Gary, angry, shoves him, but the boy responds by grabbing Gary by the face and trying to knock him out. Gary fights back and ends up decapitating the boy, who is revealed to be filled with a blue ink-like substance. The head continues to move.
Andy suddenly comes in, pissed at Gary for his lies, ignoring the headless body. A group of other high-schoolers enter and attack the five, resulting in a fight which has Gary and his court emerge victorious. They attempt to call out to talk about what happened but find that their attempts are blocked. The Network is down. The five realize that this is why everything about the town has been so strange and no one seemed to remember them: Everyone has been replaced by robots. Everyone but Gary wants to head back to London, but Gary says that them quitting the crawl will look suspicious. They end up continuing the pub crawl.
Four sad faces, one happy face. Symbolism is a thing.
As they make their way to “The Good Companions,” it’s apparent that many people throughout the town are now watching them. They enter, drain their beers quickly (including Andy, who is now drinking), and leave. At the next pub, “The Trusty Servant,” Oliver heads to the toilet as Gary approaches Reverend Green (Michael Smiley), his former drug dealer. Green tells them that the things in the town are NOT robots, because “robot” means slave, and they’re not slaves. They’re confronted by two more “not-robots” who try to silence Green, only for Green to eventually be told by a voice that he has a call. After answering it sadly, Green bitterly says “thanks” to the group and heads to the bathroom, where Oliver emerges. They continue on the crawl.
Wait, one of these men had drugs? Shocking!
At “The Two Headed Dog,” much of the town’s pretense has been dropped, as the bartender now not only knows their names, but also seemingly everything they’ve said to a “not-robot” throughout the crawl. They discuss that they need a new term for the “not-robots” and they end up adopting the word “Blank” due to not coming up with a better term. Sam arrives with her friends The Twins (Kelly and Stacey Franklin), who she says have been acting weird. Gary tries to explain to her what’s happened, but she doesn’t believe him. However, when Sam tells the Twins what he said, they react poorly, leading her to believe it’s true. Gary appears and attacks them, pulling off one’s head to prove the point.
The Twins attack Gary and Sam, but Gary fights them off. Steven emerges to confess his feelings to Sam, but is interrupted by the Twinbot, which is one twin with the other’s legs for arms. Steven and Gary defeat the Twinbot, rejoin the group, and head off to “The Mermaid.”
At “The Mermaid,” Steven is abducted by Basil, who reveals that he’s never been replaced because he prevents the Blanks from ever getting his DNA sample that they need to make a copy of him. Basil tells Steven that the Blanks actually arrived in the shooting star that Gary saw at the end of the original crawl. Meanwhile, three Blanks who are in the form of the hottest girls from high school (Sophie Evans, Samantha White, and Rose Reynolds) seduce Gary, Peter, and Andy. One even swallows Andy’s wedding ring, though he’s recently separated.
This is not playing fair.
Basil explains that the Blanks don’t want to replace people if they can help it and, in fact, are genuinely nicer and better than most humans but, unless you agree to comply with their plans, they replace you. Basil refuses to tell Steven what happens to the people who get replaced before disappearing. Steven relays the information to the group, now including Sam, however, it becomes apparent that the Blanks aren’t omniscient when they produce a copy of a citizen who died a few years back in Italy. They leave for the next pub.
At “The Beehive,” they are met by Mr. Shepherd (Pierce “I’m here because Dalton isn’t and they still needed a Bond” Brosnan), their old teacher. He explains that the Blanks have been replacing people because they want to bring Earth up to a sufficient level of civilization to allow Earth to join a Network of planets which cooperate and interact. Oliver seems to agree with Shepherd until Andy notices that Oliver now has a birthmark that he had previously removed and punches the top of his head off. Seeing that Oliver is actually now a Blank, the group attacks Shepherd, before they’re attacked by a swarm of Blanks from the bar. Andy, having reached his breaking point, hulks out, grabs two barstools and starts smashing every head he can find. During the fight, Gary manages to finish his ninth pint, matching his record from the original crawl. After beating all of the Blanks, the group is met with yet another wave of the same Blanks, including a replaced Shepherd.
I came here to drink beer and kick ass, and I’ve had a LOT of beer!
The remaining five members split up and escape, planning on reuniting at the smoke house, a shack at The Bowls Club where they used to get high. Gary runs off with Sam, putting her in her car and telling her to get out of the town, while he rejoins the others. Sam drives off as the Blanks stop trying to look human, instead having glowing hands and faces. Gary makes it to the shack where Peter, Steven, and Andy are waiting for him.
Inside, everyone is suspicious of Gary but, after realizing that they can use birthmarks and scars as identifiers, the group prove to each other that they’re real. It’s revealed that Andy and Gary’s relationship soured after Gary overdosed on drugs, drove him to the hospital while drunk, rolled the car, and almost died from the crash while Gary ran off to avoid getting in trouble. Gary refuses to show his scars on his arms, instead smashing his head into a beam to produce blood as proof. The four remaining friends leave, only for Gary to lead them towards the next pub.
On the way, Peter meets the Blank of his former bully, Shane (Darren Boyd), and Peter uses the opportunity to beat the living crap out of him, resulting in his capture. Gary refuses to quit the pub crawl, resulting in Andy knocking him out and carrying him. Andy and Steven try to get to Gary’s car, but they have to cut through the tenth pub, “The King’s Head.” They rest briefly in the bar, only for Gary to wake up and drink his tenth pint. Gary says that “ten pubs isn’t bad,” but then throws Andy his keys and makes a run for it. Andy throws the keys to Steven and follows Gary as he makes it to the next pub.
At “The Hole in the Wall,” Andy fights his way through a crowd of Blanks to join Gary, who finishes his 11th pint and marks it off the list. As they are surrounded, Steven drives through the wall of the bar. Steven gets overwhelmed by Blanks and Andy follows Gary out of a window. Gary makes it all the way to “The World’s End,” the final pub, with Andy in pursuit, though Andy stops briefly to retrieve his wedding ring from the Blank that swallowed it. Gary finds a pint already poured for him, but Andy smacks it out of his hand. Andy finally confronts Gary over all of his betrayal, revealing that it wasn’t the car crash or any of the drugs, it was that Andy got better and became an adult, but Gary didn’t. Andy wanted to keep following Gary through life, but Gary never actually got a life.
I’m a sucker for a car through the wall.
Gary challenges Andy about what a happy life actually feels like, but Andy says that his life is far from perfect, as his wife has now taken his kids and he knows he can’t win her back. It’s then revealed that Gary had recently tried to commit suicide by slitting his wrists and was committed. However, he hated being told what to do by the program there, preferring the freedom of his youth.
It never got better, Andy. It never got better than that night. It was supposed to be the beginning of my life. All that promise and fucking optimism. That feeling that we could take on the whole universe. It was a big lie. NOTHING HAPPENED!
Gary tries to get his last pint, but upon pulling the lever, the bar sinks underground and the pair are confronted by The Network (Bill Nighy), a disembodied voice. The Network speaks to Gary as the representative of the human race, humorously sounding like he’s calling him “Gary, King of the humans” as opposed to “Gary King, of the humans.” The Network explains that the plan is to replace a small percentage of the population to spread the Gospel of the Network, so that the planet will be able to be part of the Galactic Community. It’s revealed that, if you agree to join, you are given the option of being young again, with only your happy memories. Gary is met with his younger self, who he quickly kills, saying “there’s only one Gary King.”
Gary grows up.
The Network threatens him, but Gary challenges the Network, asking it who it is to tell the Human Race what to do. The Network calls Humanity children, but Andy counters that, children or not, helping someone requires their consent, otherwise it’s just controlling them. The Network tells them that this attitude is exactly why Earth is the least civilized planet in the entire galaxy and it enables Earth to constantly repeat avoidable cycles of self-destruction. Steven rejoins the pair, having survived, and agrees with the duo about resisting the assimilation. It’s revealed that the Network has not been particularly successful at dealing with Earth, having had to replace basically everyone in the town, with the rest being turned into organic fertilizer. The trio keep rebuffing the Network until the Network asks them what they want, at which point Gary quotes The Wild Bunch:
We wanna be free. We wanna be free, to do what we want to do and we want to get loaded and we wanna have a good time. And that’s what we’re gonna do.
The Network then gives up and leaves the planet to its own devices. The Blanks all power down but the Network starts to overload. The group runs away but still are going to be caught in the blast radius, until Sam returns with her car, allowing them to narrowly outrun the explosion.
The end is narrated by Andy. After the explosion, there was a pulse that apparently sent humanity back to the Dark Ages. There were a lot of casualties, including Gary’s mother, but Andy tries to look on the bright side as he gets back with his wife. He says he doesn’t miss any processed foods, but he sees a Cornetto wrapper and looks desperate to eat one. The Blanks woke up and face discrimination, though they now have no connection to the Network. Peter’s blank replaced Peter with his family and Oliver’s Blank took over Oliver’s business. Steven and Sam got together.
Though Andy doesn’t know what happened to Gary, the film shows Gary walking through the post-apocalyptic landscape accompanied by the younger Blanks of his companions. He walks into yet another pub called “The Rising Sun,” which has a sign out front that says “No Blanks.” Gary orders five waters, but the bartender refuses to serve the Blanks. Gary says that they’re on a quest, then orders five waters again. The bartender moves to grab a weapon, but Gary draws a broadsword and gets into fighting formation with his companions. When asked who the hell he thinks he is, Gary ends the movie with the line:
They call me The King.
“Gary and the Blanks” is also a pretty good band name.
END SUMMARY
I think this movie, more than the other two Cornetto films, deserves to be represented, because it was the most overlooked. Part of that is because it came out at the same time as another two movies that were also Apocalypse comedies, This is the End and Rapture-Palooza, and part of it is that it just wasn’t marketed well. Honestly, if it hadn’t been by Edgar Wright, Nick Frost, and Simon Pegg, I wouldn’t have seen it in the theater, and even when I did, I didn’t get as much out of it as Hot Fuzz or Shaun of the Dead. And that’s really the main thing that I think hurt this movie: It’s much better on the second or third viewing than the first. On the first, you miss too many things that later become amazing jokes or character moments, because you’re still trying to follow the story and who dropped what zinger in the last conversation. The movie is a lot denser in its humor than the other two films, so it’s more important to already have an idea of what the plot is.
Now, to help with this, the Cornetto Trilogy films are huge on foreshadowing. In Shaun of the Dead, Nick Frost’s character Ed describes what he and Shaun (Pegg) are going to do the next day, which ends up being a humorous description of the movie’s plot. Additionally, Shaun outlines the plan for dealing with the attack multiple times, the TV broadcast humorously tells the audience what’s happening, and they even meet a mirror of Shaun’s group that show the decisions Shaun should have made. In Hot Fuzz, the entire first half of the movie is setting up callbacks for the last act, and the many action film scenarios that Danny (Frost) proposes to Sgt. Angel (Pegg) later come into play in the finale.
In this film, this is turned up to 11, because not only does Gary’s opening monologue basically describe the events of the later crawl (including when they meet Sam, when they lose Oliver and Peter, and where they go to escape the Blanks), but each of the pub names and signs reflects what happens in the pub. This served two purposes: First, it makes it easier for the audience to follow what happens with less exposition and, second, it drives home the point that Gary hasn’t changed between the two crawls.
As to the signs, that could literally be its own essay. Most of them have at least two meanings, and the ones with Blue paint on them are the ones where they fight Blanks. My favorite ones are “The Mermaid,” which depicts the hair colors of the girls who seduce the group, like how mermaids seduced sailors, and “The King’s Head,” because it’s actually a portrait of Simon Pegg.
The theme of the film, like with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, is perpetual adolescence, though it’s much more direct in this one since the point of Gary King’s character is that he hasn’t ever changed. He goes out of his way to try and be the same person since high school, even keeping his wardrobe and car. Due to the many changes that he’s made, The Beast is much like the fabled Ship of Theseus: If every part of it has been replaced, is it still the same car? Well, Gary says yes.
Gary equates his inability to finish “The Golden Mile” with his inability to ever actually finish anything. That might seem ridiculous, but I’m not really allowed to say anything about it, since I literally started this blog to finish “The 100 Greatest Television Episodes of All Time” list as a way of trying to move onto the next phase of my life after having it massively derailed. Sometimes the best way to move on is to find something you can accomplish that can represent what you’re really failing at, so you can stop being so afraid of failing.
I love Pegg’s portrayal in the film, and I think it nailed what Wright was going for. Gary is likeable, even lovable, but he’s never respectable, and he shouldn’t be respected. He’s complete Id, with almost no self-control or self-reflection. He just wants freedom. The problem is that total freedom is, as the Network correctly points out, basically just self-destruction. The Network, in contrast, is the ultimate Superego, a social standard brutally and completely imposed upon the individuals.
The movie goes out of the way to contrast Gary and the Network/Blanks, though my favorite contrast actually comes from the Robot/Boo-Boo conversations. The Blanks don’t like being called “robots” because the word robot is derived from a Czech term for serf or forced laborer, which they summarize as “slave.” This is despite the fact that the word “Robot” itself was coined by Karel Čapek in his play “R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots)” and has since been used to identify artificial lifeforms or mechanisms capable of carrying out autonomous actions, without necessarily meaning that such life is enslaved.
In contrast to this, Gary says the phrase “Let’s Boo-Boo” when he wants to leave. He explains that it was a reference to the stage direction from A Winter’s Tale, “Exit, pursued by a bear.” It then became “Exit, pursued by Yogi Bear,” then “Let’s Yogi and Boo-Boo,” then, finally, “Let’s Boo-Boo.” The Blanks, and therefore the Network, do not believe in changing any more than Gary believes in changing himself, to the point that they hang on to the original and largely defunct meanings of words, rather than accepting that their meaning has changed over time. Gary, while he does, in fact, recognize that words change over time and for fun reasons, instead has just refused to drop the language from when he stopped changing, a sign of his stunted growth.
This is actually part of Wright’s adherence to traditional storytelling devices by having the antagonist mirrors the protagonist’s traits. In this case, Gary’s inability to grow and his selective memory are pretty much exactly what the Network is offering him: To be young again, with only his good memories. Basically, both sides are promising stagnation, and both sides are wrong. Not EQUALLY wrong, since Gary is just a shithead, not a mass-murderer, but they’re still both wrong. Life is about growth and change and some of the requisite trial-and-error for that growth is going to be error.
The end of the movie is significant because Gary orders a water, showing that he actually is trying to be sober and experience life, and that he’s moved onto the next part of his life. The fact that the pub is called “The Rising Sun” only drives that further home, signaling a new day for him.
Aside from Gary’s arc, part of the film also points out that by homogenizing or “Starbucking” everything, much of the charm and individuality of the small towns are being erased. While it’s most obvious when they enter “The Old Familiar,” most of the pubs on the crawl now look pretty much the same. They’ve been stripped of any nostalgia in favor of being “civilized.”
This is all without going into the amazing soundtrack, including The Doors’ cover of “Alabama Song, ” which was written by the father of Epic Theater, Bertolt Brecht. The characters names are all brilliant, as they are all references to court positions representing their place in the group. The cinematography is perfect, although it’s pretty similar to the other two Cornetto films, so it was expected. The detail put into the pubs, the dialogue, everything in this film was well done. It’s a shame it isn’t watched more.
I love this movie. It’s inspiring, it’s clever, it’s insightful, it’s witty, and it could fill an entire volume of analysis. Find a copy and watch it.
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The Joker On The Sofa 