If Iron Man 3 marks the official beginning of summer movie season, you could make a case that it closes out with Edgar Wright’s The World’s End, which opens October 25th August 23rd (though you smarmy Brits will be able to see it August 14th July 19th).
Once again starring Simon Pegg (who co-wrote with Wright) and Nick Frost (third of the blood and ice cream trilogy, they’re calling it), only with Frost playing the slacker this time, it tells the story of five friends (joining Pegg and Frost are Eddie Marsan, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, and Burnsy’s favorite, Rosamund Pike) trying to complete an epic, 60-pint pub crawl in their home town that they started as adolescents. It’s your basic, early mid-life crisis, you-can’t-go-home-again narrative, or at least it would be if this weren’t an Edgar Wright movie. Since it is an Edgar Wright movie, it’s less about nostalgia and abandoned dreams and ennui than it is about aliens who’ve taken over the town and the boys fighting them. So it’s true that you can’t go home again, but it took Edgar Wright to ask why. The answer? F*ckin’ aliens, man. You can’t go home again ’cause of the aliens.
Edgar Wright has a strange knack for making the kinds of movies (zombies, aliens, videogames) that I’d normally think are really stupid (the Scott Pilgrim trailer made it look like the worst thing in the world) that I end up loving. At this point, I’ve learned not to bet against him.
Still my favorite Edgar Wright shot:
One time my Uncle Pete tried to drink 60 pints and fight some aliens and that’s why he’s not allowed back at the Home Depot.