One Big Reason The World’s End Feels Different To Edgar Wright’s Other Cornetto Trilogy Movies

While 2013’s The World’s End wrapped up director Edgar Wright’s famous Cornetto trilogy, there is one major reason that the sci-fi comedy doesn’t feel like the two earlier installments. Edgar Wright’s Cornetto trilogy began in 2004 with the sleeper hit Shaun of the Dead. A zombie comedy that mixed constant laughs with a surprising degree of pathos, Shaun of the Dead saw Simon Pegg and Nick Frost star as a pair of likable slackers forced to formulate a plan when the world is overrun with zombies. Pegg and Frost’s chemistry and Wright’s direction made the movie a huge hit.

The second installment of the Cornetto Trilogy came in 2007’s action comedy Hot Fuzz. This acclaimed buddy cop movie left Pegg’s hyper-competent city cop, Nicholas Angel, stranded in a sleepy small town when his professional prowess made his colleagues look bad. Initially annoyed, Angel gradually developed a sweet bromance with Frost’s dim-witted local cop, and the pair uncovered a surprisingly dark, bloody conspiracy after numerous gruesome killings. Both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz earned widespread praise for their ability to blend action, comedy, and horror elements while consistently showcasing Pegg and Frost’s charming rapport.

Simon Pegg’s Character Is Why The World’s End Doesn’t Feel Like Other Cornetto Movies

The World’s End’s antihero, Gary King, is too believably tragic

However, the Cornetto trilogy came to a disappointing end in 2013 with The World’s End. The World’s End was a sci-fi comedy that saw a group of old friends reunite for a pub crawl, only for them to realize that their hometown had been taken over by alien robots. Even 10 years after its release, The World’s End is the least popular of the Cornetto trilogy’s three movies. At first glance, it is hard to see why. The World’s End had an oddly elegiac tone that’s absent from the earlier movies, but Shaun of the Dead also had its tragic moments.

The World’s End saw Pegg play an initially unlikable character in the juvenile party animal Gary King, but Hot Fuzz’s humorless Nicholas Angel wasn’t an instantly lovable protagonist either. However, further inspection revealed that Gary King was the real reason The World’s End never replicated the success of Wright’s earlier Cornetto Trilogy movies. The World’s End felt sadder than Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and the primary driving force behind this strange tonal shift was Gary’s character arc. While Shaun was an immature slacker and Nicholas was painfully uptight, Gary King was a genuinely toxic, tragic figure.

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The World’s End Was Already A Very Different Cornetto Movie

Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead had a sillier, more heightened tone

While Shaun needed to learn responsibility and Nicholas needed to lighten up, both characters were relatively easy to root for from the beginning. The Cornetto Trilogy’s movies all saw their antiheroes grow and change, but Gary King’s arc in The World’s End was too bleak for the surrounding movie’s tone. Gary’s inability to get his life together was played for laughs and drama, but he was an authentically sad character. The opening half of The World’s End felt more like Return of the Secaucus 7, The Big Chill, or Diner than a knockabout sci-fi comedy.

The World’s End had an even more outlandish, fantastical twist than Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, but its character work was more grounded and grim than anything in those broader, cartoonier movies. It didn’t help that Wright, Pegg, and Frost had all become well-known Hollywood stars by the time the movie arrived, as The World’s End’s glossy visual style and high production values clashed poorly with its small-town setting and muted drama. The World’s End had all the usual Cornetto Trilogy tropes, but these action beats and goofy gags didn’t feel at home in an alcoholic’s tragic story.

Gary King Is Partly Why The World’s End Isn’t As Popular As Shaun Of The Dead & Hot Fuzz

Pegg’s antihero is too tragic for the silly story of The World’s End

Gary King was a great protagonist, and it was easy to see why, despite the movie’s mixed reviews. King’s inability to let go of the past and his muddled attempts at revisiting past camaraderie called to mind cringe-worthy British comedy protagonists from classics like The Office or Withnail and I, and Gary King’s story could have been the Cornetto Trilogy’s most moving character arc. The problem was that the surrounding movie wasn’t as rooted in reality as Gary’s story, resulting in a tone that felt confused and disjointed.

Three years earlier, 2010’s underrated Hot Tub Time Machine offered another story of an unlikable antihero reuniting with old friends and learning to grow up via zany sci-fi plot mechanics. However, Rob Corddry’s Lou was as silly as the movie itself, resulting in a cult classic that never felt jarringly raw or sad. In contrast, The World’s End swung wildly between the morose story of a once-cool has-been failing to relive his glory days and a madcap tale of aliens, androids, and the apocalypse. In the process, The World’s End never found the right tone for the Cornetto Trilogy’s final movie.