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    Alien end times

    Shaun of the Dead team tackle extraterrestrial invaders in The World's End

    Joe Leydon
    Aug 21, 2013 | 3:47 pm

    After playing fast and loose with the conventions of zombie thrillers in Shaun of the Dead, and then transporting the tropes of supercop action flicks to a quiet English hamlet in Hot Fuzz, director Edgar Wright and actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have reteamed to tweak apocalyptic tales of extraterrestrial invasions in The World’s End, the grand finale of what this creative triumvirate describes as their “Cornetto Trilogy.”

     

    But be forewarned: There’s more to their new movie – much more, as a matter of fact – than what’s being hyped in the wild and wacky trailers and TV spots.

     

    Indeed, for the first half-hour, World’s End comes off as a melancholy comedy about not-so-quiet desperation.

     

    Having reached the dawn of middle age without ever quite growing up, Gary King (Pegg) is eager to return to his glory days as self-appointed ringleader for “the five musketeers,” a group of friends in the suburban U.K. town of Newton Haven. Trouble is, his four erstwhile buddies – now relatively secure and passably happy with jobs, spouses and other attributes of adulthood after moving far away from Newton Haven – don’t recall those long-ago school days as glorious in any way.

     

    And they’re far short of enthused when Gary invites them to return to their hometown and take another crack at the epic pub crawl that they began, yet failed to complete, one fateful night decades ago.

     

    But Gary is unrelenting in his any-means-necessary campaign to convince his former schoolmates – even Andy (Frost), the most reluctant of the lot – to join him on a quest to complete “The Golden Mile” by sampling a pint or two of beer at each of 12 pubs scattered about Newton Haven. Right from the start, however, Gary’s party-hearty exuberance is tempered by wet-blanket realities. For openers, Andy doesn’t drink pints of anything but water these days. And the other “musketeers” are only slightly more indulgent when it comes to sharing Gary’s frantic enthusiasm.

     

    But here’s the real drag: The old pubs don’t look quite the same, and the people who run them seem underwhelmed by Gary’s return. And it doesn’t help matters much that, the drunker Gary gets, the more his four friends remember why they haven’t kept up with the guy. After 30 minutes or so, the reunion appears ready to degenerate into barely polite tedium or, worse, angry recrimination.

     

    It’s only then that Gary realizes that most of the folks in Newton Haven have been replaced by extraterrestrial invaders. And they don’t approve of his misbehavior, either.

     

    Pegg, of course, is no stranger to acting opposite alien life forms. After all, he played Scotty in the last two Star Trek movies, co-wrote (with Nick Frost) and co-starred in the 2011 sci-fi comedy Paul, and even guest-starred in a classic episode of Dr. Who. But much like director Edgar Wright (with whom he scripted The World’s End) and frequent collaborator Frost, he would have perfectly happy had audiences not known ahead of time that extraterrestrials would figure into the mix of their latest movie.

     

    But when the three mates visited Austin last month on a promotional tour, they readily agreed that, in this era of hard-sell advertising and spoiler-stuffed online posts, it’s hard, and maybe even self-defeating, to keep anything from potential ticketbuyers.

     

     CultureMap: In a perfect world, would you prefer that audiences not know anything about what happens after the half-hour mark in The World’s End? Or have you always known there’d be no way to keep that a secret?

     

     Edgar Wright: I think you knew that going in. Even while you’re writing the script, you know that that’s going to be out there. In the same way, like, you couldn’t trailer Shaun of the Dead without showing the zombies. It’s impossible. Nobody went in to see Shaun of the Dead cold. Mind you, it would be an amazing experience if you did, if you didn’t know there’d be zombies in it at all. But then nobody would go and see it. Because there’s no way of trailering something like that without giving a hint of what’s to come.

     

    So it’s a necessary evil. And also, I think there are lots of surprises still in [The World’s End]. Lots of things that we took off the table from the trailer-makers, where we said, “Don’t show this. Don’t show that. Don’t show this.” Because the thing is, the film isn’t just about its trailer moments. Beyond the sci-fi and the action, it’s actually about the characters.

     

    When people get bummed out about summer releases and complain, “All the good bits were in the trailer,” that’s usually because the film has nothing else going on. So I would hope that there’s more to chew on in the movie than what you see in the trailer.

     

     Nick Frost: We always said about Paul as well that the best way to see that was not knowing there was an alien in it.

     

     Simon Pegg: But that was impossible.

     

     Frost: In the end, you have to kind of weigh up what you’re willing to exchange, and what you’re willing to fight for.

     

     Pegg: And you have to think about the big picture. There will be people who actively avoid spoilers and trailers and stuff. And more power to them for being so trusting in terms of coming to see the film on the grounds of what we’ve done before. We know some people have been doggedly careful to avoid everything, and have gone in and been utterly blown away by what happens. But we have to sell this film on a large scale. And unfortunately, you have to give some of it away to get something back.

     

     CM: Were you ever tempted to go down a different path? Or, more precisely, were you ever tempted to keep going down the same path you travel for the first half-hour?

     

     Pegg: But we do. That’s the thing. Despite the fact that we take that turn, the film does stay on the same path. It stays about the pub crawl. It’s just that we add a layer of fantastic exacerbation. Which has always kind of been our thing.

     

     Wright: Because we wanted to make these films like a loose sort of trilogy. In a way, our use of genre – especially in this one – is our way of amplifying a feeling that we have. So the movie is basically about the bittersweet feeling of going back home, and how you find yourself alienated from your hometown. And that’s literally what happens.

     

    The key thing that’s in the film at the half-hour mark -- without giving too much away -- is that when our hero discovers what’s going on, he’s happy about the revelation. He’s actually smiling about it. Because it’s easier for his to bear the idea of this sort of quiet invasion than it is to face, A, I’m old, and B, my hometown is not as great as I thought it was.

     

    So in a way, when we first came up with the story idea, the genre element was always a key to it. That’s been true of all three of these films. You could make a straight comedy-drama, and you would reach a different audience – a much smaller audience. What’s nice about doing these movies is that people who wouldn’t go and see a comedy-drama in a million years will actually be forced to think about their relationships and their past, and the people they know, and the emotions that they have that they haven’t thought about for a while.

     

     Pegg: And also, this invasion – this sort of galactic event – is not enough to deter Gary from his determination to finish 12 pints of beer. And that says something about the motivations of addicted people: They put that ahead of everything. It becomes the most important thing for them. Even in the face of an alien invasion. And Gary uses it to keep his friends with him. Because by the time they’ve had a few drinks, and they fall into that kind of hierarchy they had back in school – they don’t know any better than to follow Gary into certain oblivion. Which, if you remember, is what they say at the start, at the train station.

     

     Wright: I remember talking with Simon a long, long time ago about Luis Bunuel’s The Exterminating Angel. It’s a great idea: There’s this party that you can never leave. Whatever’s happening, you cannot get out of this party. So I came up with the notion that Gary sort of holds his friends hostage, basically, and says: We are going on this crawl, by hook or by crook. And we always liked the whole idea of the middle bit feeling like a French Occupation thriller. They have to start doing their mission: Pretending to have a good time. They even say that: We’re pretending to have a good time.

     

    What we really tried to do here is create these Trojan horses, so that it’s a sci-fi action-comedy – but the relationship stuff is really what this movie is all about. And that’s something you can’t spoil in the trailers. We like the idea of sort of smuggling in deeper themes into something that’s big and silly and action packed.

     

     (Prior to opening Friday at theaters and drive-ins everywhere, The World’s End will be screened Thursday as part of a triple feature with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz in Houston and other areas throughout civilized world. You can find a complete list of theaters hosting the “Cornetto Trilogy”marathon here.)

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    Movie Review

    New Superman movie forges into the future while honoring the past

    Alex Bentley
    Jul 11, 2025 | 3:30 pm
    David Corenswet in Superman
    Photo by Jessica Miglio
    David Corenswet in Superman.

    When the character of Superman was invented in 1938, it was perhaps easier to see the world in good and bad terms. Fascism was already on the rise in Germany under Adolf Hitler, and the idea of an all-powerful superhero who stood up for people in need was a welcome one. In the nearly 90 years since, though, the world and the character have undergone multiple evolutions, and the thought of someone who is purely good is often met with cynicism or worse.

    The new Superman, written and directed by James Gunn, puts the superhero (or metahuman, as the film calls him and similar creatures) squarely in the midst of the modern world, with geopolitical conflicts, mega-corporations, and social media all combining to make the altruism of Superman/Clark Kent (David Corenswet) questionable. That skepticism even extends to his coworker/girlfriend Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), whose knowledge of his exploits puts her in a tricky position personally and professionally.

    Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) is out to dominate the world and take down Superman, with his eponymous corporation and vast group of underlings dedicated to doing both. Superman is generally a one-man fighting crew, but he’s occasionally aided by a group calling themselves the Justice Gang, comprised of heroes many have never heard of like Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion), a version of Green Lantern; Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), a flying metahuman; and Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi), who knows all kinds of technology.

    One of the best things about this new version of Superman is that it mostly dispenses with introductions, putting the audience in a world where Superman is already a well-known quantity who’s adored by many and hated by some. Gunn has used his new position as co-CEO of DC Studios to honor the past of the hero and take him into the future. With the 1978 John Williams theme song echoing throughout and Corenswet giving off Christopher Reeve vibes, it’s clear Gunn wants audiences to feel nostalgia while still getting something new.

    He also appears to want viewers to fight against the negativity that the modern world can bring. The plot involves manipulation of the public, usually at the hands of Luthor, through bombastic talk shows, political theater, and social media, the latter of which — in a great joke — comes to involve hundreds of typing monkeys. The film could be read as a rebuttal of many real-world ills as, despite Luthor’s machinations, many choose to continue to believe in the goodness of Superman.

    There is a lot going on in the film, but somehow it never comes off as overly complicated. Superman’s relationship with Lois Lane and Luthor’s attempts at taking him down are given the most prominence, with everything else supporting those two main things. The Justice Gang is a fun addition, with Mr. Terrific becoming the breakout hero of the group. The addition of the (CGI) dog Krypto provides levity, poignant moments, and unexpectedly great action scenes. The only part that gets somewhat short shrift is the crew of The Daily Planet, with everyone besides Lois and Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo) getting little more than face time.

    Being the new Superman is a lot to live up to, but Corenswet is completely up to the job. He, like Reeve, plays the character as someone who is earnest but not naive, a quality that comes through even when he’s in the middle of fight scenes. Brosnahan is also fantastic, providing a nice balance to the relationship while also proving the character’s own worth. Hoult makes for a great new version of Luthor, and Gathegi nearly makes the case that Mr. Terrific should get a starring film of his own.

    Just as he did with the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, Gunn has shown that success can be found through making characters people want to see. Not everyone in this Superman will be familiar to viewers, but in the end a group of people working together toward a goal that serves the common good is one worth watching and cheering for.

    ---

    Superman is now playing in theaters.

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