Edgar Wright’s Genius And Small Town Living Are On Display In Two New The World’s End Features

By Rudie Obias | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

In roughly a month and a half, the conclusion of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright‘s Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy (also known as Blood and Ice Cream trilogy), The World’s End, opens in theaters across the U.S. With Shaun of the Dead in 2004, and again with Hot Fuzz in 2007, Pegg and Wright created a series of films that works within genre types to entertain audiences across the globe. The World’s End should be no different.

After starting in the late 90s with the British TV series Spaced, Wright has come a long way as a craftsman, developing into one of the best comedic directors working today. Yahoo! UK has released this new featurette highlighting Wright’s day-to-day professional habits while working on a film.

Pegg and fellow World’s End star Nick Frost have both worked with Wright numerous times, including Shaun and Fuzz, and the three have formed a tight friendship. Hopefully this isn’t the last time the trio work together, we would love nothing more than to see them continue to churn out quality comedies for years to come.

The actors in this featurette above call Edgar Wright a “genius,” and many hardcore fans would agree. Although The World’s End is only Wright’s fifth film, his movies have a certain precision and execution to them that comes from a world-class director. It just so happens that this world-class director likes to make witty genre comedies.

I liken Edgar Wright to Quentin Tarantino, only he deals with comedies instead of leaning towards the dramatic and violent side of things. Both directors have a deep understanding of how genre movies work with audiences, and how that relates to their filmmaking. They’re also not afraid, or shy, about directly referencing the many movies that have influenced them over their careers.

As part of the viral marketing campaign, Universal also released a tourist video for the small fictional town of Newton Haven, where The World’s End is set. Aesthetically this video looks like it came directly from the 1970s, and highlights the town’s biggest attraction, “The Golden Mile” pub-crawl. Starting with The First Post, and ending with The World’s End, these twelve pubs form the crown jewels of Newton Haven. Too bad these pubs aren’t real; I can easily see legions of Edgar Wright fans flocking to town to re-create their own version of the Golden Mile.

The Three Flavours trilogy shares more of a thematic connection than a narrative one. Each movie fits into a different genre, but all deal with the similar theme of adults not wanting to grow up. Shaun of the Dead works in horror, while Hot Fuzz skewers the tropes and clichés of buddy-cop action films. The World’s End is Wright’s play on the alien invasion school of science fiction. Each movie also has a distinct color scheme (red, blue, and green), which ties to a different flavor of Cornetto ice cream (strawberry, vanilla, and mint).

The World’s End centers on Gary King (Simon Pegg), a 40-year-old man-child who refuses to act his age. Two decades after he and a group of childhood friends tackled the epic pub-crawl, Gary calls the old crew together to re-live their glory days. As the group ventures from pub to pub, they soon realize that the quiet town where they all grew up has somehow changed. It seems like Newton Haven has been invaded by killer robots that plan to destroy all humans, and ruin their pub-crawl.

As usual, Wright has put together a great cast, one that features Pegg, Frost, Martin Freeman, Rosamund Pike, Eddie Marsan, David Bradley, and Paddy Considine. The World’s End hits U.S. theaters on August 23.