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The World's End (film)

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The World's End
Theatrical release poster
Directed byEdgar Wright
Written byEdgar Wright
Simon Pegg
Produced byNira Park
Tim Bevan
Eric Fellner
StarringSimon Pegg
Nick Frost
Paddy Considine
Martin Freeman
Eddie Marsan
Rosamund Pike
CinematographyBill Pope
Edited byPaul Machliss
Music bySteven Price
Production
companies
Distributed byUniversal Pictures (International)
Focus Features (United States)
Release dates
  • 10 July 2013 (2013-07-10) (Leicester Square)
  • 19 July 2013 (2013-07-19) (United Kingdom)
  • 23 August 2013 (2013-08-23) (United States)
Running time
109 minutes[1]
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Budget$20 million[2]
Box office$44,916,335[3]

The World's End is a 2013 British science fiction comedy film directed by Edgar Wright, written by Wright and Simon Pegg, and starring Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, and Eddie Marsan. It is the third in the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, following Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007). The film follows a group of friends who discover an alien invasion during an epic pub crawl in their hometown. Wright has described the film as "social science fiction" in the tradition of John Wyndham and Samuel Youd.[4]

The film is produced by Relativity Media, Big Talk Productions, and Working Title Films.[5]

Plot

Gary King (Simon Pegg), a middle-aged alcoholic, resolves to track down his estranged friends and complete the "Golden Mile", a pub crawl encompassing 12 pubs in their hometown of Newton Haven. The group attempted the crawl as teenagers over 20 years earlier, but failed to reach the final pub, The World's End. Gary persuades Peter Page (Eddie Marsan), Oliver "O-Man" Chamberlain (Martin Freeman), Steven Prince (Paddy Considine), and Andy Knightley (Nick Frost) to join him in Newton Haven. While his friends have adult lives and responsibilities, Gary has changed little since 1990, remaining untrustworthy and impulsive.

The group and their mission are not met with the hero's welcome Gary expects, and Gary relearns that he had been barred for life from one of the pubs. The group are briefly joined for a drink by Oliver's sister Sam (Rosamund Pike), over whose affections who Gary and Steven were rivals at school. In the toilets of the fourth pub on the crawl, Gary gets into a fight with a surprisingly strong and agile local teenager. Gary accidentally knocks the teen's head off, exposing him as a robot. Gary's friends join him and fight more robot youths, after which Andy abandons his teetotal ways and drinks an order of shots meant for the whole group. Unsure how many robots there may be, the group decide to continue the pub crawl as "just five friends, on a night out, having a good time", so as to avoid attracting suspicion.

Several pubs later, the group runs into Sam again and Gary warns her of the robot invasion. Though skeptical of the news at first, Sam is convinced after Gary saves her from twin robots impersonating her friends. At The Mermaid, robots attempt to seduce the men and steal their DNA. When Sam's childhood crush Adrian appears, she panics and drags the others from the pub, explaining that Adrian had died in a motorcycle crash years previously. When they reach the next pub, Guy Shepherd (Pierce Brosnan), a teacher from the group's secondary school, encourages them to accept their fate and be replaced by robots. Noticing the reappearance of a surgically removed birthmark on Oliver's head, Andy realises that he has been replaced with a robot, and crushes his head with a barstool. A fight breaks out, during which Gary insists on drinking a pint for the sake of the pub crawl's integrity. Overwhelmed, the group scatter and Gary takes Sam to her car, urging her to leave Newton Haven.

Once reunited, the friends accuse each other of having been replaced by robots. Steven, Peter and Andy prove their humanity with scars from their past, and Andy reveals that his resentment of Gary stems from an accident that occurred as he was trying to save Gary after a drug overdose. Gary refuses to roll his sleeves up to reveal a scar on his elbow, and instead repeatedly head-butts a pillar to prove that his skull is tougher than those of the robots. The robots close in on the group and capture Peter. Despite this, Gary is determined to finish the pub crawl and after having had a drink at the other two pubs along the way, runs towards the final one on their list, The World's End. Abandoning Steven, Andy chases Gary through the streets, fighting robots along the way and encountering a large robot previously concealed as a sculpture.

At The World's End, Andy confronts Gary. During an ensuing quarrel, Andy notices that Gary's wrists are bandaged and marked with a hospital armband, indicating that Gary had been sectioned for a suicide attempt. Andy questions whether Gary can distinguish between his drunkenness and sobriety anymore. Gary tearfully tells him that his adult life has been a failure, and that finishing the Golden Mile is the only thing he has left. He is jealous of Andy for having an ideal life, but Andy reveals that his marriage is falling apart, and pleads with Gary to give up the crawl and get help. Gary ignores him and tries to draw his final pint. The tap lever instead lowers the bar into a hidden chamber, where the two are reunited with Steven. A disembodied entity called "The Network" (voiced by Bill Nighy) reveals that the robot invasion of the town is one of 2,000 "penetration points" on Earth, as part of a "civilizing" process for humanity's own good, and that it had been responsible for all of humanity's advances in telecommunications in recent decades. It also reveals, much to the dismay of the three, that the humans turned into robots have been reduced into mulch for agricultural purposes. The Network offers the men eternal youth should they choose to become robots, but the three friends decline, belligerently arguing that humans should be allowed to be free. Concluding that humanity is more trouble than it's worth, The Network abruptly ceases communication and abandons the invasion. Sam arrives to drive the trio to relative safety as the town begins to self-destruct.

Some time later, Andy recounts this story around a campfire in the ruins of London, explaining how the destruction of Newton Haven was accompanied by a worldwide electro-magnetic pulse that wiped out modern technology and set humanity back to the Dark Ages. The remaining robots have reactivated and are regarded with understandable mistrust by surviving humans. Andy's marriage has recovered, Steven is in a relationship with Sam, and robot versions of Peter and Oliver have returned to a semblance of their former lives. In the ruins of Newton Haven, the now-sober Gary enters a pub with the younger robot versions of his friends and orders five glasses of water, reprising his speech from the start of the Golden Mile. When the bartender refuses to serve any robots, Gary draws a sword and leads his robot friends into a brawl.

Cast

Production

Development

The World's End began as a screenplay director Edgar Wright wrote aged 21 titled Crawl, about a group of teenagers on a pub crawl. He realised the idea could work with adult characters to capture "the bittersweet feeling of returning to your home town and feeling like a stranger".[6] Wright said he wanted to satirise the "strange homogeneous branding that becomes like a virus", explaining: "This doesn't just extend to pubs, it's the same with cafés and restaurants. If you live in a small town and you move to London, which I did when I was 20, then when you go back out into the other small towns in England you go 'oh my god, it's all the same!' It's like Bodysnatchers: literally our towns are being changed to death."[7]

Pegg told Clark Collis in an interview for Entertainment Weekly, "People think we choose the genre first every time, and it's not true. We find the stories first. The notion of alienation from your hometown taken to its literal conclusion was how we got to science fiction."[8]

After the story was complete, Wright and Pegg examined a list of real pub names and "tried to make them like tarot cards" to foreshadow the events of the story. Wright explained: "So we said, 'OK this one's the Famous Cock, because this is where Gary is trying to puff up his own importance.' ... We did go through work out in each one how the pub sign was going to relate."[7]

All twelve pubs in the film use identical signage on menus and walls, reflecting what Wright called "that fake hand-written chalk" common to modern British pubs.[7] The exteriors of the fictional pubs were shot at locations in Welwyn Garden City and Letchworth Garden City, with altered signage.[9]

Production

Principal photography for The World's End began on 28 September 2012.[10] Filming took place in Hertfordshire, at Elstree Studios, Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City.[11] Part of the film was also shot at High Wycombe railway station in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. Filming ended on 22 December 2012.

Stunts were coordinated by Brad Allen of martial arts film director Jackie Chan's team. Wright said: "In Drunken Master, Jackie Chan has to get drunk to fight, but this is more the idea of Dutch courage. You know, when you're kind of drunk and you think 'ah, I can climb up that scaffolding!' Or just that you're impervious to pain. One of the things we talked about is this idea that [the characters] become better fighters the more oiled they get."[7]

Soundtrack

Untitled

The film uses alternative rock and pop music from the time of the characters' adolescence. Wright explained: "A lot of those songs are ones that really hit me and Simon hard when we were that age... [Gary] is still living by those rules. It's like he decided to take 'Loaded' and 'I'm Free' to heart and thinks the party's never going to end."[7]

The soundtrack for the film was released on 5 August 2013 in the UK and 20 August 2013 in the United States, with the film's score, composed by Steven Price, released on the same day.

Tracklist

In addition to songs featured in the movie, the album also features dialogue snippets. The track list for the soundtrack is as follows:[12]

  1. "Loaded" (single edit) - Primal Scream (4:21)
  2. "There's No Other Way" - Blur (3:19)
  3. Dialogue: "I Put This On a Tape for You" - Simon Pegg and Paddy Considine (0:09)
  4. "I'm Free" - The Soup Dragons (3:50)
  5. "Step On" - Happy Mondays (5:14) [Deluxe version bonus track]
  6. Dialogue: "Was The Music Too Loud?" - Steve Oram and Simon Pegg (0:04) [Deluxe version bonus track]
  7. "So Young" - Suede (3:37)
  8. "Old Red Eyes Is Back" - The Beautiful South (3:32) [Deluxe version bonus track]
  9. Dialogue: "A Humble Taproom" - Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (0:15) [Deluxe version bonus track]
  10. "Come Home" (Flood mix) - James (3:53) [Deluxe version bonus track]
  11. "Do You Remember the First Time?" - Pulp (4:22)
  12. Dialogue: "Welcome" - Simon Pegg (0:04)
  13. "What You Do to Me" - Teenage Fanclub (1:57)
  14. "Fools Gold" (single edit) - The Stone Roses (4:15)
  15. "Get a Life" - Soul II Soul (3:36)
  16. Dialogue: "We Have Changed" - Nick Frost (0:07)
  17. "This Is How It Feels" - Inspiral Carpets (3:10) [Deluxe version bonus track]
  18. "Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)" - The Doors (3:16)
  19. "Wear Your Love Like Heaven" - Definition of Sound (3:43)
  20. Dialogue: "This Is What the Kids Want" - Simon Pegg and Martin Freeman (0:07)
  21. "Step Back in Time" - Kylie Minogue (3:04) [Deluxe version bonus track]
  22. "Join Our Club" - Saint Etienne (3:15)
  23. "Here's Where the Story Ends" - The Sundays (3:52)
  24. Dialogue: "I Hate This Town" - Nick Frost (0:04)
  25. "20 Seconds to Comply" (World's End Bomb Squad mix re-edit) - Silver Bullet (4:35)
  26. "This Corrosion" (single edit) - The Sisters of Mercy (4:21)
  27. "Happy Hour" - The Housemartins (2:21)
  28. Dialogue: "Let's Boo Boo" - Simon Pegg and Paddy Considine (0:24)

Release

The World's End premiered on 10 July 2013 at Leicester Square in London[13][14] and was released on 19 July 2013 in the United Kingdom.[13] It was released in the United States on 23 August 2013.[15]

Reception

Box office

The World's End earned £2,122,288 ($3,242,064 USD) during its UK opening weekend, losing the top spot to Monsters University. Its weekend grosses were higher than Shaun of the Dead's £1.6 million but lower than Hot Fuzz's £5.4 million.[16]

In the United States, the movie was released on August 23 and earned $3.5 million on its opening day, beating out the much more heavily advertised films The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones and You're Next. The World's End also had the highest per-theater average out of all films in theaters throughout the country on its opening day.[17] On its opening weekend, the film landed in fourth place with $8,790,237, behind Lee Daniels' The Butler, We're the Millers, and The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones.[18] This exceeded box office expectations ranging from $7 million[19] to $8.5 million,[20] and The World's End's opening weekend earned the most out of all films in the Cornetto Trilogy.[21]

Critical reception

The World's End has received critical acclaim. Template:Rots The website's consensus reads, "Madcap and heartfelt, Edgar Wright's apocalypse comedy The World's End benefits from the typically hilarious Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, with a plethora of supporting players." The film also holds a Metacritic score of 81 out of 100, indicating "universal acclaim", based on 45 collected reviews.[22]

Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B+, praising it as "hilarious" and the "best" collaboration of Wright, Pegg and Frost, saying that "these pint-swilling Peter Pans also know how to work the heart and the brain for belly laughs... The finale is a little too shaggy and silly. But what do you expect after a dozen beers?"[23] Mark Dinning of Empire magazine gave the film four stars out of five, writing: "Bravely refusing to rigidly adhere to a formula that has been so successful, Wright, Pegg and Frost's Cornetto Trilogy closer has tonal shifts you won't expect, but the same beating heart you've been craving."[24] Movie blog eatpraymedia gave the film four and a half stars, calling it "...the perfect antidote to big budget movie making."[25] Henry Barnes of The Guardian gave the film four stars out of five, writing: "With this final film they've slowed down a bit, grown up a lot. And saved the richest bite until last."[26]

References

  1. ^ "THE WORLD'S END (15)". British Board of Film Classification. 5 July 2013. Retrieved 5 July 2013.
  2. ^ "Simon Pegg: The World's End is $4 million shy of double what Hot Fuzz cost". 24 July 2013. Retrieved 24 July 2013.
  3. ^ Reynolds, Simon (18 August 2013). "The World's End (2013)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 16 October 2013.
  4. ^ Hewitt, Chris (28 May 2012). "Pegg And Wright Talk The World's End". Empire. Retrieved 26 July 2013.
  5. ^ "The World's End". Big Talk Productions. 22 February 1999. Retrieved 22 July 2013.
  6. ^ "The World's End: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright on their apocalypse comedy - video interview | Film | guardian.co.uk". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 July 2013. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  7. ^ a b c d e Franklin, Oliver (17 July 2013). "Edgar Wright interview on the World's End, pubs & Ant Man - Film - GQ.COM (UK)". Gq-magazine.co.uk. Retrieved 22 July 2013.
  8. ^ Collis, Clark (30 August 2013). "3 Blokes. 3 Films. Many, Many Laughs". Entertainment Weekly: 47.
  9. ^ The Railway Station looks a bit different this morning. Love Letchworth. Retrieved on 2012-11-23
  10. ^ Chitwood, Adam (28 September 2012). "Production Begins on Edgar Wright's THE WORLD'S END; Martin Freeman and Eddie Marsan Join the Cast". Collider.com. Retrieved 25 July 2013.
  11. ^ "Creative England supports the production and filming of The World's End". Creative England. 4 July 2013. Retrieved 25 July 2013.
  12. ^ Phares, Heather (6 August 2013). "The World's End: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack review". Allmusic. Retrieved 25 August 2013.
  13. ^ a b Kemp, Stuart (10 July 2013). "'The World's End' Premiere: Cast Celebrates Boozy Pub Crawl Comedy in London". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  14. ^ "The stars come out for Simon Pegg at The World's End premiere". Evening Standard. 10 July 2013. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  15. ^ Fischer, Russ (20 March 2013). "Edgar Wright's 'The World's End' US Release Date Pulled Forward to August". /Film. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  16. ^ Reynolds, Simon (24 July 2013). "'Monsters University' holds off 'The World's End' at UK box office". Digital Spy. Retrieved 25 July 2013.
  17. ^ http://www.boxofficemojo.com/daily/chart/?view=1day&sortdate=2013-08-23&p=.htm
  18. ^ http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?yr=2013&wknd=34&p=.htm
  19. ^ Subers, Ray. "Forecast: 'You're Next' Targets Top Spot on Quiet August Weekend". Box Office Mojo.
  20. ^ Weekend Forecast: 'The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones', 'The World's End', & 'You're Next'
  21. ^ Subers, Ray. "Weekend Report: 'Butler' Repeats, Newcomers All Open Below $10 Million". Box Office Mojo.
  22. ^ "The World's End". Metacritic. Retrieved 24 August 2013.
  23. ^ Nashawaty, Chris (31 August 2013). "The World's End". Entertainment Weekly: 48. Retrieved 1 September 2013.
  24. ^ Dinning, Mark. "The World's End". Empire. Retrieved 24 August 2013.
  25. ^ "The World's End Review: The tastiest Cornetto is the one you wait for". Retrieved 21 August 2013.
  26. ^ Barnes, Henry (9 July 2013). "The World's End - first look review". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 July 2013.
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