10 Great Sci-Fi Movies With Terrible Concepts
4. The World’s End
Okay, so you're critically acclaimed British comedy director/ genre mash-up mastermind Edgar Wright.
It's 2012, and after the one-two punch mega-successes of the first two Cornetto trilogy instalments Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, you've hit a snag. Those two films saw Simon Pegg and Nick Frost play a pair of slackers stuck in a zombie horror and an uptight city cop and his over-enthusiastic partner stuck in a twisty mystery, respectively. In both cases, these instantly likeable characters won them a lot of love.
How do you create iconic characters for their third outing?
Well, how about addressing those two cornerstones of comedy: depression and alcoholism?
Not just in a throwaway gag, either. Look at the premise of The World’s End: A depressed alcoholic, desperate to relive his glory days when he peaked in high school, marshals his reluctant middle aged friends together for a poignant, embarrassing pub crawl.
Then they realise their town is overrun by robots.
As far as genre mash-ups go, it sounds messy, ill-conceived, and tonally disastrous. But the thing is, by putting this film's darker moments in the beginning where Shaun of the Dead took the opposite approach, the robot-smashing third act of The World's End becomes an unexpected and gleeful blast.
The film tackles its heavy themes early on when the audience are most patient, then cleverly lightens its tone near the close when the depressing content could easily have become overbearing.