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Why The Worlds End Was The Perfect Ending To The Cornetto Trilogy
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Jun 6, 2025
Within Edgar Wrights Cornetto Trilogy, most fans gravitate towards Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz as their favorite installment. Though the Worlds End is the absolute perfect way to wrap up a trilogy steeped in homages and references. Edgar Wright approached The Worlds End from a different angle than Hot Fuzz or Shaun of the Dead. Exploring the ideas of youth, nostalgia, and of course pub crawling.
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Gary thinks we should keep up with the crawl, because they know what we're doing, but they don't know that we know what they're doing
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And basically, no one else has a better idea. So f*** it! Trilogies come in all shapes and sizes, from the deep character examinations of the Godfather movies to epic morality tales like Lord of the Rings
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The final films in those series can often be divisive, sometimes collapsing under the weight of built-up expectations
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Somehow Palpatine returned. Within the Cornetto Trilogy, The World's End showed us not only how to wrap up ideas and themes, but also how to subvert our own expectations
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Released in 2004, Shaun of the Dead is technically the first in Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's Cornetto Trilogy
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It was what the two would lovingly refer to as a rom-zom comp. It was followed in 2007 by Hot Fuzz, a loving tribute to buddy cop action movies with a folk horror twist
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This is about to go off. Each were career-making movies for Wright and Pegg
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The two understood comedy in film wasn't just a matter of well-written jokes
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It was a bit earlier on that you missed when I distracted him with the cuddly monkey, and then I said, playtime's over, and I hit him with a piece, Lily
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You're off the f***ing chain! It was its own unique visual language dependent on sight gags and audio cues
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You got red on you. And with co-star Nick Frost working opposite Peg in each movie
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the three had carte blanche to continue Sean's tradition of telling very human stories
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wrapped in a love of genre which brings us to the world's end released in 2013 the world's end was
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tasked to wrap up a trilogy that was never intended at least from the beginning right
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had stated that the original cornetto reference in sean was simply a real life experience do you
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want anything from the shop cornetto it was in fact edgar wright's hangover cure and he thought
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it had a touch of realism and a slight easter egg to his friends while on the press tour for
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the film's release, Wright and Peg were both elated to see Cornetto supply ice cream to the
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film's after party. The two joked they should add some Cornetto to the next movie in hopes for more
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free ice cream. While their plan came up short, a journalist did ask about the Cornetto connection
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while doing press for Hot Fuzz. Wright made a quick joke that it was a reference to famous
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Polish director Krystal Kieslowski Three Colors trilogy It was a textbook right gag It shows a knowledge of world cinema while also being self but the idea warped into his head What would his Three Colors trilogy be More importantly how would it end The world end follows Gary King played by Simon Pegg reuniting with his
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old high school friends to finish a pub crawl referred to as the Golden Mile they had started
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23 years before. While that sounds like a light comedy, Wright and Pegg upend what could have
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been a nostalgic rom by making king a man on the edge to even get his friends to tag along king
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lies about the death of his mother in order to garner their sympathy for one last hurrah right
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has stated that all of the cornetto trilogy movies are trojan horses simply put he takes a kernel of
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emotional weight a heavy idea that might come across as too serious and then wraps them in
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genre the rom zamcom of shawn of the dead is just genuinely a romantic comedy akin to high fidelity
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wrapped in Dawn of the Dead complete with a pun title. The adult view of platonic friendship in Hot Fuzz
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could very well be My Dinner with Andre via Michael Bay. But with The World's End
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the duo wanted to make a broader statement, not just on the youthful ideas of the former two movies
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but the way we approach nostalgia. King is a man stuck in the past
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completely obsessed with the idea that his younger days, the hookups and friendships
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were the best times of his life. Only as we watch his interactions back in their hometown of Newton Haven
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we learn that he was always lying to himself. It's this bit of depth that makes King an interesting character different from John or Sergeant Angel
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The protagonists of the Cornetto trilogy have always lied to themselves, believing everything is fine in a spiraling relationship or that you're beloved for your steadfastness
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With King, though, the lovable goof aspect is immediately torn away when we see the adult King for the first time in a rehab support group
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This character is actively self-medicating to the point of self-harm because deep down, a voice he's desperate to silence with alcohol
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knows he doesn't have control of his life. Towards the end of the movie, we see the fallout of King's addiction
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when the bandages on his wrists are revealed, and King shouts, They told me when to go to bed
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Me! It is genuinely heartbreaking to see the wall shatter, not because people are finally telling him something he never realized
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it's because we see him admit it to himself. That idea of admitting something is wrong is perfectly encapsulated in the aforementioned Trojan horse Wright and Peg built around the World End It sci trappings While Sean and Hot Fuzz have direct parallels like Dawn of the Dead or Point Break World End is more content to rest on the overall genre of science fiction
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Even the idea of King lying to himself is cleverly worked into the idea of the body-snatching aliens
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As the crew begins their trek along the Golden Mile, King wonders why nobody recognizes him
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When it's revealed the majority of the population has been replaced, it fuels the lie he tells himself
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Everybody's been replaced by one of these! That's why no one recognized us! You could draw a loose connection between Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Thing
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but the antagonists there were more agents of chaos. Here, there is a clear end goal to the invaders, known as The Network
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who want to connect the world of Earth to their intergalactic empire
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Oh, f*** off, you big lamb! It's an authoritative voice that we know King will reject
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For the entire movie, we have watched him rebuke authority again and again, usually at the expense of his friends
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It's a more broad stroke than the previous movies, but it feels like a natural progression
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Wright first stepped into the spotlight with his show Spaced. Also starring Pegg and Frost and directed by Wright, Spaced was a nerd culture mecca of comics and films
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The show often featured direct homages to things like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or The Twins from The Shining
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When Wright and Pegg made Sean, the homages were still there, but less direct than Spaced
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By the time they were making World's End, the two are championing the idea of genre as a whole
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Wright is a creator with a seemingly endless knowledge of cinema. It's clear from any interview that he has a deep love for what movies and particularly genre can do
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No matter how Wright's career has evolved, there's always been a clear love of wild and weird cinema
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More so than directors like Tarantino or Rodriguez who use genre more stylistically
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Wright uses the trappings to tell stories about humanity. World's End more than any other in the Cornetto trilogy hits on humanity as a whole
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while Sean touches the same way Romero did on ideas like what is living
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Hot Fuzz didn't really comment until it turned into a full horror, and the idea of the greater good was brought into focus
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But when we reach the climax of World's End, Kane gives an empowering speech on the beauty of mankind our messiness our ability to love and fail and above all our choice It is our basic human right to be f ups This civilization was founded on f ups and you know what That makes me proud
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That choice again ties back into the overall theme of Gary King, choosing whether or not to idolize
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and cling to your past or move forward. Not because we know things will work out, but because we chose
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to do so. And there's a clear connection between that idea and this being the last of right and
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pegs trilogy there's a safe path they could have taken where they could have continued the formula
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they each knew would work but this is the film where we see them make a choice to push themselves
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in doing so we got movies like baby driver last night in soho star trek beyond and the tv series
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the truth seekers the world's end has some of right and peg's sharpest writing the two have
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been known to outline tightly using giant pads to plot and track their screenplays here the chorus
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they established with king of it's pointless arguing with you exactly is repeated by the
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network it's pointless arguing with you much has been said about the one line declaration of frost's
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character that sums up the plot of sean early in its runtime have a bloody mary first thing
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i'll bite the king's head couple of the little princess stagger back here
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back at the bar for shots and the two do it again here each bar they enter is a direct comment what
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will happen in every scene from the mermaid to the hole in the wall. Even the opening retelling
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is a broadcast of the movie to come, revealing where each character will disappear, be taken
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or turned into a blame. It's a writing Tick Wright has become known for, not just to show off a level
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of cleverness, but to entice us to watch again and again, to get something more out of the experience
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every time we come back. And this movie warrants a return. While Peg had traditionally played the
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straight man with Frost being the wild card in previous movies, the two smartly choose to switch
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archetypes here. King is unbridled with Andy teetering on the edge. It works with our understanding
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of the actors. We know the chaos Frost can bring, and when we finally see him lose it, we cheer
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We feel rewarded because we knew this was inevitable, and there's something beautiful in
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that. And there is something wonderful in what Wright and Pegg accomplished here
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Something that teeters so close to a failure, it hops the fence to become one of the most successful trilogy finales in film history
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