Cap'n Howdy's Best of 2013: The World's End

 I mentioned somewhere in the "middle" recap that This is the End was probably the funniest comedy I'd seen in 2013, but The World's End is the smartest. By a mile. The final chapter in Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's loosely connected "Cornetto Trilogy" may not be as consistently hilarious as Shaun of the Dead or as audaciously violent as Hot Fuzz - which is not to say it isn't still frequent with the belly laughs and contains some serious carnage - but it's easily the best thought out of the three, the most thought provoking in its themes, and the most heart felt in its relationships. If, for some reason, you haven't made The World's End a "blind buy" on DVD and Blu-Ray (I know you didn't see it theatrically, because the numbers bear that out), do it right now. I'm going to spoil the ever loving hell out of The World's End, and I'd rather you see it without knowing where the movie is going.

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 I'm Warning You! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

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 Back? Wasn't that great? Yes, it was. If you just went ahead and skipped to the next paragraph, shame on you. I told you to watch it and you didn't, and now you're just going to have to see it knowing everything. But because you cheated, you'll be able to watch The World's End armed with some of the cleverly hidden easter eggs and thematic set-ups and payoffs that come from seeing it more than once. And you'll be seeing it more than once, cheater.

Okay, so here's a quick recap for the cheater: Gary King (Simon Pegg) is one of those guys who never quite got over the "glory days" of high school. In fact, his adult life is so underwhelming that the cajoles his old friends Oliver "O-Man" Chamberlain (Martin Freeman), Steven Prince (Paddy Considine), Peter Page (Eddie Marsdan), an Andy Knightley (Nick Frost) to join him in reliving a pub crawl they started, but never finished: The Golden Mile in their hometown of Newton Haven. The guys don't want to do it, but some stretching of the truth gets them all back in "The Beast" (Gary's car from high school), and they find themselves being dragged along by the ne'er do well as they try to finish a pint at The First Post, The Old Familiar, The Famous Cock, The Cross Hands, The Good Companions, The Trusty Servant, The Two-Headed Dog, The Mermaid, The Beehive, The King's Head, The Hole in the Wall, and finally, The World's End. But Newton Haven isn't the way they remembered it, at all. With only Oliver's sister Sam (Rosamund Pike) to help them, but guys are in for a long night, one they'll be lucky to survive, let alone drink through.

There are many place I could start with The World's End, but let's deal with the science fiction element that makes it part of the "Cornetto Trilogy" (Zombie movie, Cop Movie, Science Fiction Movie). I had the good fortune of seeing The World's End with a friend of mine who didn't know anything beyond the Golden Mile premise, so when the film takes a turn while Gary's in the bathroom, it caught him completely off guard. And that turn? Well, it's robots.

  Robots. Yep, getting that right out there, even though the replicants (?) don't like being called "robots," and the aliens behind the machines replacing humans in Newton Haven have (arguably) the most peaceful take-over planned in all of science fiction film. But it's not to be, of course, because humanity has a right to want not to be civilized in the galactic picture. In that way, one could argue that The World's End is a middle finger from mankind to the end of The Day the Earth Stood Still, with roughly the consequences that Klaatu promised as a result. It is, in essence, the pawns rebelling against a benevolent world-creator (well, mostly benevolent - all of the characters replaced by robots are fertilizer, which seems a little harsh) to the point that the creator (literally) says "Oh, fuck it."

 What's so very impressive about The World's End is how well structured Wright and Pegg's screenplay is. Like Shaun of the Dead, they lay out the entire story in the prologue, and pack in a dozen other small details that are referenced so quickly you wouldn't be faulted for missing them the first time around. On top of that, not only do all of the names and signs of the bar hint at what's going to happen inside (and have corresponding numbers to the phases of the Golden Mile hidden somewhere), they also reference, in varying ways, the twelve steps of recovery that we don't exactly know Gary is going through until near the end of the film. The last one isn't really covered in the "Signs and Omens" extras on the disc, which will help you if you don't have time to watch The World's End three more times this weekend, but came from another friend of mine who was in a similar situation to Gary.

 And, oh yeah, it's very funny. Put aside the densely layered script, the folding back on itself, the metaphysical subtext of humanity in the universe, and you still have a laugh out loud comedy. I love that Frost and Pegg switched character types for The World's End: Frost the one who has it together and doesn't trust Pegg, the perpetual loser who pushes his likability to the very limits over and over again. If the "Three Musketeers" scene in the trailer made you chuckle, wait until you see how they alter the phrase "rob Peter to pay Paul" and the shit-eating grin that Gary closes the scene with.

 However, it's not Pegg or Frost, or even Freeman who walks away the VIP - it's Paddy Considine. Admittedly, I'd seen less of him than Freeman, Marsdan, Pegg, Frost, and even Rosamund Pike, but he has some of the best lines, many of the best reactions, and ends up with the most to do in the story. The World's End is centrally about the fractured relationship between Gary and Andy, and the event that drove them apart, but Steven's longtime crush on Sam is the heart of the movie. I keeps Andy and Gary alive in the end, and Steven is the final vote that saves humanity (or dooms them, depending on your reading of things).

 That, in turn, brings us to the ending, which turns The World's End from science fiction film to my second favorite sub-genre (behind anthologies): Post-Apocalyptic Cinema. This seems to be a point of contention for some people, because it's such an abrupt left turn for the movie, but thematically it fits perfectly with what everybody in the story wants. Gary gets the gang back, Andy's with his family, Steven and Sam are together, Robot Oliver is basically the same (with a Wilson-esque head), and Robot Peter is pretty much where he started. Yes, humanity is without technology, and communication across long distances is almost impossible (until Kevin Costner comes to the rescue, we can assume), but they seem happy. Humanity continues, on their own terms.

 I'd like to mention that while I wasn't impressed with the characters in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, the staging and filming of fight choreography that Wright honed in making that film pay off in spades during The World's End. The fight scenes (and there are a few) are dynamic, with fluid camera work that manages to shift from one character to the next without ever losing a sense of geography in the (basically identical) pubs. The poor robots and their blue blood (?) are torn asunder, bashed, smashed, cracked, and beaten to pieces repeatedly, and Wright covers it all in a way that might not have been possible had he not made Scott Pilgrim. So bully for him.

 Even though we're neck deep in spoiler territory, I'm not going to tell our cheaters about the surprise characters in the film. I will say that in keeping with the tradition started in Hot Fuzz, there's another James Bond in the film, but I won't say who, nor will I tell you where the other cast members from earlier "Cornetto" entries appear, although most of them do. The World's End, of the three films, benefits the most from re-watching, and is an easy call to put in when you have friends over. Like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, it didn't light the box office up, which is a shame, but since I gave Scott Pilgrim fans so much grief for saying the same thing, I won't lament it. Let's hope it has a long life on home video, just as its predecessors have. King Gary would want it that way.