The best way to approach Edgar Wright's The World's End, a film where five estranged friends return to their hometown of Newton Haven for a 12-bar pub crawl known as the "Golden Mile," is as if it's a musical without any music. As counter-intuitive as that sounds, please hear me out before you dismiss this idea. The film is frequently broken up by fights against alien robots that are replacing everyday people. During these fights, the characters (all men who are decidedly over-the-hill) become championship-tier fighters, executing complex choreography and delivering devastating punishment. And yet, we don't really stop and think why these men who have obviously never taken a martial arts class in their lives can fight so proficiently. Well, it's for the same reason that we don't question why teenage gangsters can spontaneously break into ballet-streetfights in West Side Story (1961). Additionally, nobody truly acts rationally within the diegetic space of a musical. Characters act in ways that will advance the plot and allow for more song and dance numbers. Likewise, the characters in The World's End don't act rationally AT ALL, deciding to continue their inebriating night out even after they discover the robot invasion. Why? Well, the diegetic explanation is that if they don't act the way they would have before their discovery, they will be found out by the robots and get "replaced." As anybody with a brain can attest towards, this is a very dumb explanation. But the REAL reason why they continue is that if they packed up and left Newton Haven after discovering the alien plot, the film would be over. It isn't important WHY they continue the pub crawl, merely that they DO continue it. This, my friends, is musical logic.
7/10
No comments:
Post a Comment