Everyone But Me Is Wrong About The Cornetto Trilogy
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- Опубліковано 19 бер 2024
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NOTE: calling Gary "narcissistic" was, in retrospect, poor word choice. while I did not mean to imply Gary has Narcissistic Personality Disorder, there is enough ableist discourse that presumes a) any selfish person is a clinical narcissist, and b) people with NPD cannot help being abusers and must be avoided at all costs, that I think it wise to retire colloquial use of "narcissistic" and stick to synonyms like "egotistical" and "selfish." like any disorder, NPD is something that can be managed and compensated for, and people living with it deserve the same respect as anyone. (and I have beef with the psych world for naming a disorder with a word that literally means "hopelessly selfish" in common language.)
Great to hear! It's really amazing that a popular figure on the left is taking a stand against ableism! I'd like to clarify that in common language, the slur "N***c***st" wasn't a slur, and was mostly an obscure psychological term, until the release of Christopher Lasch's book The Culture Of Narcissism, which said clinically significant NPD is being produced by American culture. The book was so influential, Lasch advised president Carter. In the following decades, self-help books drawing on Lasch's work asserted that every abusive figure in your life - your boss, your parents, your husband - has NPD and is abusing you because of it. Today, self-help books are less influential, and they've been replaced with Reddit's r/raisedbynarcissists and Quora, which make the same arguments. The cultural shorthand of "N***c***st" as a euphemism for "abuser" flows into our vernacular from these ableist self-help sources. The word wasn't nearly so politically charged or commonly used before Lasch's book, when the disorder was named. Also note as further evidence that in the original myth, the only way Narcissus hurt anyone was by rejecting their romantic advances (being aromantic; queer). His condition was most harmful to himself. This doesn't translate into the English vernacular of an abusive person, except by taking the etymological path through clinical psychology and the self-help books. Turning a myth about a queer person into a euphemism for abuser through the language of psychiatry is perfectly symbolic of the bigotry embedded in our modern culture.
That was a proper use of the word narcissistic, your correction is the error.
@@jontspam4134 source: freshly pulled from where the sun don't shine
@@vlc-cosplayer oh it shines
I'd have to disagree with this point of view, although I'll keep my counterpoints in the back pocket cause I'd rather not subject this comment section to an unwanted debate
how could anyone see gary king play apoco-knight with teenage clones of his old friends and think “wow he really grew up and took responsibility”
I mean the entire world regressed by that point so, from Gary's perspective, he was looking out for other people. And that counts as self-improvement. That and he seemed to be keeping sober.
He grew up in the sense that he took legitimate steps to overcome his alcoholism. There is that line at the beginning of the movie about how real courage is ordering a tap water, and at the end of the movie he orders a tap water. But yeah, in terms of growing up and "maturing" and being "responsible" he has not. He is still living in the past.
In my reading, that’s exactly the point. You’re supposed to look at Gary and realize that he hasn’t grown up, and the world went to shit as a result. That recontextualizes the other two movies and makes you question the idea that the protagonists were positive role models, if you hadn’t already. The message is still about growing up, just expressed as a cautionary tale of what happens when you don’t, instead of an aspirational tale about what happens when you do.
@@willowparker-ct3pq How about this: It's neither and it's way more about a suicidal middle-aged alcoholic moving on from the toxic thought that his best days are decades behind him, sobering up, and finding purpose to live again - and considering the circumstances, gathering a ragtag team of what is now a persecuted minority group and leading them to survive in a hostile post-apocalypse (let's not forget that it's a plot-point that he used to ditch his friends in bad situations all the time before and now he's more than happy to stand by them) is a pretty cool place to end up at eventually.
@@darko1295 Bro, the purpose he finds to live is finishing a barcrawl from when he was in high school. That’s not growing up, that’s wallowing in immaturity. And his friends survive an apocalypse he caused because of that same immaturity. There’s just no reading wherein he grows up. You can read his lack of growing up as positive or negative, but growing up is not something he does in the movie.
"You live in a community, a culture, an...an...ecosystem!"
I saw you, Ian. At the writing desk, working on this script. And trying so very, very VERY hard not to say "You live in A SOCIETY."
In French, we say, "we live in a Roquefort" and I think it's beautiful.
@@vincentstartuplarbin2786a soft blue cheese made from ewes' milk. It is ripened in limestone caves and has a strong flavor.
@@XeridanusPrecisely
@@vincentstartuplarbin2786 On vit vraiment dans une saucisse (Antoine Daniel™)
I had this exact same thought. With Lindsay Ellis' voice in the GoT "hot take" video : "We live in a society. It really makes you think".
So my favorite thing about Hot Fuzz? It's one of the only cop/action cop films I've seen that actually emphasizes the paperwork side of policework. And what makes these scenes funnier is how Wright shoots them with Bayhem cinematography to make the paperwork seem more epic.
I love it. The most intense action Angel sees in an average work day is steam-pressing his uniform, so of course it's gotta have Snatch-style editing.
The video is also totally off base with Nicolas. It gets repeated so many times, that he has to learn how to switch off, and that's in a way what he does, when he decides to not call reinforcement from outside town.
Also having the law be malleable and changed to suit the situation is how you get police that act with more prejudice, since its now all up to their own judgment. It's crazy how many leftists get brain farts when it comes to law enforcement
Even better, those paperwork montages were put in _because_ the cops interviewed by Wright and Pegg for research complained that the massive amounts of paperwork in their jobs were never depicted.
@@ButMadNNW626 haha really!? I'm guessing you saw/read/heard them talk about that? I had no idea-yeah that even more now lol
It's so good 😂
I think the reason that people assume that Gary comes out morally superior in “The Worlds End” is because they included that line about how 90% of people are being replaced by the system. Additionally, the fact that explicit parallels are made between the gentrification of Newton Haven and the alien replacement of humanity. I agree, though. Gary’s ordering of tap water in the final scene doesn’t represent growth for him, it shows that he’s become intoxicated by his own ego and no longer needs alcohol to live in self-delusion.
Yeah the way the aliens are solving humanitys problems is by removing all the humans, at a certain point thats just not helping anyone because there is no one to help, but that is the good reason to not want to accept the help of the alliens. The reason Gary doesn't accept the allien help is because he doesn't want to be helped, wich is selfish and selfdestructive and just plain sad (and also what makes him a very tragic charecter in the litteral sence, there are always ways out for him but also he is not capable of taking the ways out)
Gary King is not morally superior in the sense that he or his actions are laudable, but in that his capacity to exist at all represents a legitimate threat to occupying forces. his rejection of authority is in some contexts problematic but in the context of the network, we are meant to see a direct and uniquely self-motivated reaction AGAINST a colonizing culture. and in the epilogue, his resistance to authority and other factors side him not with the oppressive majority he belongs to but with an oppressed minority whose cause seems to give him a very valuable (noble even) reason to choose life (even when, as evidenced by the king arthur diatribe, continuing his path of alcoholism is in every meaningful sense the path of least resistance)
I always thought that he drinks water because it's post apocalypse and beer is just harder to come by
@@user-eb5bo5fb8h there's still enough of it that he's able to walk into a bar and get scoffed at for ordering something non-alcoholic
For me, his having sort of a point is what makes Gary unsufferable. He is a douche canoe, and he is not right, but he has enough of a point that you cannot really dismiss him without thought. He does represent a part of us, and that part has intrinsic worth. At the same time, he and that part of us are douche canoes.
Hot Fuzz definitely does the best out of them. Nicholas has friends, he loosens up a little, he's still a petty tyrant but in a story where the police don't abuse their power.
I like Gary King's performance so much though. Finding the depths of his selfishness and self destructive behaviour is a journey. "They tried to tell me when to go to bed" is such a raw admission.
That line is forever burned into my memory. After an hour of suffering this arrogant asshole, you finally see how sad and desperate he really is. The delivery alone is spectacular.
Hot Fuzz is their opus of a film. But World's End has so many tragic layers, and Gary King is and amazingly destructive character. It's in the title.
Yeah. Nicholas doesn't 'grow up', but he does /grow/. He learns that there's more to life than work and that having friends is nice, actually. The other 2 movies, the main characters learn nothing. They don't become slightly better people. Shaun stays the same, Gary arguably becomes worse.
Nicholas does "grow up" at least a little by relaxing the enforcement of the rules. As seen as he jokes with the rest of the crew, something he never would have done before. He still has a massive stick up his ass, but he's more willing to bend than the start of the movie
@@Zephyr_Zeitgeist I totally get where you're coming from, but I would argue that Nicholas *doesn't* just then learn that there's more to life. He's known that for a while, and even admits it to his ex in the setup to his transfer, which coincidentally is where the actual transformation is foreshadowed. By the end of the movie, Nicholas is still for the most part a pedantic, by-the-book cop, he just also found someone he loves more than being a police officer.
This video *ALMOST* reaches the point, I think but in many key ways you've made the same mistake as the folks you're responding to: your thematic read subscribed to a "this unilaterally is or is not" stance on their thematic conclusions.
Shaun does not revert to his slacker ways, or simply remain in stasis--he learned to compartmentalize, to sublimate his manchild tendencies into a version of himself which didn't compromise his capacity to maintain a healthy relationship with his partner.
nic angel didn't grow up, but he did ABSOLUTELY change. his concept of the law was fantastical--not just that the cops always follow it to the letter, but specifically that the law is always just and good. after he arrested those kids for drinking, he unknowingly was sentencing them to death, and specifically a death at the hands of a group led by the Police Chief he serves under. and at the end of the film, he's not the same pencil pushing cop with a sense of duty and moral righteousness we was in the beginning--he actually is dressed to resemble an out-and-out fascist, exercising force on "hippie-types". reality has given him some degree of perspective on the role he plays, even if you couldn't say the world is better off for it (an acquiescence to the inherent limitations of the genre being pastiched).
the thing about the world's end is... The Network are imperialist colonists. the brexit read is justifiable in retrospect and i sympathize but fundamentally their rhetoric is that of the colonizer and you HAVE to take that into consideration when you read that film. and gary king is not drinking, in the context of the golden mile, just to please himself on another whim--he's doing it to die. you're correct that the read of his character as unwilling to change to the detriment of others is baked into his thematic conclusion, but he's not malicious enough to condemn his friends to death over his own suicidal pity party. it's a point that makes me wonder how recently it is you watched these movies before writing that conclusion. because gary is not an isolated factor, and that he happens to be the straw thar breaks the proverbial camel is nothing more than a coincidence. and no colonizing force has EVER been foisted upon a culture without incurring exponentially more bloodshed than that which was drawn in the fight to resist it by those resisting. gary, though he fucks up royally i agree, literally decides to socially martyr himself in the defense of a minority group displaced by his actions when he very well could have just joined the privileged human side of that conflict. that's worth something, even if you argue that he's doing it for selfish reasons. there mere fact that he's not only found a reason to live, but a reason to live which is noble in spite of the person he was and his role in what can be described generously as an apocalypse level disaster is... meaningful? significant?
This video makes points that people do absolutely miss in their reading of the films. But I also think that in setting the record straight you overcorrected to the point of ironing too cleanly films which aren't about growing up or refusing to grow up, but are more complicatedly about resolving a dialectic or sorts, the rift between identity and the expectations that constitute those maturation narratives. the political dimensions specifically, i think, add context relevant to the role these characters play in these stories and i think in neglecting that you wind up with the exact same kind of reduction of substance that drives people to come to the conclusion that these films are straightforward maturation narratives in the first place.
I agree, I think the structure of the films is more the classic thesis-antithesis-synthesis structure than the guy has to grow up trope.. Each of characters do change and it takes a bit of stretch to say they do not. But they change in ways the keep their good qualities they had in the beginning.
And did Gary screw up? As has been pointed out in other comments, if Gary hadn't chased off the aliens, the world would have been even worse. Most people would be dead, and the rest would have to conform very exactly or die themselves.
@gravitynaut lmao this is exactly what I wanted to say but described more eloquently, excellent post!
Had this thought throughout the entire video too. Thank you for articulating it so well.
Yeah, this video is kind of frustrating in it trying to PROVE that his interpretation is the correct one.
He's mad about this argument but also the only person I can see giving a black and white interpretation of these films is him when he says that people who don't agree with him about Angel are wrong.
It feels like he's turning what should be an interesting discussion about the themes of these films, how effective they are, how cohesive they are as a trilogy, into just an argument.
@@Pleanal Well he did say that Gary ruined everything when he made the alien Network go away and take all of its modern technology with it while comparing it to Brexit . . . while ignoring or downplaying the colonizing behavior of said Network, and that it systematically kills and replaces anyone or anything that doesn't meet its standards with robotic duplicates (and it must be pretty high given 99% of just one town's populate are these robots). There were already Network hubs at various towns and villages throughout Earth, do you want bet they have the same "population" as Newton Haven? What if the Network expanded globally instead of being isolated to these towns and villages? How much of humanity would be left?
The Network isn't letting humanity join consensually, it's forcefully assimilating humanity; it's genocidal gentrification. And it just feels really gross Innuendo Studios implicitly sides with it because it offers technology and makes the trains run on time.
I think you're right about Gary, but wrong about the movie and how it turns out. You took the aliens at their word that they replaced the people who were "too messed up". But you missed the fact that... that was literally everyone in town. Were you asleep for the scene in the Bee Hive where EVERYONE there was replaced? Including Pierce Brosnan's character, who is everything the drunken fools in the group are not? What I'm saying is... Gary was correct, by the movie's estimation. EVERY human was too messed up by the aliens' metrics. They weren't herding us into a Nirvana for our own good, they were KILLING us and replacing us with copies that they found more agreeable. So what the movie was saying, in part, is that even a completely terrible person like Gary is STILL preferable to a robot copy in a corporate copy of a "nice" town. Yes, the world ended, but the new world would be something humans could try to make something out of, and they were even influencing the copies to be more human than their alien creators.
Damn, this is good shit right here
Well said. 💯
Because of the thing with the teacher, I assumed they’d offered similar deals as they did to Gary - to keep their memories etc and just get a new body. So it makes whether every one was forced or consensual somewhat fuzzy.
yea they're literally replacing everyone lol it's kinda hard to miss i think
Part of me feels like this is also a reflection of one's behavior in the "Why Are You So Angry?" series, where an individual who can't see that the world doesn't revolve around them will go out of their way to preserve their innocence and ego, even if it means ruining everything and everyone around them.
I liked the recurring fence gag.
Nick Frost stumbling through the fence in Hot Fuzz is one of my favorite visual gags of all time! 😄
The fence gag mirrors its characters. Shaun is ruining his own life: one panel and he falls on his arse. Nicholas is so hypercompetent that it makes things difficult for those around him: he stunt jumps over every one and Danny crashes through trying to keep up. Gary ends up dragging the entire world down with him: the whole fence goes down.
I love it! Visual motifs like that are cool.
i just wish it was the same actor falling in every movie tho lol idk
@@highdefinition450 But the Hot Fuzz one where Nick Frost just falls straight through the fence is the best of the bunch! 😄
The elephant in the room here is that Gary rejected a system that was dissapearing people "for the greater good" which is largely a good thing. The reason people relate to The Worlds End is the rejection of a system which treats human cost as insignificant as long as things hum along. I agree with you about his arc but the brexit analogy gives way too much credit to brexiters with this in mind
THE GREATER GOOD
I think the difference is that in a story that isn't a love letter to immaturity it wouldn't be the same ending. The aliens represent adulthood in all the worst ways but if we were talking about a movie where it wasn't a love letter to immaturity it would probably end with Gary probably doing something like convincing the aliens that even he can change so mulching people is wrong or being able to disguise himself as a blank/adult to disconnect them without destroying the world or something, depends on what you want the theme to be.
@@KyleJCustodioYeah, it would had been more like the "Demolition Man" kind of ending: "Why don't you get a little dirty? You a lot clean. And somewhere in the middle... I don't know. You'll figure it out"
Brexit analogy was moronic. Should have expected as much from a stinky Yank.
I think Brexit works for that analogy, because it's very much in the same vein as the World's End. This is very much the drunken rant at the bar that spurs on some glorious action that only made sense while you were in the drunken haze World's End exists in. On the one hand, people decided to do something, on the other hand, we're rapidly learning that the captain of the ship is drunk and won't look at the maps because he doesn't need anyone telling him what to do.
The problem is that the analogy is wrong because if you apply that logic, you're on the side of everyone should be replaced by robots.
I think the films are more mature than that. I think it's not exactly a loveletter to immaturity, so much as an understanding of how immature and substanceless adulthood is. We're told that adulthood is the thing to desire, but it's not. Adulthood is the thing that happens to us while we're working out how to survive in the world. Childhood is the things that we do when we're not doing that.
World's End:
If you take this as an analogy, Gary spends the whole film running from adulthood. He's trying to relive his past. The issue is that growing up from most people's perspective is that he stops drinking, works hard, becomes an accountant, and starts trying to develop adult relationships. Which is great, but it's not really who Gary is. The film basically makes it clear that stopping drinking is about the freedom to conform to society's rules and to become "normal" to Gary. Which is exactly not what he's going to do. At the end of the film, stopping drinking becomes the freedom to choose how to fuck his life up.
Gary ends up in the apocalypse with robot copies of his teenage friends. I don't know why more isn't made of that. Society is essentially bullying Gary by pretending that he isn't who he is. In the "adult world", Gary stops drinking, and then he has a straight job, and he isn't a mess, and he lives in the "real world" and he develops adult relationships. In the world that he's in, the world already ended when he was in his teenage years. He's dragged those memories around for the past 20 years. He's refused to live in any other kind of world, and nothing about that appeals to him. Sober Gary isn't going to suddenly shape up, he's not going to get a straight job, he's still a mess, he's still a chaotic asshole. The film basically reconciles who he is with the choices he has to make. Yes, he's got to stop drinking, and that's fucking huge on a personal growth level. But, the idea that he's going to do that to conform with societal standards, and actually the idea that the societal standards were open to him at this stage is also immature. Stopping drinking just means he makes conscious decisions about what he wants to do, and is aware of who he really is.
Hot Fuzz: If you assume that this is about Nicholas not growing up, then you're on the side of the conspiracy. Nicholas's ideas about police work are "immature", yes. He's such a hardliner that it's a problem. We're presented with the "rural policing" attitude of doing kind of a half-arsed job of it. Basically, the police are there to reassure people that the law exists, and let people do their own thing. After all, most of this stuff is petty, not really crime, and it's only a problem when people cause trouble. Leave it up to the Adults.
The issue is that the conspiracy exists. Small Town Fascism. When the police aren't using their power, crimes are still happening. And things happen behind the scenes. When the police don't use their power, other forces have the power to do what they want. And those forces don't want police poking around.
The film resolves with Nicholas having basically reconciled himself with rural policing. He's still the hardline cop he's always been, but he learns to switch off a little (hence the end scene where they're in the car eating ice cream).. He's got a friend, he's not chasing after all of the crimes now (so sod London). I think this video ignores the part where he goes full badass. I'm pretty sure, at certain points, he's encouraged to get out of this, and to stop and keeps going and insists that this is the only way. Actually, he does break rules and he does calm down a bit. The thing that doesn't change is who he actually is.
Shaun of the Dead:
The film has this list of things that he's supposed to do to sort his life out.
According to the film, his job isn't good enough, his mates aren't good enough, his local isn't good enough, he's not man enough for his step-father. He's got to "grow up". He's got no plan, and he just does the same things over and over.
On the film's terms, he has to get a new job. He has to kick Ed out, and move Liz in. He's got to reconcile with his step-dad who just decided that he's not good enough. He's got to start making new plans.
But the film basically tears that apart.
He didn't need a new job. This was about society's view of him as a person, not something that actually mattered to him, or about him. He was supposed to cut Ed off, while Ed was the loyal friend who he could rely on in this film, while his grownup friends were relatively useless and in Dylan Moran's case, petty and undermining. His stepfather didn't need him to do anything much to prove himself, besides show up. And the new plans? Everyone criticises "The Plan", but they don't have different ideas.
The film basically reconciles Shaun with the adult world. New Job? No. Moving Ed out was resolved by the zombies, but he was never going to cut Ed out of his life. His stepfather basically apologies, because it was entirely about societal pressure, not really that there was much wrong with Shaun. And the plan's still there, because the truth is that going to the pub with your mates was always fine. Social pressures just make people feel like it's not good enough.
18:13 I feel like you missed the point that the Network didn't just pick "some" people. The Network had to replace all but 3 people in New Haven, and Basil really only half-counts.
This is pretty clearly the state of the Network's colonization of Earth: in a world where everyone must grow up or die? Most people get mulched.
I feel like that kind of undercuts your point that this is a "Space Brexit." Because if the invasion is supposed to make humans grow up, the resounding answer seems to be that nobody does, really. It's why Steven ends up with his childhood crush Sam, why Peter beats his blueblood bully with a stick, why Gary... well, is Gary.
Gary is the figurehead of imperfection, how people always carry some of their imperfections and immaturity with them. It feels more like a rejection of corporate culture and gentrification for something more genuine, if less constructive or even outright self-destructive. TWE seems to state that you can't get rid of that without also getting rid of humanity.
IMO, "The World's End" bit off a little more then it could chew. Between its cyclical structure, juggling more main characters than the previous movies, making the troughs of tragedy lower than in any previous film, and broadening its thematic reach to stuff like "Starbuckin" and "going green" on top of everything else... It's a little bit messy. But that's honestly part of its charm for me.
I think the point of it isn't that "This is what the European Union wants," it's that this is Gary's fantasy come true. In Gary's worldview, anyone who wants to tell him when to go to bed is an evil alien conspiracy seeking to replace all humanity. Anyway, I'm not sure that the film becoming the world according to Gary really works. It kinds feels like it undercuts its own point.
Counter-proposal: what if the movies are more about society than they are the "stunted man-children" that the Peggtagonists seem to represent? What if it's less about Shaun working a dead-end job and hanging out with his friends, and Nic's lack of healthy social connections, and Gary's alcohlism and it's more about how the specialization of western economies fails to serve any good ends?
The walking dead as an allegory for blind pursuit of the nuclear ideal, reflected by Pete as the first undead encountered after trying to get Shaun to take life more seriously while his attitude fails to result in any major difference in lifestyle between the two, and Mum and Phil being already bitten in every scene they're seen in after the undead begin to appear as those for whom it is already too late, Phil's jaguar sat outside a house that looks a lot like the one Shaun is already living in as a symbol for the lack of real distinction between the life he's being pushed at by those around him and the one he's already living, how he is being pushed to race towards a red light. Is Liz's settling down and finding contentedness over a total wipeout analogue and a cup of tea at the end intended as a contrast to her want for holidays and red wine and expensive restaurants? Is the castigation of Shaun by Pete, Liz, and Phil actually a portrait of the punching bag of the unsatisfied zombies pursuing the broken economic promises of the turn of the millenium?
Nic's post-thatcher pursuit to be exemplary in his role failing to bring him the respect of his superiors or his peers and leaving him unable to put down social roots until he feels he can cease trying to impress everyone and advance because he already has while the village pursues their ideal of a perfect village as a reaction to a tragic death of a neighbour by murdering a bunch of their neighbours.
And the technological and social advancement of the world in World's End coming at the expense of almost no real humans actually fitting into it, and society actually continuing to exist however changed in the end.
What if the trilogy is less about how mature our protagonists should be and more about how our society's idea of what maturity and progress looks like has become divorced from what humanity's natural social environment can look like and the effects of what that sort of blind pursuit of "the greater good" can actually look like?
Are the local pubs that each entry of the trilogy revolves around symbols for the sociological concept of "the third place" that has increasingly become endangered as people struggle to juggle a regular social life and a wide-ish social network with the increasingly prohibitive costs of houses, expensive cars, imported goods, and travel?
Is the continued failure of the hero in our heroes' journeys to learn and the need for the world to change to resolve our Peggtagnoist's major conflict each movie actuallly symbolic of a society that constructs people that don't fit its template and then expects them to change or die?
Given that the trilogy has been written by someone that became not a local police chief, or an electronics salesman, or corporate lawyer/estate agent/car/salesman/architect, but instead by Edgar Wright: director and co-writer of the Cornetto trilogy, is it not possible that he's poking fun at how what everyone told him was the path to healthy, happy, and successful adulthood was actually a complete mislead?
This.
i LOVE this take !!!
much, much better analysis. this whole video annoyed me for saying "this people saying this movie is about growth and responsibility are wrong, it's aCtUaLlY about GROWTH and RESPONSIBILITY!" like what point are you making, then having the audacity to say 'you don't owe me an apology haha i kid' like dude?
there's also a separation from the reward we see given to the protagonist in a film, the lesson they learn, and the lesson we as a viewer absorb and reflect after seeing it - we don't live in a world of apocalyptic world-changing sci-fi so we have to reflect on the ways these events are allegory for real-life situations, and why the characters havent responded to the call for growth and responsibility-taking, and why that's not what they should have learned (therefore almost pedagogically showing us, the viewer, what WE should have learned) and the answers lie in a social analysis - that was alluded to but entirely missing from this film. But your comment said it well!
@ joleneonyoutube Yes! This comment was absolutely spot on Jolene. I wish this comment and thread was higher up as people should see this perspective including your well presented comment. I personally felt a lot of the vid was very “wEll aWkSHuallY ☝🏼” kind of person you typically get on reddit or something…
@@jayboy2kay7 Thanks for the kudos but I think I have to say I hope people don't think I think this piece is wrong even though I prefer a different take on it. Innuendo Studios tends to put out really good, well thought out and interesting videos, and I think if I hadn't watched this one then what I wrote in my original comment probably never would have occurred to me.
Just to put that out there in case anyone thinks I meant to just drag the video's premise
Not long after World's End was released I went to a showing where Edgar Wright was in attendance. Afterwords he held a Q&A, I asked if the point of the film was that Gary "won" by dragging the world down to his level rather than by taking responsibility for his own life and growing up. Wright basically said neither he nor Simon Pegg had considered that perspective when they wrote the film, which I thought was pretty funny because yeah, that is exactly what happens.
That said, this video is excellent & needed to be made.
that's actually a bit terrifying
Worth pointing out that while Wright never considered it nor did Simon Pegg discuss it with him, that doesn't mean it didn't cross Simon Pegg's mind at some point.
@@dzonbrodi514You think it's plausible that they wrote the screenplay together but Pegg never mentioned his interpretation of the film to his coauthor?
I think they wrote those movies to be funny, not to have a deep meaning. That sort of ending was just the funniest they could come up with. ^^ Creators don't necessarily try to convey a deep meaning with their work. That's for the audiences to discover. And if the creators have a good connection to their inner truth they will simply stumble upon deep meaning, often without noticing it until later.
@@noneofyourbusiness4616Pegg was an alcoholic
/trying to get sober/had gotten sober at that point I think
World's End is my favorite, because missplaced priorities is one my favorite comedic tropes when done right. The higher the stakes the better.
It's my favorite but that's just because I think it's the funniest, Shaun of The Dead is my least favorite
World's End isn't my favorite but it does have my absolute favorite bit with Nick Frost going to push the door and punching his hand straight through the glass.
i also love how he advocates for humans' messy nature and that being imperfect and free is better than being a cog in the machine and all that. ironically, the alien movie feels the most human to me. it's also my favorite
@@highdefinition450it's even more relevant now with algorithms shaping every aspect of our existence, even our imagination or even what we consider our "human messy nature"
You know, after you talked about how much of a "genre" those Adam Sandler movies were when I was a baby millennial (barely 20 when it came out), it suddenly clicked why the ending rubbed me the wrong way for me and so many others. I had this grand expectation that Gary was gonna shape up and achieve self-actualization but he just... doesn't.
I still get grossed out rewatching any comedies from that era and wondering why the fuck the love interest would ever want to be with such an immature creep. Usually she'll be annoyed by the MC right up until some drastic change apparently happens off-screen and suddenly she's madly in love.
You mean it suddenly CLICKed
(I'm so sorry)
I have never watched an AS (pronounced "ass") movie and I am so grateful.
I take that back: 50 first dates and Spaceman - I liked those
I think this is also why he was cast in the lead for Uncut Gems. When you think about it, Howard Ratner is your typical Adam Sandler character: a selfish, immature, unfaithful asshole whose inability to chance consistently fucks up his life and the lives of those around him. A big reason the movie is so anxiety inducing is because you're watching him make bad decision after bad decision. The finale is him pulling off a heist that will let him have his cake and eat it too, and even though it succeeds, he doesn't get to reap the benefits and is immediately shot in the head by a guy who had it up to here with his bullshit.
i love that tbh lol
To answer the question of where the notion of these films being about growing up comes from: film school. I was literally taught that about Shaun of the Dead in film school, in as many words. I failed an assignment on how Shaun grows over the narrative when I made the same argument you did.
As somebody finishing up film school now. Some students lack critical media literacy skills, formally, contextually or even the skills to subjectively explain their feelings on content. I'm not surprised when I see or hear about educators with similar failures. I'm just extra dissapointed because they've had so much more time to develop those skills.
Wow....what a shitty teacher.
The point of essays is to make a compelling argument, no matter your conclusion. Getting a bad grade just because your point disagrees with your professor's is pathetic on their part
@@misteryA555 well that's assuming that is why they failed the assignment, it could be they did a bad job making that argument. Just sayin
@@secretlyaslug2325 Yeah, don't get me started.
Blue is just simply better, I’m sorry. Red also is incredible, but Blue is a tour de force from Binoche and Kieslowski.
you have made a powerful enemy this day
team Blue. binoche lays down one of the best screen performances of all time in that one. red is very close though
I clean forgot my film teacher reccomended 3 Colours till seeing this, so thanks for the memory unlock to both of you 😊
At least neither 'Red' or 'Blue' end like 'White'; where the "hero" frames his ex wife for his faked murder. The film ends with them reconciling as she begins SERVING A LIFE SENTENCE FOR A CRIME SHE DIDN'T COMMIT. I haven't been more aghast at the sexual politics of a film ending since 'A Boy and his Dog'.
DONT LET EM SILENCE YOU EMILY 🗣️
Oh thank god, I was worried you were going to say you didn't like it
The World's End is easily my favorite of the three, but I also think you nailed the analysis. Gary's path is one of alcoholic indulgence and he does ruin everyone's life, metaphorically and literally. I stopped drinking because it made me impressively sad, and that changed how I view the movie. Gary isn't the hero, just like Tyler isn't the hero of Fight Club, but he's charismatic and warm and exciting and never lets himself be wrong, and pulls himself down around him. I think it comes from a similar place as Midnight Mass, where Simon Pegg was worried he was going to destroy other people with his drinking, and the character went off in unexpected ways.
wait i dont get the midnight mass comparisson, what do you mean?
Yep. exactly. The movie is about one big drunken bender that ends with a man finally hitting rock bottom, and maybe JUST MAYBE having a chance to be slightly better by at least not letting his alcoholism define him anymore.
@@Larissa-zt6nr as someone also confused by this, I guess he's comparing the regretful vampirism of the Priest to the similarly regretful alcoholism of TWE
Ironically, the World's End is my least favourite because I hate Gary by the end of the movie, and I particularly hate Gary because he does have a bit of a point. He is not completely right, but he is right enough that I cannot just dismiss him out of hand. The bostord.
I know so many people who praised the movie for that reason; but I think they still saw Gary as the hero and a cool guy which is why I've never understood the praise for that movie compared to the other two.
Not sure if the argument that Nicholas Angel is the wrong character for a Buddy Cop Action Movie works when Hot Fuzz is specifically demarcated by an _exact_ moment when it switches into action movie mode. It's the moment when Nicholas answers a gas-station cashier with a cliche action movie line: It's a total non-sequitur but it's just the movie entering action mode.
"Is there anything else I can help you with sir?"
"No... this is something I have to do myself."
Is Hot Fuzz still about arrested development? Sure. But is Nicholas Angel the "wrong" character for an action movie? No, he's Super Cop, the cop that can't be stopped - Danny idly checking out a bargain bin DVD of that type, a generic action movie, is contrasted in the same scene by Nicholas effortlessly chasing down a shoplifter with 110% effort despite the low stakes!
Hot Fuzz is also an outlier in that Nicholas _does_ actually learn to switch off and chill out. He's just also still a super cop. But unlike Shaun playing video games or Garry LARPing a teen's idea of "cool", Hot Fuzz ends with Nicholas shooting the shit with his coworkers, telling a joke and _smiling._ He learns to do both, he actually learns his lesson.
The world didn't change, beyond this one town having one incident that happened to be huge. Nicholas has always treated his job with 110% effort, be it for shoplifting, missing swans, mall Santas, or whatever he and Danny get called off to do at the end. But Nicholas has found a group of people he can joke around with - that's change!
half the joke of Hot Fuzz is that British cops are fish out of water in Bay-style action films, they didn't even carry guns!
It does make sense to say this because the typical cop movie hero is a "loose cannon" whereas Simon Pegg is a "tight cannon". However, I think you're right in that this type of character could easily be played straight in a real cop movie.
IMO another aspect of the motif of the movies is that each one has a different type of ending, Sean of the Dead the characters & world return to normal, Hot Fuzz they get better, and World's End they get worse. I personally prefer Hot Fuzz because of this, but I don't begrudge anyone who prefers the cynicism of World's End or mediocrity of Sean of the Dead.
Hot Fuzz doesn't end with him shooting the shit with coworkers and smiling, it ends with him treating "hippy types messing with the bins" as something requiring sirens blaring as they race through the streets.
@@InnuendoStudiosThat's why it was weird to me that you said the action movie part doesn't make him bend the rules and he does everything by the book. I'm pretty sure he in fact breaks a lot of rules and doesn't go by the book. Well, going for an epic shootout all around the town with confiscated weapons isn't probably even in the book in the UK.
it is about yummy ice cream cones
and trying to jump over fences
I remember baby filmbuff me was already grousing at the way people would describe these movies as "More than *just* comedy" or how they "*Elevated* comedy to something more". Comedy does not need to be elevated, great comedy in particular, and these movies don't transcend comedy, they simply scrape towards the highest echelons of what can be accomplished in comedy, which are not eclipsed by those of drama, tragedy, horror, or anything else.
they seem to be "elevated" not because they're "more than just comedy", but because many comedies don't understand how to make long-form comedy fun.
for example, as they are all parodies of different genres, many parodies just make fun of every aspect of it. but shaun of the dead is a good zombie movie with comedy on top of it. it has all the central themes with "the real monsters are actually the humans", "sacrifice" and "maybe if we go along, they don't realise we're not one of them". And the same goes for the other 2.
Then there's also the fact that they have tons of callbacks which you'll miss when you only watch it once or aren't very attentive. the shaun of the dead morning walk, the crossword solutions in hot fuzz coming up in RL again (fascist across, hag down), the whole movie of the worlds end just being a repetition of what he tells in the intro (they lose the same people at the same places, they end up on the same hill etc).
You can watch these movie as drunk teenagers not paying attention and think they're funny, but you can watch them as observing adults and appreciate the details
tl;dr: they're not elevated comedy, they're what regular comedy should be.
They definitely reminded audiences of what comedy could be after suffering more than a decade of Adam Sandler and the like.
They only Eleveated comedy in that they returned to what really good comedy is, rather than the lazy trash from Sandler and co and the endless stream of terrible rom-coms and brain-dead comedy you're supposed to watch while stoned. But they are just comedy films, it's just they are really good comedy films.
Totally agree. To say it transcends comedy is to say comedy is less important than drama or whatever. It's not, and it's extremely difficult to do well.
I'm sorry to have to resort to such blunt language,, but I genuinely believe that people who use the term "elevated" in relation to a genre of cinema deserve to step on a Lego.
The utterly overblown R-rolling on "THRRRRICE!?" is a thing of beauty. The sheer indignation is palpable.
Hot Fuzz is one of my favourite films of all time and I knew the fact that the world changes to meet Nicholas somewhere deep down, but you've articulated the idea so well I didn't realise I already knew it lol
A 30 minute video from Innuendo Studios? Christmas has come early!
or late, depending on your perspective
I got a short brainfuck moment, because I only know Innuendo Studios from the Alt-Right-Playbook Series.
And so have I
I can't wait to watch Brennan Lee Mulligan clips after watching this
Wait. What is the connection between the two?! Being a fan of both I have no idea what this is referring to!
@@ninaadadhvaryu1603 Ian is annoyed that UA-cam won't stop putting Brennan Lee Mulligan content into his feed
@@ninaadadhvaryu1603 he's complained occasionally that he's sick of BrenLeeMull clips being sent to him by the algorithm. It's not Brennan that bothers him, it's his general inescapability.
me unironically, because a new episode of dimesion20 just came out
Brennan Lee Mulligan and Pirate Software just dominating that shorts game
I had friends like Gary King in my late teens who's lives just nose-dived after highschool. Guys who stopped talking to me because they started hanging out with the worst crowd that would have them and doing things they knew I'd never do. I would never go out of my way to talk to them now because they fuck up everything they touch.
And I also LOVE Gary King. He reminds me of how it felt to be friends with those guys back when. I feel a great nostalgic pang for his character. And I'm sad for him, and I can laugh at him. Because in real life, all those guys I used to love so much who peaked at 18 are gone. They've become dark, pathetic monsters I wouldn't dare invite into my life. So I MISS when they were still boys. When they were still okay. I miss my friends.
Through Gary, I get to forgive a bunch of people I can't even talk to in real life.
An important factor in how I view World's End comes from a detail revealed in that final confrontation with the network where it admits that over 99% of the town had to be replaced in order for there to be an acceptable peace, and it's implied that other incursion points have had a similar situation. There are three humans left in Newtonhaven when the group arrives and only two of them were by acceptance of the network. Humans are fundamentally incapable of fitting in to the network's standards. One way or another, the end of the information age was an inevitability.
I like Gary King. I like him because he sucks. I like him because I feel like I recognise the pain of being born into a system that you will never fit into, and from having only escapism as a lifeline. 'It's all I've got' is something I feel very deeply on my worst days. As someone who feels very beholden to the effects my actions have on others, who feels like a failure in so many ways, who will never live up to the standards of others...to have that pain shown as something that another (and, to some extent, everyone) also feels...it's important. It's why World's End is my favourite.
I think the point of that is that 99% of people, like... grow up. Which in the worldview of a perpetual manchild might seem like "becoming a robot", because the whole thing is metaphorical. We're not actually talking about being replaced by robots, we're talking about growing up and becoming part of a functioning community vs. continuing to ignore your responsibility to those around you in order to selfishly continue acting like a spoiled child.
The movie frames it as "99% of people had to be replaced by robots" because the movie is a story told from Gary's perspective: that's how (the non-metaphorical real-world version of) Gary views people who stop living solely for their own constant self-gratification.
I don't think you're supposed to agree with him.
To be clear I don't mean that "growing up" has to mean conforming to society's standards. I'm a queer anarcho-communist, trust me I'm not advocating anybody capitulate to the system, the system is shit. But the fact remains that at some point you have to recognize that it's not just about you, that your actions have an effect on the world around you and the people who exist in that world, and that you bear responsibility for the effects of your actions. You can reject the problematic expectations of the system we live under while still accepting that you have a responsibility to the people and community around you.
Gary's pain wasn't because the world shunned him, it was because he was a spoiled brat who refused to understand that the world doesn't actually revolve around him and he refused to understand that his pain was a consequence of his own actions.
Saying Gary King making the Network leave is Brexit is like comparing the War in Algeria or Ireland's fighting against British rule to the Confederate side of America's Civil War. like... the Network was an occupation, their whole thematic crux magnifies gentrification to the scale of cultural genocide and imperial narratives. gary king acted rashly but he only hastened an inevitable violent resistance to Earth's occupation
@@Gravitynaut So, again, you're interpreting a metaphor too literally. The movie is not about aliens taking over Earth and replacing everybody with robots, it's about a perpetual man-child who rationalizes refusing to become a better person by seeing everybody who does do that as "a robot".
It's framed as a movie about aliens taking over Earth because that makes for a more fun movie, and "fun movie that's also a metaphor for something deeper" is a pretty common thing.
@@anothervagabondI don't you're reading into the metaphor enough tbh. If becoming a robot is meant to be a metaphor for growing up, then growing up is framed as inherently negative.
As is clearly established in the film like 99% of the town (and presumably the world) are replaced by robots because the vast majority of people fail to meet the Network's exacting standards. Even those who desperately try and conform often eventually crumble under the pressure and then are replaced (like Reverend Green) or are delegated to the fringes of society (Basil). If the replacement of human beings with the Blanks is a metaphor for growing up then The World's End displays complete disgust with the concept, rejecting it as something to celebrate and even saying that the concept in of itself is immoral.
I thought Hot Fuzz was about finding the balance between Danny's and Nicholas' approach to life
Hmm. Maybe? But Danny always wanted to be a good cop, by my memory. He just didn't know how, or have any real local pressure to do so on account of living in the country and under a secret society keeping the town peaceful via murder.
Nick, though. Nick _never_ had any real plans to learn how to relax and enjoy life before meeting Danny.
Danny did become more like Nick, but he wanted to go that direction from day 1. Nick became more like Danny, but that was his character arc.
Can't that balance still be an immaturity?
As did I. Valid, so sayth this girl
Yeah, Nicholas can still be a good cop and find time to loosen up and "turn off." And it could be seen as him being a little spiteful to his former prescint begging him to come back because, hey, maybe it wasn't a good idea to boot your most competent and decorated officer to the boondocks because of bruised egos and letting crime rise as a result.
I think each movie can have their own messages, but this video talks more about the overarching refrence
Wait, are people really saying that the Cornetto Trilogy is about responsibility???
REALLY??? MATE, DID WE WATCH THE SAME MOVIES???
I wish I was articulate enough to explain why I hate the take on World's End as much as I do.
I think that Gary being sober is more of an indication of him abandoning his destructive habits and becoming a better influence on the people around him, while not becoming 'boring' otherwise.
I have so much more to say on the topic, but alas I am just a man in the UA-cam comment section.
Gary doesn't order water because he's overcome his problem, but because he's been taught earlier it's braver. Or, rather, it's even more confrontational. Ordering bear wouldn't be as self-destructive as ordering water here is sort of the point.
The world's end kind of muddles it for me. Since there are like 3 humans left in the town.
So Gary winning - even though it's the end of civilisation - is still the humans surviving. So I can't read the ending any other than positive. He is being rewarded for being that way. AND the human race needed him to be that way.
I can't tell if that muddles the point, or drives it home.
Yeah, you're spot on. Dan completely whiffs this, lol. Gary isnt textually the cause of [the delcine of humans], the aliens are.
If [the aliens leaving] was enough to collapse what was left of non-robot human civilization...then we were already dead.
Garys a prick and a narcissist...but he *saves* humanity.
This reading of it as [brexit] feels like shoehorning. The payoff isn't [its good to be irresponsible], the payoff is [not fitting into the soul-crushing/individualality-erasing Matrix that neoliberal capitalism imposes on us all] isnt always a bad thing.
This is exactly the kind of point I wanted to make. It's definitely not framed as being this big terrible somber thing, the way Ian is presenting it. There's a feeling that everyone's lives, if they're harder now, are a lot more genuine without the influence of the aliens.
Him berating Gary is like Agent Smith telling Morpheus humans are a virus. Rejecting this system for a harsh world is necessary or else the machines will do all the thinking for you.
"Sometimes you make a video out of love, and sometimes you make a video out of SPITE."
Me: Wait... you can make videos out of something other than spite?
Wait... you can make a video?
I really enjoyed this video, but was surprised Ian didn't mention something I think is pretty key - these aren't just films about being a child, they are specifically films about being a boy. The nostalgic world they lionise is one in which actual women are excluded, and the female characters they passingly portray are reduced to cardboard cutouts: mummies, nagging girlfriends, that weird "always making double entendres" role they've got Olivia Coleman doing in Hot Fuzz, etc. Part of the longing for simplicity and childhood is them saying "wasn't it great when we were kids and played at cops and robbers/aliens/zombies, and things were simple because NO GIRLS ALLOWED".
I disagree with "because no girls allowed". it's part of it, but it's not the main part. being a boy means a lot of things and your implication that the movies say girls are the root of all evil is just wrong.
@@TheZorginator1 "it's part of it, but it's not the main part" - we are in agreement. I don't think it's the main point of the films either, but it is significant, and I'm surprised it didn't come up. I certainly wasnt implying that the films say "girls are the root of all evil". They say "growing up is the root of all evil" and one of the significant ways they draw a distinction between adulthood and childhood is the creation of an all-boy world.
@@pleisiomorph Yeah, good point
They also dont really ackbowledge anyone other than what its like to be cishet or white, either. World's End, especially, is a nightmare of an ending for queer people (so many queer people's only genuine safe spaces are just *gone* in the ending thanks to the destruction of modern technology) and the film never even acknowledges this. Because acknowledging millions of queer people losing access to their only support systems would sour the mood about their "comically subversive" ending and we'd see Gary King for the fucked up monster he actually is.
On one hand I feel like you have a point. On the other... The way I see it, the reason these movies aren't as gender diverse is that it would set the stage for misinterpretation of romantic subplots and gender-relational subtext when the movies are explicitly about the inner lives of immature men. I feel like if they were more gender diverse, the tone of the films would be much more focused on the societal than on the inner mental struggles - and the giving in to them - of each of these characters. I don't so much see it as "a simpler world" as I see it as a necessary device to tell these stories about dysfunctional masculinity in a way that doesn't make it about either conforming for the sake of heterosexual love or refusing to conform as a rejection of it.
Like, I'm as feminist as they come, but this is one of the relatively few cases where I think making basically an all-male cast is necessary to make the point the films (maybe subconsciously) end up making. And I think it's different here than from, say, Die Hard, because these movies understand that these men aren't heroes.
There's a difference between making a movie that forgets to include women as people as an implicit political statement, and making a movie that uses an all-male cast with very few female appearances to tell a compelling, cautionary tale about toxic masculinity.
Theres another comment saying this in a better way, but im surprised you take the aliens side when they are colonizers
"Bad people being bad" is a definite escape from reality that can be fun. Burn After Reading, American Psycho, There Will Be Blood. But much like enjoying Fight Club or Rick and Morty, it's important not to model your life after them, or hold them up as an ideal. Scarface isn't an instruction book, it's a cautionary tale.
I think all three of these films have arcs (if not the major traditional arcs you'd find in more predictable films), in that these characters end the films by doing something they could not have done at the start of the film. At the end of "Shaun," Shaun is able to compartmentalize his adolescence. At the end of "Fuzz," Nick is able to laugh, make friends, and work well with others. At the end of "World's End," the more important development is not that he's drinking water at the end (though that's very encouraging), it's that the Network offers him a very literal way to regain the adolescence he craves, and he rejects it, something I don't believe he was capable of doing at the start. It takes him being face to face with the thing he wants most for him to not only say "nah," but to also say that he himself is not perfect, the thing we're repeatedly told he's incapable of doing ("You're never wrong").*
(His rejection of his blank also takes on real weight when you consider that the pub crawl is functionally a suicide run. His eyes lighting up at the start of the film are when he first gets the idea for a very literal "last hurrah," and him rejecting self-annihilation is important.)
* I think this movie means a lot to people with mental health issues or addiction problems not just because Gary has serous baggage and problems, but because the film recognizes *how extremely fucking hard it is to change*. Because it literally feels like the world you were familiar with is ending. And then those first steps out of the behavior feel deeply meaningful to the person afflicted.
"Once is a gag, but thrice?"
Yes. It's called the Rule of Three, because it's funny three times.
lol
Hmm, I'm still not sure I really agree about Hot Fuzz. If the idea is that Nick chooses to stay in the immature fantasy instead of growing up, how does him staying in the village represent that? The fantasy wasn't living in the town, the fantasy was the action movie with the black and white morality, and that movie ended when they arrested everyone. And it's implied at least, that he's willing to be more lax with the rules around the town, showing growth from his original mindset
absolutely nothing happens to imply he will be lax about the rules
In the terms of what the fiction thinks are the rules that cops follow his looseness around sexual humor with his colleagues and his alliance with graffiti artists do fit that description.
@@InnuendoStudios I would argue the movie implies the opposite, it ends with him going to confront people for recycling other people's garbage, a complete non-issue.
@@firesofthemind☝️
I mean the last scene and only interaction with the law after the violence ends is him treating "hippie types messing with the bins" as if it was a violent emergency, police sirens, speeding and dangerous driving included.
I would like to make an objection. Hot Fuzz isn't about a manchild. It's not about the wrong person for the job. It's about two people who are right for the job, but only together.
Angel isn't immature, Danny isn't stupid, they're just two people who have never been given the chance to do anything but what they were always taught to do. Angel prioritized his job too much, yes, but it was because he'd never known a way to exist in the world except efficiency. Danny showed him the fun side of his job, the way to enjoy it, so that by the midpoint he was taking a break from work to buy his friend a gift and by the end he was rejecting the job he'd wanted in the start to stay with his friend and do something he could be proud of and happy about instead of something that would be better for his policework. Danny, likewise, isn't stupid. He's an incredibly quick learner, sticking on every word from those who know more than him, he's almost starved for learning because it's in his father's best interest to make sure he never becomes a great cop who could figure out the goings on in the town. Once he's taught how to do things, he becomes an amazing cop in just a few days.
Shaun and World's End follow the structure you laid out in the beginning, but people always misread Nick and Danny in Hot Fuzz as being dysfunctional when in fact they're both the best there is at what they do, and it just takes them clicking in order to truly complete each other. Like, fun fact, the original drafts of Hot Fuzz would've had Nick bring a girlfriend with him to the town, presumably Cate Blanchett's character, but she was cut from that part of the movie and most of her lines were just given verbatim to Danny. They truly do complete each other
You're absolutely right, but that's a trope that's carried over from buddy cop movies as a whole rather than a theme specific to the cornetto trilogy. And as with the rest of the cornetto trilogy movies, that trope is subverted when instead of Angel and Danny meeting in the middle to form a more mature worldview, Angel and Danny both adopt each other's forms of immaturity
@@Three_Blind_Dice Yeah that's fair (and full disclaimer I only watched part of the video before writing this so his argument definitely debunks some of what I said but I still stand by some of it)
I really like this take. It also reminds me a bit of something I saw Simon Pegg say in an interview - that he hates when people talk about “bromance” because close emotional friendships between people who society genders as men are healthy and should be normalized 💙
@@Three_Blind_Dice TBH I don't know why people expect there to be a singular cohesive theme of the Cornetto Trilogy, I doubt they were all three planned out from the start given they span a decade of time, and are narratively completely separate from each other. They have recurring motifs but they aren't some master plan high work of art with some hidden Da Vinci code meaning underneath the surface. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost aren't stupid, but they aren't mastermind geniuses either.
so disco elysium ?
I'll be completely honest, I think you've majorly misread The World's End to a very similar extent as those who think Gary King grew up by the end.
First, to say that Gary single-handedly doomed the world is giving him way more agency than he actually had in his confrontation with The Network. He didn't force them to leave, neither did he force them to get rid of all the technological advancements they brought. That was something The Network did entirely of their own accord, just because Gary (and likely humans in general, given other pieces of dialogue) were annoying them that much. They effectively had a planet-wide hissy fit and stormed off when things weren't going their way, arguably making them ultimately just as immature as Gary despite their claims of superiority.
Second, I really have to question your presentation of The Network's takeover as the better outcome compared to the world in the ending, and the suggestion that Gary was somehow wrong in opposing them. The Network are explicitly portrayed as fascist, given that their plan to make the world a better place was to murder the undesirables and replace them with copies sympathetic to their cause. Furthermore, their talk of civilising Earth and preparing it for integration with the rest of the galaxy is practically identical to how colonisers have historically justified their actions. Any good they claim to bring is very clearly in their own self-interest rather than out of any genuine altruism for the human race.
Interesting points
Sounds kind of similar how when france pulled out of.... I cannot remember which former African colony, but they basically declined further trade relations and the french went "ok" and took everything they considered french-made with them as they left.
Edit: it was Guinea
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op%C3%A9ration_Persil
That's part of why I wasn't a big fan of the film. I don't think what Gary represents is any more authentic either. It felt like a jumbled mess to me in part because they tried to flesh out the aliens too much the way they did. I think they wanted a more coherent counterpoint to Gary but the vehicle used to do that kinda undermines that tension. I watched, a bit frustrated that those were the two options lol
So to be clear, I do mostly agree with the parallel between Gary's actions and Brexit made in the vid. But, I do think there is another reading. Another way to see Brexit was as a vote against the continuation of a shit situation.
Yes, being in the EU was better than not being in it, but the (obvious, tangible) benefits of that arrangement were not equally spread, geography or class-wise, in the UK. I voted Remain, but I cannot blame someone who was told "you can't vote to leave, think of how much worse things will get" and looked around at their crumbling schools, hollowed out towns, the slow death of their communities due to managed decline and thought "if the choice is between this and a change, any change, I'll take the change."
In some ways I think this actually dovetails with the reading of "Gary's actions= Brexit". The option given was "continue to experience this shit life while things are made worse, or change it" and he chose to change, with all the negative outcomes that implies in either Brexit or the movie. Just to complicate things more, I also think the reading of Gary's actions as Brexit gives too much credit to the racism and xenophobia of the Brexit vote. Because, the Network *are colonisers*, who do actually aim to replace much of the population with themselves. If you draw a parallel between Gary's actions and Brexit, you're saying Brexit was also an invasion and then you're on some very thin ice...
And again, to be clear, I think Brexit was bad and a lot of the people who voted for it did so out of xenophobia, racism, not wanting EU regulations to stop businesses making profit at the expense of people, etc. I think it was all of those things, for a lot of people, and also how i described it above.
Yes, the most charitable interpretation of The Network is they're a more totalitarian, version of Blair's New Labour, Neoliberalism, & the Corporate Fash-Lite who embody that System.
The less charitable version is that they're just Blair's New Labour, Neoliberalism, & the Corporate Fash-Lite who embody that System.
Hey wait a minute...
I really like this analysis.
One thing that i think is critical in understanding World's End is Pegg's publicly discussed substance abuse.
I think to some extent each of the films are Pegg and Frost working through parts of their lives in screen. An extension of the themes of spaced.
The empty solipsism and overt destructive nature of Gary king really seems to vibe with what Pegg has described in his own experience. The morning after a bender extended to global apocalypse is the cherry on top.
I don't want to defend Gary King or anything... But by the time the drunk protagonists finally come into contact with the Lightshow Alien, it's made pretty apparent that the invasion was a failure. Sure, everyone has the technology we see today but when it came time to assimilate into the Galatic Federation (or whatever it was called), the aliens took over an entire town and left THREE people alive. The replicants are like playthings or puppets - even by their own logic of the human race being the most primitive civilizations in the galaxy, they KEPT GOING. It could be reasoned it was going to be a near-eradication of humans for an admittedly pyrrhic victory in bringing another planet to the Federation.
You're spot-on about Gary King (and libertarians): he made a drunken decision for everyone, and life SUCKED afterwards. Earth got nuked back to the Dark Ages. Civilization persisted somehow but it's a far cry from the comforts we have now. But given the evidence that we'd all be dead otherwise... Both are bad endings, sure, but one is much worse than the other. I don't think anyone could make the case that enough humans would have been assimilated for the rest of the global population to get on board. After all, the aliens took over AN ENTIRE TOWN, save for three people.
By this logic you could argue life did probably get worse for the other two movie settings as well (now we have zombies but they're subdued kind of, and a cozy peaceful town is run by a no-nonsense hall monitor), I just think World's End is such an extreme example because it was an active choice to never grow up for Gary King, and Earth was punished anyway.
It's silly to pin the apocalypse on a suicidal inebriated man who not only had no concept of what the full extent of the network's absence would, but Did Not Personally Decide To Fuck Everything Up as they left?? It seems weirdly like... victim blaming to me? On top of that Gary was not a lone actor in that final exchange. Peter and Andy were backing him up, and very justifiably so.
Yeah, it was weird for Innuendo Studios to be on the Network's side when its MO was assimilating and replacing anything and everyone that displayed controversial thought and action, because it offered technology and the trains run on time.
It wasn't just Gary who made the decision but also Peter and Andy, and the guy played by Mr. Filch, one of the last real humans in town who can also give sober consent that the Network should just leave (and beforehand, he made it abundantly clear he's fucking terrified being in that town and made several paranoid precautions to ensure he wasn't cloned or body snatched or whatever).
I mean.... in Hot Fuzz, given that the town was literally killing anyone wh didn't fit in, the resolution is still better than it was before. And, arguably, in a way the guy did grow up a little and change the precise way he was a killjoy.
You're missing something: little backwater towns are *loaded* with people who, left to their own devices, will eventually die from drug use. Not even from an OD, but from destroying their liver with the acetaminophen included with the Vicodin they snort 20 of every day (and the hep-c they got off a needle in their "wild" days).
People so heavily invested in some kind of cult-like evangelical micro-denomination that they despise all cultural development that came about after 1945.
The kind of people who seem lovely until the subject of the nearest (small) urban environment arises and they casually drop a hard-r N-bomb out of nowhere (and you find out their third husband was a literal klansman until he died of a heart attack at age 42).
Do those seem *really* specific? They should, they're real people, from a real little town that maybe the world would be better without (or perhaps with a large segment of their population replaced).
Food for thought.
Well, and obviously there's the layer of metaphor there. Growing up as being replaced. Not everything has to be literal, ya dorks.
These are all reasonable statements, but I think the distinction is looking at The Network as a metaphor for growing up vs. looking at them as a literal genocidal alien invasion.
If you look at the latter, then yes, fighting back is the only thing that makes sense.
But, the former, then you see how Gary's "Fuck you, I do what I want" attitude is akin to real-life adults (and political parties) who feel this way and drag the rest of the world down with them.
I think where World's End becomes a bit messier is they (to good effect, I think) brought in a lot of different themes, and Gray was by far the most complex of their protagonists, and that makes it a bit harder to look at it as solely about "one thing." I suspect that's what Ian means when he says it's the most interesting of the films.
"He does absolutely everything by the book, only louder!"
So he does everything by the Audio book?
I do wanna throw in my So What: The World's End especially feels like a metaphor to me on human rights, especially in the context of humanity's right to fuck up over and over again. Supporting, for instance, women's rights to control their own bodies means supporting people who don't get pregnant in a way that you approve of or would choose for yourself. Supporting the rights of immigrants means supporting the rights of an immigrant who wants to, for whatever reason, harm you. Supporting drug addicts means supporting people who choose to go back to the drug even if they've been offered all the support they need. All these cases are statistical outliers, but they do happen occasionally. You have to do what's right even if it feels like Scott from the daily commute is trying to ruin it for everyone. Making up laws to get Scott in trouble for his own good ("for the greater good!") will only harm everyone else affected by that law.
In The World's End, when they're truly living in the post apocalypse, despite Gary's harmful actions, he's now working together with the shunned minority (Blanks) and fighting for some version of a life for them. And it's still selfish andfeeds fully into stroking his ego, but it also makes sense, because (due to his own selfishness), many of his friends have been replaced with Blanks now just trying to live their own lives. And it's going to be harder for them to do that if they're hit with NO BLANKS segregation signs everywhere.
That's just my read, of course. I'm sure there's a lot that goes against it, but my point is that yeah, Gary doesn't grow up: he's uniquely suited to the role he made for himself, and that's a lifestyle with the respect of human dignity, if nothing else.
Suddenly want to do an analysis of the differences between one person choosing the end of the world in "The Worlds End" and "Cabin in the Woods"
I'd watch it.
I love that idea.
I love these movies so much, and I totally agree- they’re not about making positive changes, they’re about changing the context so that the protagonists’ dysfunction becomes reasonable due to the world being completely unreasonable.
I think my fundamental problem with your analysis is that it implies Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg are wrong about their own films; they imply in many interviews that these films are intended to be about growth and change.
I also think it's odd to view Gary shutting down the network as being a selfish or moronic decision - it follows immediately after he snaps the neck of his younger self and rejects their offer of internal youth - something he has longed for throughout the entire film - this very action seems (at least to me) to be a very clear indication of growth?
Yeah, it pretty much reveals that Gary realises that he never actually wanted to be young and stuck in his glorious past forever, he just wanted to be able to grow up as himself, to grow, not just learn to fit in.
I think that a meta contextual argument could be made, because people hate Gary, that we blame him for the systemic problems (that system is so fucked that it makes people seem irredeemable) that made Gary. Like if Gary would just shape up we could have utopia but that isn't true. We have to fix the system that makes the Garys. That is a form of our own shame, of thinking it is all on us, aimed outwardly at Gary or in reality the conservatives/brexiters he represents.
Coming back with another thing that occurred to me about why I love World's End. Coming from the perspective of someone who was raised in fundamentalist christianity, the choice to reject a paternalistic figure of control is a cathartic one. God loves you, they say. He wants the best for you. Just follow the rules and everything will work out. If you don't follow the rules, however...you get mulched.
Leaving that behind was difficult and painful. I was told I was ruining my life. God know's what's best after all. But I don't want what's 'best'. I want what's 'bad' for me. I want to reject that 'love'. Reject the impossible standards. Reject the shame. Reject the neat little boxes that no-one can ever really fit into. It is my human right to be a fuck up. It is my human right to be free.
"Just what is it that you want to do?"
"We want to be free. We want to be free to do what we want to do. And we want to get loaded. And we want to have a good time."
You are right. I didn't catch the "Omega Doom" reference. I will look it up.
idk why but this comment is so heartwarming to me, what a sweet interaction
love that this video implies the information age is worth like billions of people being killled and replaced with robots
like seriously i havent seen the film for a while but im fairly sure like a lot of the town down to like children has been massacred and replaced with duplicates and the framework of this video just assumes that this is fine and that having spotify and ethernet cables is worth the large scale covert brainwashing of the planet
You are so close to getting this premise correct.
It's not about a manchild abandoning their arc and not growing.
It's a story about three men who think they are grown men and their role is questioned and then reinforced by their faced.
The journey is them learning that them pretending to be an "adult" isn't any good. Then they try to step up into that roll and realize they aren't that person. The person we all are is a broken attempt at being an "adult" but in reality as you get older you realize you are still that kid inside for the most part and you just have to accept your shortcoming, stop pretending to be better than you are and last but most importantly, find your own happiness, not settle for what should make an "adult" happy
Shawn was a dead end burn out slacker, but in the end he learned, I can still be that guy, but in moderation. That's growth. Not just working and living like an adult but just accepting the world and rising to the position the people you love care about or you could lose them forever.
Hot fuzz.hot fuzz is a reverse of this. He is the man who rose to too high a level of adulthood and lost the joy of himself
In the end he's still a mature excellent cop, but now he understand that an island drowns in the waves of an unrelenting ocean. You must find comfort in the world to truy thrive, but the journey for happiness has its own extreme toll. Moderation is key.
Last is the world's end. These characters are extremes again of Shawn and Angel. They learn again that being these extremess is unhealthy but some people just can't cope with life. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try, it just means you will error and the most important thing is getting back up and finding balance.
They are all about balance
what i think is interesting about the worlds end is how the older you get, the more you can appreciate it. Even though it's the same movie a third time in a row considering the structure, the other 2 can be fully understood even when you're younger.
the "it's all i've got" scene made me cry the second time i watched it, much to the confusion of my then girlfriend. she was like "there are moments when you drink too much, but this is not even comparable, why does this affect you so strongly?" and what i wanted to say was that these moments are for the same reason, which definitely wouldn't have been fair to say to a loved one (and overdramatic), but i often felt like i was going nowhere, i can't pull myself up to finish my studies, my relationship has lost its energy... i liked to be drunk because then those things didn't matter anymore. What i ended up saying was "i know i'm not going to end up as bad, but i still feel like he's where i'm going".
i also had to tell her that while i miss being the drunk idiot of my youth and not caring about as much, i also don't want to go back because i found more important things in life. (like her for example, which is ironic considering she's my ex xD)
I’ve always thought that Gary orders water in the pub, not because he kicked his addiction necessarily, but because earlier in the film his friend says there’s nothing more badass than ordering water in a pub full of tough guys. He’s ordering water BECAUSE he wants to start a fight, or at least to show off.
I disagree with the characterisation of Nicholas Angel as returning to what was before. That would be him accepting the offer to go back to London and being the same entirely-buttoned-up cop he was before. The shoot-out scenes are entirely against the book (for British policing, anyway), and what protocol would have been in those situations would be to call in an armed response unit, which wouldn't be the other local bobbies. While Angel is trained for that, he's not part of that unit now, and so shouldn't act that way. And he would know that.
There's also the scene where they're filling out the paperwork for the village-wide shoot-out, he engages with the un-PC banter and is accepted in it, in a way he wouldn't have done before. The final scene of the film has Angel and Danny break out the sirens for some teenagers messing with bins, when Angel explicitly cautioned against that at the start of the film. While this isn't necessarily "becoming an adult" (the implied punitive response for a minor infraction is part of why it's a gag ending), it's still growth on Angel's part that he's accepting a different attitude to policing compared to the one that he started with.
I also think that a reason why there's empathy for Gary among a certain demographic (certainly me, as an elder millennial) is Gary's words in his fight with Andy. The "this was supposed to be the beginning of the rest of our lives, but it never got better" section in particular is a sentiment that echoed strongly with me personally after graduating in 2007 and then the Great Recession hit the next year, meaning the jobs market dried up and led to me temping for three years before going back into education. I don't know how typical my experience was, but I imagine many were similar. Gary's reaction may have been childish, but that was the emotional core of the film for me - the idea of wanting to relive the "glory days" of youth, because reality never lived up to expectations.
I think this video essay hurt me. Because Ian has a clear value system about growing up and taking responsibilty, while I struggle so much with living in the society and feel unable to grow. so his values may just not apply to me.
I think the UA-camrs AND you are right. The world changes so Pegg doesnt have to... but he DOES let others change him JUST enough... Shaun fails in his plan... but hes got a plan! Angel throws caution to the wind and fires 2 guns while jumping through the air. And Gary roams the desolate world... but sober. Its 80% standing his ground -20% smoothing the edges that lets him get by
Always happy to see that you are still going. I know this isn't your first job, but your content is great.
I would like to genuinely thank you for the courtesy of bringing up the mental health aspect of gary, and the strong emotions it can evoke in people.
I've grown up with these films, and I truly treasure them, yet I've found that over time the nature of this love has changed. Here in the UK, I've noticed that these films are so ubiquitous, that if you were to shout out a random quote on a night out, it's very likely that someone will shout out the next line of that quote. People love these films, they think they're hilarious, and that's usually where the conversation ends - in recent rewatches I've begun to give greater thought about the themes of these films, but I don't think this is a common thing.
With the empathy towards gary specifically, I think this may be a result of how many people view these films - having watched and rewatched these films so many times, people are going back to specific scenes and highlight reels on UA-cam. This can cut past the larger thematic points you raise in this video, and presents a scene divorced of much of its context - in the case of the world's end, there are a number of memorable scenes that are frequently rewatched that portray gary as a deeply tragic, flawed figure, presented with an emotional honesty that isn't often seen in films of this kind. (I think the reveal of his self harm is potentially a watershed moment - ironically for a film that delights in its drunken comedy, this is such a harsh and sobering moment, yet it's adult and honest in a way I scarsely see in Booze Adventures. As you pointed out, it's the logical endpoint of such a character, but it is such a powerful and haunting visual that it can genuinely leave me speechless. I suspect the visual will be familiar to international audiences, but to me it is a powerful visual of British drinking culture specifically. No matter how fun the path is - eventually you will see this, and you're never going to forget it)
I can say I recognise a piece of myself in gary during these scenes (i.e the bandages scene), and I recognise in him a great many people close to me who have reached a tragic end. I haven't rewatched the film much since its release, but I've viewed these few scenes many times since, and I suspect many others have too. Taken purely in isolation, these scenes have a particular power to them that I'm struggling to adequately convey through words.
I very much enjoyed your video, and I've held the same position as you for years on the larger themes of these films. I just felt compelled to say my piece on gary king. He's such a complete bastard.
You know as I get older, I realize the guys I used to watch movies with aren't as media literate as they believe they are or as I believed they are. And you're right. And that's why I love Shaun of the Dead. And why I didn't like At the World's End as Much. I need to get new movie watching buddies.
I actually grew to like world's end a lot when I realized "oh...this is a movie about alcoholism and that fact that even if you finally decide to get sober you can't undo the collateral damage from the countless drunken benders you already went on. You can only stop drinking and take the first steps towards a new dawn (hence the final pub being named the Rising Sun) and maybe try to be a little better.)" It's not about actually growing up. It's about the danger of refusing to change and acknowledge your failures. That's why I love it the most.
If you're gonna leave an entire friend group because they didn't make the exact same overanalyses on a movie that you did, good riddance.
@@scarlettNET except they also got Dune, American Psycho, and Joker wrong. So I don't hang out with them anymore because it turns out they're jerks with no media literacy skills.
When you need to own someone so desperately you start defending colonialism. I was kinda taken aback by this reading of the last movie.
Yeahhhhh this was a bit of a disappointing curveball to see given Ian's excellent rightwing playbook series
Oh boy my favorite kind of media criticism: the incredibly petty pseudo-response video. Glad you finally got to make the video on Cornetto that you wanted to
Something I'm surprised you didn't touch on is that while the Network is most clearly a representation of adulthood and responsibility all the threats are kind of adulthood in some way. The opening montage in shaun of the dead as well as the ending draws heavy parallels between pre and post zombie existence for the minor characters and in Hot Fuzz the NWA consists of most adults shown in the film trying to impose the clean cut look of civilized adulthood.
My read of the Cornetto Trilogy for years has been "A man refuses to pull himself together with increasingly dire consequences (A friend group, a town, the entire world).
I am on nebula but one of the things I dont like about it is that I do not get to communicate my gratitude for your work. You are reliably in my top 3 favorite video essayists on any platform. Excellent work as always. Thank you. Also, I have never been able to get into the cornetto trilogy and I have never been able to articulate why. I would like to say I had some inkling of your main points here but that is probably not true. Anyway, thanks again.
I feel that. Nebula is nice and Ive definitely switched to that feed because it’s not yt’s wack suggestion algorithm or 90 seconds of ads, but I wish I could comment on videos to express my support!
This is why I watch a lot of nebula creators on UA-cam. I don't care if they don't read my comments, but I want the algorithm to bump them to the top so more people can see their good work.
The lack of comments is the biggest reason I'm still kind of on the fence about Nebula. I'm here to watch the videos from creators I like, but a lot of the time scrolling through the first few comments adds useful and sometimes contrasting context or viewpoints. On this video for example - I've seen the first two movies, but not World's End. And in the first few comments, there's people pointing out that the aliens weren't just removing a few people, but almost *everyone*. It doesn't invalidate the points made in the video, but it adds depths to other takes on the message and meaning of the movie.
Unpopular opinion here but who else's favorite of the three is world's end? Like, people tend to favor Shaun because it's the most obvious about what it's trying to do and the funniest, but World's End is the most emotional and the best story in my opinion. Like, we all have times in our life where we just want to stay where we are and never move forward because how could life ever get better, and inevitably that mindset leads to us falling behind the curve of our lives. Seeing a grown man who's been behind the growing up curve since he was a kid and is desperately trying to find what he once had, with the subtext that it fully was his last stop (there are a lot of clues that he planned to kill himself after they did the Golden Mile) is just so horrible and sad, and I tear up at Gary and Andy's final fight literally every time.
"IT'S ALL I'VE GOT!" Chills.
i cry every time at the same scene. i know its hard but if anyone reading this knows someone that struggles with alcohol do your best to encourage them to get help.
@@imposterblues "It never got better than that night. All that fucking hope and optimism... it was all a lie!" I'm still pretty young but literally every time there has been a major change in my life, anywhere from the pandemic to changing schools, I have absolutely dug my heels in and refused to move any more than absolutely necessary for life to continue, and it led to me being really stunted for a long time, and I'm still trying to work out of some of those habits. Every now and again I think "oh yeah, in 10 years I'll probably have a drinking problem" and this movie kinda convinces me to keep trying to move away from that line of thinking
It was the definitely the most emotionally resonant. Simon Pegg really showed his acting chops in The World's End. However, Hot Fuzz's genre parody (parodies, really) are just too good, and it showcases Edgar Wright's humor behind the camera the best of the three. It's hard to compare, but if you forced me to pick, I'd go with Hot Fuzz.
@@joshuahitchins1897With you on that. I'd have to watch The World's End again. The emotional gut punches put me off last time, since I's watching it back-to-back with the others, and it kind of came out of left field. Hot Fuzz is fantastic, not least because it's an action film rampage through a creepy small British town a la Midsomer Murders, which is a brilliant fusion.
15:47 that's not entirely true. He gets the hoodie kids from the local school to spraypaint all the town's security cameras so the NWA can't see what they're up to and signals them to rush and tackle the shopkeep who would only let one schoolkid in at a time.
16:11 he didn't sign out the weapons. He just went in the weapons storage and took him and none of the other cops noticed at the time. except for the one at the desk that asked him about a phone call from london but then he realized Nicholas was "busy". Nicholas is breaking protocol and acting like a cowboy cop. He even rides into town on a white horse he took from Mr. Reaper's farm
Yeah, those are very fair points. The larger argument is still persuasive though, don't you think?
@@dzonbrodi514 it is but it requires you to view simon pegg's characters as the sole protagonists when nick frost's characters and their development are kinda central to their respective movies as well (at least in the first 2 movies, ive not seen the 3rd one yet)
@@mutantfreak48 Nick Frost's character in The Worlds End is great I think you'll like it
15:47: They do all the things Ian Damskin says even if they also did other things. (Did you typo the timestamp or something?)
16:11: That's framed as conjecture, and it's both up to interpretation and nonessential for Danskin's thesis.
So, you're not wrong, but it doesn't stop Danskin from being right too.
Gary is reliving his peak by bring the world down to the level of person he wound up becoming.
One of my favorite essayists doing my favorite kind of essay, half an hour deeply personal discussion of a piece of media I have never experienced and now get to remember a wonderful discussion of when I go to see it
This feels like a reference to Hbomberguy.
This guy really glosses over that the Network was actually doing. It wasn't offering adulthood. It was offering genocide in soul and body. Anyone not going along would be a corpse.
Gary is also a cokehead though not explicitly, I agree you're correct about all this. Also Worlds End is the best of the three
This is a great video, and I think the analysis is pretty much spot-on, but I don't really share your stance on the ending of The World's End. I think that secretly manipulating an entire society "for their own good" and replacing people who get in your way with dopplegangers as part of an elaborate plan to reshape humanity in your own image is bad, actually. Like, to me it's not a complex moral problem. It's not a "tough decision" that Gary should to "consult with humanity" about (how would that even work? the alien plan is secret, so any form of consultation, even if somehow technically possible for Gary in that moment, automatically alters the status quo because having been asked people are immediately aware of the manipulation), any more than Superman should consult everyone before deciding whether he should stop Lex Luthor nuking Antarctica or something. Like to me, it's really genuinely quite cut-and-dried.
To me, the ending of TWE plays very much like the ending of Watchmen. Gary (like Rorschach) is a terrible person, but also (like Rorschach) he's the one person that will *actually do the right thing* in this (bizarre) situation (albeit not for the 'right' reasons). Admittedly in Watchmen we don't see the H-bombs falling as the peace breaks down after the revelations in Rorschach's journal come to light, whereas TWE is much more explicit about how doing the right thing has actually made the world worse in measurable ways. But the overall vibe to me is the same - peace and prosperity based on unspoken secret horrors is worse than a more chaotic society without such horrors. I guess that's just a value judgement on some level, and I'm not sure I could defend my stance rigorously with philosophical arguments, but it sure *feels* true to me, at least in an artistic or storytelling sense.
I think this actually makes sense of why Innuendo Studios finds TWE the least satisfying of the Cornetto Trilogy, because based on his take about how things end, it does kind of break the formula of the films as he lays it out. If what Gary did in stopping the alien takeover of Earth was basically wrong, then the films ending is fundamentally not about how Gary gets away with being immature and growing up is overrated: it's about how Gary really should have grown up and done the sensible thing and, I guess, submitted to alien dominion over the Earth (or like... done a referendum of all of humanity secretly? Idk I'm still kind of amused by the accusation that Gary didn't ask everyone before stopping the aliens) but oh no he didn't and now everything's ruined - as if at the end of Shaun they'd just been eaten by the Zombies because Shaun is such a failboy, or at the end of Hot Fuzz the bad guys won because Nick wouldn't bend the rules. Whereas to me, TWE is essentially the same story with higher stakes: Gary is a childish asshole who can't get his shit together but his failure is ultimately rewarded by *actually* saving the day.
Fantastic essay! One thing I point out that I'm sure you noticed, is that not only does Shaun not save anyone, he actually gets almost everyone killed. Liz David and Jan are all in a apartment building high above the zombies with secure doors and the zombies aren't even aware of them. They only gain access because Shaun breaks in, they even say it in the film. If Shaun had never gone there then they probably would've bunkered down in there until the army arrived and all survived. Same could maybe be said for Philip and his mother (not 100 percent sure about that but still). And Ed and Shaun are only really in danger in the first place because Ed forgets to close the front door
This is actually a really compelling analysis, and I wouldn't mind you making more like it in the future
bro no why i have to go to bed!
no you don't
trully staying up and watching youtube is the simon peg character thing to do
@@InnuendoStudios
Alright, Gary. You win.
Thank you for putting my problem with World's End into words.
I had trouble reading Nicholas as immature given the profession, but framing him as the hall monitor is 100% spot on.
On your bonus video (which is absolutely beautiful) I was gonna complain about "stepping on the mat" (as the subtitles proclaim) but I guess that's "step in on the mat" in which case it totally works
Honestly, I would have loved to see a video where you just talked about the Cornetto Trilogy and its themes, even if such a video would be relatively "basic", but you know what, if a few video essays (or rather, a bunch of people on Twitter) where they said the exact opposite thing about the movie compared to you is what motivated you to finally make a video about these movies, I'll take it!
I'm sorry, but I'm not sure why it's assumed that you're supposed to read the ending of World's End as being thematically different from the end of Shaun of the Dead. Both of the movies portray a world post apocalypse were people just adapt and move on. The "post-apocalyptica" aesthetic of the ending doesn't read to me as "everyone in the world is miserable", it reads to me as a gag about human adaptability; the aliens left, and life went on. Society, as a whole, remains unchanged; people still settle down and buy houses. Obviously, that's not a realistic depiction of the horrors of the apocalypse, but neither is Shaun of the Dead's.
Okay I can get people misinterpreting what these movies are about (except the third), and I did enjoy The World's End, but Hot Fuzz is CLEARLY the best of the 3.
You really just helped me understand why everyone else's analyses of these films, and especially Hot Fuzz, didn't really work. It wasn't about them changing. It was about the world changing or being changed for them. Hell, somebody pointed that out about The World's End. It just didn't initially seem like it.
Love the energy in this video, and I am happy you finally put this one out.
Man I saw this argument on Twitter the other day. You cranked this out quick! Love it
that argument was not the first nor likely the last. I was already weeks into the edit on this.
I think you are missing some nuance here.
The movies are not coming of age movies, you're right, but they're also not about making the world as childish as you are. They are about compromise.
Shaun still plays video games with Ed but now he lives with his girlfriend, has boundaries, asks for consent, and keeps Ed in the shed. He did get rid of the stoner flatmate and kept what he realistically could from the relationship, while making his relationship with gf stronger.
Nick does record taking the guns out of the evidence locker - that does not make USING those guns lethal. And the only reason that he's not pulled up for it is because he's just so much more competent than the higher ups. It's a synthesis between his law and order attitude and Danny's heroic one. You can see in the denouement that he is now using some mild sexual harassment in the work place cuz he's learned to bend a few rules. He will even put on the lights and speed to minor crimes because he's learned that there is fun and value in bending the rules while still doing the right thing.
Gary is the most complex and I understand why people leave that movie feeling weird. But it's more than just not drinking alcohol anymore.
First of all, none of them knew getting rid of the aliens would destroy all technology, that selfishness is from the aliens. They didn't have to do that. That was punishing the children for wanting freedom from control.
And what does that punishment leave? A bunch of blanks that humanity hates for being agents of the aliens, even though they were also literally mind controlled to be that way.
You mention "and what sort of world is it that Gary changes it to?" As if that's some kinda gotcha. But it's a world where Frost's character gets back with his wife and the other two settle down. Where people tell stories round the campfire. Where people are building things together. People still know how technology works, people will rebuild.
So what does Gary do now, having both responsibility and still immature anger? He directs that anger towards the hateful. "It takes balls to walk into a room full of big burly men and order a tap water" - Gary has been reckless the whole movie, but now he is brave. He defends the abandoned blanks. He gets to be the king like he always wanted, yes, but he gets to do it in a way that's constructive and good.
All three of them learn to integrate and synthesize their immaturity in HEALTHY WAYS. That's what it's about. Not growing up, just compromising, figuring out what to keep and what to get rid of. Making your child self work in the real world, making the real world work with the immaturity you choose to keep.
Yasee, stuff like this is why you're easily my favorite video essayist. I've never even seen these movies and sharing this deep dive with those who have lets me have new conversations and enriches my life, even when I didn't have the time or mental bandwith to watch the original work.
And sometimes, in the case of Monkey Island, I find things that I do want to engage with due to my desire to design games and the need to reflect on older works and compare old mistakes and quirks with my intended work, finding pit falls before they can steal my time and improving my own editing between the rough draft design doc and the first playable build.
All of this is valuable to me, and you present it wonderfully.
Thank you for being a teacher of many topics.
The idea that the lack of a clear “why” was what kept you from making this video sooner I think really speaks to you as a writer and essayist - your videos so consistently hit because we as an audience can feel how important the “why” is to you. Thanks for another banger video!
The amount of times ive seen people online talk as if "a character arc" is the only measure of quality of a character if not a story makes me understand why people rejected this aspect. If you consume media through the lens of an American sitcom, where the whole story is one character learning their lesson, and then watch and enjoy something that doesn't fit that mold, then I can imagine why you'd find yourself twisting in knots
I really like your work Ian. Thank you for making it. It's stimulating, fascinating.
I never finished world's end, but I remember having a similar reaction to the scene in Shaun of the dead where it shows Shaun's roommate chained up in his basement. The movie goes from "aw so maybe he did grow up in the aftermath!" to "oh my god that man has a corpse in his basement. How much is Liz busting her ass to keep this apartment clean??? Oh my GOD he is NOT good for her."
This style of video is SO good. Love the graphic novel editorial pastiche. More please!
Uh you're completely wrong about Hot Fuzz. Nicholas breaks basically every law; engages in a two man assault on an entire town, firing weapons indiscriminately, endangering civilians even children like the street kids, stealing weapons, breaking traffic laws, disobeys a superior officer, rides a horse on city roads...like pretty much every law possible he broke. How did you get that so wrong|? He absolutely changes.
"He doesn't bend the rules." Seriously were you on crack while writing this? He blows up a citizen AND THE POLICE PRECINCT. Even LAPD look at that and say "whoa that's excessive force."
He towards the end engages in the suggestive banter with the other police he formerly castigated as improper.
Just wanted to say that as I continue to expand my music-listening taste, I listened to the band Trans Am, and the song “Cologne” caught me off-guard, struck me as extremely familiar
Your scripts are always good and insightful but I really appreciated your delivery on this one. It put a big smile on my face.
Love your essays. Pleasure to see one in the feed, even more when it's about wright
I think you're wrong about Hot Fuzz. I don't really buy that Nicholas doesn't change, or that your theme really applies to the film.
On its face, it just doesn't make much sense. Shaun and Gary have problems that are very much problems in the real world. But "being a cop who does everything properly" is not a problem in the real world. As long as we're stuck with the Police in its current form, we'd be a lot better off if more cops were like him - incorruptible, fair, well trained, unlikely to murder someone for no reason. Also, while Shaun and Gary would have done a better job dealing with their respective invasions had they been less flawed, Nicholas's "flaws" make him very qualified to deal with the NWA.
But more importantly...
In Hot Fuzz, as far as the film is concerned following the law too closely isn't his issue. He gets fired for being too efficient - Bill Nighy doesn't want him to stop following the letter of the law, or let small things go. He just needs him to stop showing everyone up. When he arrives in Sandford, yes, they have a different view of when to follow the law, but that's not framed as being better than his - it's just a contrast. Things are different in the country. And as it turns out, they're only lax with the law to be the Best Village, which is bad.
Okay, so maybe he needs to grow up by learning to be less competent? But the film doesn't think this either. He gets kicked out for being too good at the beginning, but by the end THEY NEED HIM BACK, and that has nothing to do with the action film that just happened. It would have happened anyway, and he presumably would have taken the opportunity to go back to his old life.
As far as the film is concerned, his issue is he can't switch off, and that means he can't have any relationships in the real world. But by the end of the film, he has learned (or at least, is learning) to switch off, and as a result he's making friends. He's grown up.
Shaun and Gary I absolutely agree with, Nicholas less so. I don't see adhering to a strict guideline, set in place for a reason, as a notion of having a regressed understanding of right and wrong.
Regulating those that don't work as well, and coming to compromises in relation to our evolving societies, is part of that system. Letting some kids drink in a pub (I'm surprised this is seen as a fair compromise), or letting jerks ride people butts because they're upset you're not going 15mph+ over the limit like they are (and never getting reprimanded for it, letting them get away with it) are absolutely things that shouldn't be tolerated.
Yea, I feel that Hot Fuzz operates in a universe where the police are generally a good thing that generally do good for people (or if not we aren't really shown that, yes the chief is the leader of the conspiracy but that's clearly portrayed as wrong and all the rest of the police force line up against him).
Nicholas definitely needs to work on his people skills, both on and off the job, but none of the examples of the mundane lawbreaking we see make sense to let slide. Off the top of my head (and it's been a bit), besides the conspiracy itself and associated crimes, we see kids drinking (very) underage, drunk driving, hoarding and dangerous storage of many weapons and explosives, speeding (by a fair amount).
None of those strike me as minor things; I mean one's opinion about the age of drinking aside, they also all have the potential to cause harm to others.
So yea... Not feeling that example.
So... The World's End *is* about growing up then... it's just a cautionary tale: Don't be Gary.
What about the scene in SOTD where Simon's character yells at Ed that all he ever does is fuck things up for him? He stands up for himself in that scene, that's character growth.