There's only one way to describe The World's End: It's as good as fried gold.
In the hotly anticipated conclusion to what's come to be known as the Three Flavors Cornetto Trilogy—a joke started in Shaun of the Dead (2004), carried on by Hot Fuzz (2007), and bittersweetly referred to in The World's End (in theaters nationwide today)—director Edgar Wright and mainstays Simon Pegg and Nick Frost take on a new kind of evil: alien robots. Of course, they're not just any evil alien robots.
The film follows Gary King (Pegg), a functioning alcoholic keen on reuniting his childhood friends for one last attempt at the Golden Mile, a 12-pub crawl they failed to complete in their youth. But unlike Gary, his friends—played by Frost, Paddy Considine (The Bourne Ultimatum), Eddie Marsan (Ray Donovan), and Martin Freeman (The Hobbit)—are now all suited up like adults for their fancy jobs and sweet families. After a little convincing, King rounds up the crew and they return to their small town. However, nothing—that is, besides King's former fling (played by Rosamund Pike)—is as they left it. The entire town falls under the control of an intergalactic organization called The Network that's turned everyone and their mother into mindless droids living in a false utopia.
As the friends struggle to check off the Golden Mile that's eluded them all those years, all of their buried issues that've kept them separated bubble up to the surface, creating another monster for them to beat down.
True to the style of filmmaking that's made Wright, Pegg, and Frost cult film heroes, The World's End is more than a fun summer sci-fi action comedy. It's the best kind of movie: one replete with eye candy but also with something substantial to say. And we'll let Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost tell you exactly what that is.
As told to Tara Aquino (@t_akino)
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