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The World’s End: A Fitting Conclusion

By Jim Rohner · August 26, 2013

Memory can be a powerful factor in how we progress as human beings.  For some, memory can be a buoy, keeping us going during both the good times and the bad as past evidence of a positive future.  For others, memory can be an anchor with such emotional weight that the belief in its unmatchable apex can actually prevent us from moving forward.

Gary King (Simon Pegg) is affected by memory in the latter sense.  Nicknamed "The King" in high school due to his social prowess and reputation, Gary is introduced to us while speaking to some form of rehabilitation group about the apex of his young life when he and his school chums attempted to complete The Golden Mile, a pub crawl through the 12 drinking establishments in their home town of Newton Haven.  They never made it to The World's End, the final stop on the crawl, but the memories of debauchery with his closest mates were enough to convince Gary that life couldn't and wouldn't get any better than that.

Flash forward 20 years and Gary has been proven right in a fruition of his depressing, self-fulfilling prophecy.  Broke, alone, and boasting the same band apparel and car he had in 1989, Gary tries to get the old gang back together to complete The Golden Mile once and for all.  The only problem is that the old gang doesn't look on the old days quite as fondly as Gary does and have all seemed to have moved on: Oliver Chamberlain (Martin Freeman) is a successful real estate agent, Steven Prince (Paddy Considine) is dating a 26-year old fitness instructor, Andy Knightley (Nick Frost) has his name in the title of a law firm, and Peter Page (Eddie Marsan) has been made a partner at his father's Audi dealership.

Yet, somehow Gary convinces them all to take a walk down memory lane—a lane that, like most idyllic towns in the 21st century, has seen the encroaching and conforming hand of glocalization tightening its grip.  For Gary, the return to Newton Haven is like Rocket Richard walking back into The Montreal Forum, but for the others, it's Bill Buckner walking back into Shea, a regrettable reminder of past embarrassments and disappointments, many of which were incited directly by Gary.

But so determined is Gary to recapture former glory that he refuses to let anything get in the way of completing The Golden Mile, even when it becomes clear that the town's charming uniformity is actually conformity enforced by the synthetic duplicates of townsfolk created by The Network, a hive-minded alien intelligence attempting to take over the world one corner at a time.

Fans of the previous installments in the Cornetto Trilogy know what to expect from the team of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost, and they won't be disappointed in what The World's End has to offer.  Still prevalent is Wright's kinetic editing, the visual foreshadowing and symmetry, and great comedic performances, but The World's End is less flamboyant in those regards than previous Wright titles; fittingly toning down some of the more absurd elements in order to tell a darker, more somber tale about the dark side of nostalgia.  The film is still funny from beginning to end, but it takes more time than its predecessors did to dwell on more serious ideas, and the well-established chemistry between the leads ensures that that feels as natural to the story as the silliness does.

Exploring the themes of the film and how it fits in with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz also provides a peek into the development of Wright's career as a filmmaker: Shaun of the Dead, with its underdog , unproven hero, ushered in a new, confident voice; Hot Fuzz, with its same formula, yet differing results, confirmed that Wright wasn't a one-trick pony; and The World's End, signaling as it does an end to the tropes that made Wright recognizable, is a fitting conclusion as viewers now eagerly await seemingly un-Wright future titles like Ant Man.  On the one hand, it's great to see Wright, Pegg, and Frost have one more go around, but on the other hand, it's sad knowing that life has progressed in such a way—Wright being handed comic book properties, Pegg being billed on tent-pole Hollywood releases—that a future re-teaming is unlikely.

But if The World's End is indeed the last film these three make together, they've at least went out on an ambitious note.  The driving force behind the film is nostalgia and memory, and within the background and subtext is a lament for the elimination of small town identity, slowly but surely being replaced for the sake of the comforts of worldwide sameness.  New Yorkers need only drive a couple hours outside of the city through Pennsylvania's Route 22 to see how a great deal of local shops and eateries have been boarded up or torn down for the sake of a few TGI Fridays and Chilis. 

Yes, the characters in The World's End who are not named Gary gripe about returning to their childhood home, but they also make regular comments about the "Starbucking" of the local flavor. Gary and the gang fight for individuality and uniqueness in the face of the global uniformity of The Network—But within this conflict, Gary and the gang are also fighting to hold on to the pieces of themselves that they fear they may have already paved over. They exist as their own "small towns," as it were, and both lament and rejoice in their own Network-like replacement of themselves. And this feeling echoes through to make you wonder whether or not Pegg, Wright, and Frost have also experienced this very same fight. Then there you are feeling this inner struggle within yourself. It's not often that a movie can blend a silly, satisfying humor with a dramatic, self-reflective look at life and time—and all of that within a loving homage to the 1960s classic The Village of the Damned. Don't miss it.