So, The World's End, the last film in the Blood and Ice Cream (or Cornetto) Trilogy. Last sequel to Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, this film is the science-fiction, and a good one. The film follows Gary King, played by Simon Pegg, as he re-unites his old school friends in the hope of finally completing the golden mile, a pub crawl through Newton Haven, but unfortunately the town has had a small invasion by robots, shit happens.
BEWARE SPOILERS ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE
So the film starts off with Gary regaling the story of the original attempt at the golden mile, he introduces himself, the "Bad-boy King", Andy Knightley "The Best Friend", Steven Prince "The Rival", Peter Page "The Young One", and Oliver "O-man" Chamberlain. O-man makes it to the sixth pub, Peter gets Benched in the park, but King, Knightley, and Prince almost make it to the end but fall short. Fast forward 23 years and everyone has grown up...except Gary.
They repeat the crawl with a tee-totaled Andy, reaching The Cross Hands where they meet the Robots-that-aren't-actually-robots. Or, the Blanks. Deciding the only way to survive is to finish the crawl without saying a word they continue. To shorten things I'm going to bullet point now, O-man is assimilated, the gang learn about the Blanks, Steven meets an old fling and fights Blanks, the gang are seduced by Blanks only to escape, SHIT GOES DOWN, EPIC FIGHT, OMAN-BLANK DESTROYED, the remaining four are suspicious of each other and some character development is had, Peter gets assimilated, Gary refuses to leave, Steven is overwhelmed by Blanks, Gary and Andy belt it to the World's End, Gary is in a pretty bad way and shares his feelings, where the baddy (Bill Nighy) is revealed as some Space Age Alien entity, who decides "fuck it" and leaves, the world ends and humanity goes back to the dark ages. Simple.
The acting is what you'd expect from the trilogy, it's not Oscar winning but it's snappy the actors have chemistry, it's a good laugh and it IS a good laugh. This films comes across as more comedy based than the other two, during the screening myself and everyone viewing were laughing throughout. To those saying it's "Just a drinking film", it isn't, it's a film about the night, the journey, and the morning after. There isn't much character development outside of Pegg and Frost's characters, as per usual, but what they did have was effective.
As with the other films there is a butt-load of hidden meanings, I'm not gonna spoil them all but I have three things to say; 1) there would appear to be far less premonitions in terms of the ending compared to the previous films, 2) the Pub name are Tarot Cards as to what happens in them, 3) The feel of the film makes me think of Arthurian legend, real middle-ages type stuff, partly because it's a small town and takes place mostly in pubs but the names of the characters, King, Knightley, Prince, Page, Chamberlain. It seems to be a hidden message.
Music was good, lots of fluidity in the camerawork, ESPECIALLY during the fights, there are a few running gags which help keep pace, there is a lot of Hollywood in the film. It's a little disappointing, you can feel it in some of the action, and the ending to the film is not the best, think like Assassin's Creed type bad endings, other than those choice elements it still has Wright's classic directing choices with Pegg and Frost's classic chemistry.
I give the film an 8/10, it's good for comedy, it's fast paced once it gets going, if you liked the previous films it is definitely worth watching, same as if you didn't watch the previous films. Keep an eye out for the Cornetto, I'm out.
