Shaun Of The Dead And The Worlds End
For this essay I have chosen to talk about 3 British films which are of Shaun of the dead (2004) Hot Fuzz (2007) and The Worlds End (2013) or better known as the Cornetto trilogy directed by British director Edgar Wright.
The first film in the cornetto trilogy is Shaun of the dead which tells the story of Shaun a 29 year old with no real ambition in life, much to the consternation of his friends, family, and fed-up girlfriend and With only a loyalty to his lazy best friend Edgar, a dead end job where his employees step on him, and the good old days, Shaun isn't exactly putting his best foot forward. But when the flesh hungry undead start to rise in numbers around modern-day London, Shaun must come to the rescue of his girlfriend and mother before all hell breaks loose. With loyal Edgar at his side to fight the good fight, the two will have to pave their way through zombie-ridden London as Shaun must take on the first real challenge in his life with comical results, not your average comedy Edgar wright managed to combine both horror and comedy in this delightful twist and with long-time friends and co-workers nick frost and Simon Pegg working with wright the latter also helping write the script for Shaun of the dead this was just a peek to what Edgar wright would bring in later films.
The film was a critical …show more content…
and commercial success in the UK and the US. It received a 92% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a score of 76 out of 100 at Metacritic. Shaun of the Dead was also a BAFTA nominee. Pegg and Wright considered a sequel that would replace zombies with another monster, but decided against it as they were pleased with the first film as a standalone story,
“I used to stay up all night playing 'Resident Evil 2,' and it wouldn't stop until the sun came up. Then I'd walk outside at dawn's first light, looking at the empty streets of London, and it was like life imitating art. It felt like I'd stepped into an actual zombie apocalypse” (Edgar Wright)
The film is notable for Wright's kinetic directing style, and its references to other movies, television series and video games, The film was also inspired by the Spaced episode "Art", written by Pegg (along with his writing partner and co-star Jessica Stevenson) and directed by Wright, in which the character of Tim (Pegg), under the influence of amphetamine and the video game Resident Evil 2, hallucinates that he is fighting off a zombie invasion. Having discovered a mutual appreciation for Romero's Dead trilogy, they decided to write their own zombie movie. Spaced was to be a big influence on the making of Shaun of the dead, as it was directed by Wright in a similar style, and featured many of the same cast and crew in minor and major roles. Nick Frost who played Mike in Spaced has a starring role in Shaun as Ed. Peter Serafinowicz and Julia Deakin who played Duane Benzie and Marsha in Spaced appear in Shaun as Pete and Yvonne's mum, and Pegg's spaced co-star Jessica Stevenson plays Yvonne.
The film also features a number of British actors and comedians such as matt Lucas, rob brydon, martin freeman, Dylan Moran and many other stars all who has collaborated with wright before.
The filming of Shaun of the dead was done on location around north London and at Ealing studios, the extras were either local residents or fans of wrights previous work spaced and some even responded through casting call organised on a fan website, the film made 1.6 million during its opening weekend and despite a limited release was ranked seventh at the box office.
Shaun of the dead is so much more than just a film about a man running from zombies, it tells the story of a person who is stuck in a job he hates going home to be a couch potato doing nothing productive and when the apocalypse happens he is reminded what matters the most which is friends and family and through risking it all he is able to be reunited with his loved ones and do the one thing he wants to do the most, enjoy a quiet pint in the Winchester.
The next film I will be talking about is hot fuzz which tells the story of Sgt Nicholas Angel who is the perfect policeman honest, reliable, and dedicated to public duty. The only problem is that he is too good. His arrest record is so good that he is making everyone else look bad so he suddenly finds himself transferred to the picturesque village of Sandford. There he not only finds that the police force is less than ideal, but that there is in fact very little policing to do. The odd drunk and a few lads with a can of spray paint are about all there is to worry about. He becomes friendly with Constable Danny Butterman, who just happens to be the station chief's son. Suddenly however, there is a rash of murders that leads him to believe there is a massive conspiracy to keep the village clean and inoffensive.
Another comedy by Edgar wright this was a parody of police dramas as opposed to Shaun of the dead’s horror theme and with Simon Pegg and nick frost working together again as the films leads hot fuzz was an enjoyable film which showed two police officers attempting to solve a series of mysterious deaths in a quiet English village.
Wright wanted to write and direct a cop film because there wasn’t any tradition of cop films in the uk and he felt as though every country had a tradition of police films except England, working with Pegg again wright spent 18 months working on the script and used films like lethal weapon, point break and executive decisions as inspirations, Pegg even joked that many action films names were generated through two random words in a hat and so he decided wright and himself would do the same.
Wright and Pegg both being from south west England looked for locations which felt like home so after looking at Frome and stow on the wold they decided that wells in Somerset wrights hometown would be the perfect location, the filming of hot fuzz was done entirely on location and wright stated he loved shooting at his home town as he felt more creative and free, filming took place from march 2006 and lasted eleven weeks.
The homages in the film are present in nearly every scene with wright using his previous works as inspiration and even some dvd’s or posters as props, the homages in terms of action and buddy cop films are present with nick frosts character showing Simon peggs a range of films such as bad boys or supercop in which the image of the police is completely different to the one seen in their village.
The film received a 91% approval rating and scored 81/100 on metacritic, the film also beat out Shaun of the dead in terms of the box office earning 7.1 million in its first weekend release.
“Here's a funny thing. My mum's a big conspiracy theorist and when I was younger, in that way when you automatically take the opposite view to your parents because you're a sullen and idiotic teenager, when my mother would come out with wild conspiracies about our hometown, I would just, like, formally reject it But when I was writing "Hot Fuzz", I said to my mother, "I want you to write down all the stories that you heard about our town and give it to me and the result was A fifty page document called Spooky Doings, I think she was so happy that I'd embraced the conspiracy theorist in her” (Edgar wright)
The meaning behind this film is that things are not what they always appear to be as Simon peggs character Nicolas angel can never stop being a policeman and through initiative he uncovers a plot in which an innocent looking town isn’t so innocent after all, another common theme in wrights films are friendship and in hot fuzz Nicolas angel learns there is more to life than a job and through friendship becomes a better human being.
The final film in the cornetto trilogy is the worlds end, 20 years after attempting an epic pub crawl, five childhood friends reunite when one of them becomes hell bent on trying the drinking marathon again, They are convinced to stage an encore by mate Gary King, a 40-year old man trapped at the cigarette end of his teens, who drags his reluctant pals to their home town and once again attempts to reach the fabled pub, The World's End. As they attempt to reconcile the past and present, they realize the real struggle is for the future, not just theirs but humankind's and reaching The World's End is the least of their worries.
Wright described the film as social science fiction In the tradition of john wyndham and Samuel youd, another film in the trilogy which deals with a apocalyptic world, the worlds end is a combination of both previous films in terms of plot e.g. friendship and survival.
The worlds end began as a screenplay titled crawl which was about a group of teenagers out on a pub crawl, written by Edgar wright at the age of 21.
He soon realised he could work with adult characters to capture the bittersweet feeling of returning to your home town and feeling like a stranger. Wright explained that he wanted to satirize the strange homogenous branding that becomes like a virus explaining it doesn’t just extend to pubs it’s the same with cafes and restaurants and if you live in a small town and you move to London which he did when he was 20, the next time you would go back home it feels as though the town has been replaced with body
snatchers.
The production of the film began on September 2012 and took place in Hertfordshire at elstree studios and all 12 pubs used in the film were shot on location in Welwyn garden city and Letchworth garden city with some of the pubs being remodelled to go with the films plot.
The worlds end earned 2.1 million during its opening weekend at the box office earning more than Shaun of the dead but losing out to hot fuzz which had more than doubled what the worlds end had made, The critical reception the worlds end received was very positive with an 89% approval rating and a metacritic rating of 81/100 the film was considered hilarious and the best collaboration of wright, Pegg and frost.
The meaning behind the worlds end is the most obvious of the entire cornetto trilogy and that is trying to recreate the glory days, although the films antagonist Gary king has not done much with his life he clings to his glory days and by tracking down his estranged school friends he tries to get them to complete the golden mile something he could not even finish as a teen, other themes that are present in this film is that friendship is a very important thing and that you need to mature in order to grow as a person.
In all of Edgar wrights films its clear to see the influence of the television show Spaced in which he worked on with nick frost and Simon Pegg, spaced played a huge part in his career and he works with the same cast and crew as he’s build a good relationship with them as well as the fact he is more creative when working with Pegg his writing partner, the themes and motifs of his films also rarely ever change with wright working on comedy films which consist of more than one genre e.g. comedy/horror or comedy/action and through influences by other directors and films wright is able to create an homage to films he grew up watching combined with ideas he’s come up with.
The cultural aspect of all three films are that they are very much about British ideals such as going to the pub or banding together and in in two of the three films the aim is to reach a pub, the realism within these films is quite unrealistic but if they were to happen the way the film dealt with the situation would be the British way for instance a quiet countryside village being a cover for conspiracy and murder and the policeman rather dealing with a duck that is loose, the humour is very British and so is some of the situations they find themselves in.
In the cornetto trilogy the main theme that is consistent with each film is friendship with Simon Pegg and nick frost being best friends in each film and in each film their friendship is tested meaning they must work together to get through the challenges that lay ahead, other themes that are present in the films is danger as In 2/3 films there is an end of world scenario and in one of the films there is a mass conspiracy meaning they must work together to get through everything, another little key theme is the reason why the trilogy is named the cornetto trilogy, The name originates from a silly joke during the promotion of Hot Fuzz. Wright had written in the use of Cornetto ice cream as a hangover cure for Frost's character in Shaun of the Dead based on his own experiences. Within Hot Fuzz, Wright included a brief couple of throwaway scenes that called back to the Cornetto joke in Shaun of the dead, On the promotional tour of Hot Fuzz during production of The World's End, one interviewer pointed out the use of Cornetto in the first two films, to which Wright jokingly stated they represented a trilogy comparable to Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colours film trilogy, Each film in the trilogy is connected to a specific Cornetto flavour appearing in each film, Shaun of the Dead features a strawberry-flavoured Cornetto, which signifies the film's bloody and gory elements, Hot Fuzz includes the blue original Cornetto, to signify the police element to the film and The World's End features the green mint chocolate chip flavour in a nod to aliens and science fiction.
The first film in the cornetto trilogy is Shaun of the dead which tells the story of Shaun a 29 year old with no real ambition in life, much to the consternation of his friends, family, and fed-up girlfriend and With only a loyalty to his lazy best friend Edgar, a dead end job where his employees step on him, and the good old days, Shaun isn't exactly putting his best foot forward. But when the flesh hungry undead start to rise in numbers around modern-day London, Shaun must come to the rescue of his girlfriend and mother before all hell breaks loose. With loyal Edgar at his side to fight the good fight, the two will have to pave their way through zombie-ridden London as Shaun must take on the first real challenge in his life with comical results, not your average comedy Edgar wright managed to combine both horror and comedy in this delightful twist and with long-time friends and co-workers nick frost and Simon Pegg working with wright the latter also helping write the script for Shaun of the dead this was just a peek to what Edgar wright would bring in later films.
The film was a critical …show more content…
and commercial success in the UK and the US. It received a 92% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a score of 76 out of 100 at Metacritic. Shaun of the Dead was also a BAFTA nominee. Pegg and Wright considered a sequel that would replace zombies with another monster, but decided against it as they were pleased with the first film as a standalone story,
“I used to stay up all night playing 'Resident Evil 2,' and it wouldn't stop until the sun came up. Then I'd walk outside at dawn's first light, looking at the empty streets of London, and it was like life imitating art. It felt like I'd stepped into an actual zombie apocalypse” (Edgar Wright)
The film is notable for Wright's kinetic directing style, and its references to other movies, television series and video games, The film was also inspired by the Spaced episode "Art", written by Pegg (along with his writing partner and co-star Jessica Stevenson) and directed by Wright, in which the character of Tim (Pegg), under the influence of amphetamine and the video game Resident Evil 2, hallucinates that he is fighting off a zombie invasion. Having discovered a mutual appreciation for Romero's Dead trilogy, they decided to write their own zombie movie. Spaced was to be a big influence on the making of Shaun of the dead, as it was directed by Wright in a similar style, and featured many of the same cast and crew in minor and major roles. Nick Frost who played Mike in Spaced has a starring role in Shaun as Ed. Peter Serafinowicz and Julia Deakin who played Duane Benzie and Marsha in Spaced appear in Shaun as Pete and Yvonne's mum, and Pegg's spaced co-star Jessica Stevenson plays Yvonne.
The film also features a number of British actors and comedians such as matt Lucas, rob brydon, martin freeman, Dylan Moran and many other stars all who has collaborated with wright before.
The filming of Shaun of the dead was done on location around north London and at Ealing studios, the extras were either local residents or fans of wrights previous work spaced and some even responded through casting call organised on a fan website, the film made 1.6 million during its opening weekend and despite a limited release was ranked seventh at the box office.
Shaun of the dead is so much more than just a film about a man running from zombies, it tells the story of a person who is stuck in a job he hates going home to be a couch potato doing nothing productive and when the apocalypse happens he is reminded what matters the most which is friends and family and through risking it all he is able to be reunited with his loved ones and do the one thing he wants to do the most, enjoy a quiet pint in the Winchester.
The next film I will be talking about is hot fuzz which tells the story of Sgt Nicholas Angel who is the perfect policeman honest, reliable, and dedicated to public duty. The only problem is that he is too good. His arrest record is so good that he is making everyone else look bad so he suddenly finds himself transferred to the picturesque village of Sandford. There he not only finds that the police force is less than ideal, but that there is in fact very little policing to do. The odd drunk and a few lads with a can of spray paint are about all there is to worry about. He becomes friendly with Constable Danny Butterman, who just happens to be the station chief's son. Suddenly however, there is a rash of murders that leads him to believe there is a massive conspiracy to keep the village clean and inoffensive.
Another comedy by Edgar wright this was a parody of police dramas as opposed to Shaun of the dead’s horror theme and with Simon Pegg and nick frost working together again as the films leads hot fuzz was an enjoyable film which showed two police officers attempting to solve a series of mysterious deaths in a quiet English village.
Wright wanted to write and direct a cop film because there wasn’t any tradition of cop films in the uk and he felt as though every country had a tradition of police films except England, working with Pegg again wright spent 18 months working on the script and used films like lethal weapon, point break and executive decisions as inspirations, Pegg even joked that many action films names were generated through two random words in a hat and so he decided wright and himself would do the same.
Wright and Pegg both being from south west England looked for locations which felt like home so after looking at Frome and stow on the wold they decided that wells in Somerset wrights hometown would be the perfect location, the filming of hot fuzz was done entirely on location and wright stated he loved shooting at his home town as he felt more creative and free, filming took place from march 2006 and lasted eleven weeks.
The homages in the film are present in nearly every scene with wright using his previous works as inspiration and even some dvd’s or posters as props, the homages in terms of action and buddy cop films are present with nick frosts character showing Simon peggs a range of films such as bad boys or supercop in which the image of the police is completely different to the one seen in their village.
The film received a 91% approval rating and scored 81/100 on metacritic, the film also beat out Shaun of the dead in terms of the box office earning 7.1 million in its first weekend release.
“Here's a funny thing. My mum's a big conspiracy theorist and when I was younger, in that way when you automatically take the opposite view to your parents because you're a sullen and idiotic teenager, when my mother would come out with wild conspiracies about our hometown, I would just, like, formally reject it But when I was writing "Hot Fuzz", I said to my mother, "I want you to write down all the stories that you heard about our town and give it to me and the result was A fifty page document called Spooky Doings, I think she was so happy that I'd embraced the conspiracy theorist in her” (Edgar wright)
The meaning behind this film is that things are not what they always appear to be as Simon peggs character Nicolas angel can never stop being a policeman and through initiative he uncovers a plot in which an innocent looking town isn’t so innocent after all, another common theme in wrights films are friendship and in hot fuzz Nicolas angel learns there is more to life than a job and through friendship becomes a better human being.
The final film in the cornetto trilogy is the worlds end, 20 years after attempting an epic pub crawl, five childhood friends reunite when one of them becomes hell bent on trying the drinking marathon again, They are convinced to stage an encore by mate Gary King, a 40-year old man trapped at the cigarette end of his teens, who drags his reluctant pals to their home town and once again attempts to reach the fabled pub, The World's End. As they attempt to reconcile the past and present, they realize the real struggle is for the future, not just theirs but humankind's and reaching The World's End is the least of their worries.
Wright described the film as social science fiction In the tradition of john wyndham and Samuel youd, another film in the trilogy which deals with a apocalyptic world, the worlds end is a combination of both previous films in terms of plot e.g. friendship and survival.
The worlds end began as a screenplay titled crawl which was about a group of teenagers out on a pub crawl, written by Edgar wright at the age of 21.
He soon realised he could work with adult characters to capture the bittersweet feeling of returning to your home town and feeling like a stranger. Wright explained that he wanted to satirize the strange homogenous branding that becomes like a virus explaining it doesn’t just extend to pubs it’s the same with cafes and restaurants and if you live in a small town and you move to London which he did when he was 20, the next time you would go back home it feels as though the town has been replaced with body
snatchers.
The production of the film began on September 2012 and took place in Hertfordshire at elstree studios and all 12 pubs used in the film were shot on location in Welwyn garden city and Letchworth garden city with some of the pubs being remodelled to go with the films plot.
The worlds end earned 2.1 million during its opening weekend at the box office earning more than Shaun of the dead but losing out to hot fuzz which had more than doubled what the worlds end had made, The critical reception the worlds end received was very positive with an 89% approval rating and a metacritic rating of 81/100 the film was considered hilarious and the best collaboration of wright, Pegg and frost.
The meaning behind the worlds end is the most obvious of the entire cornetto trilogy and that is trying to recreate the glory days, although the films antagonist Gary king has not done much with his life he clings to his glory days and by tracking down his estranged school friends he tries to get them to complete the golden mile something he could not even finish as a teen, other themes that are present in this film is that friendship is a very important thing and that you need to mature in order to grow as a person.
In all of Edgar wrights films its clear to see the influence of the television show Spaced in which he worked on with nick frost and Simon Pegg, spaced played a huge part in his career and he works with the same cast and crew as he’s build a good relationship with them as well as the fact he is more creative when working with Pegg his writing partner, the themes and motifs of his films also rarely ever change with wright working on comedy films which consist of more than one genre e.g. comedy/horror or comedy/action and through influences by other directors and films wright is able to create an homage to films he grew up watching combined with ideas he’s come up with.
The cultural aspect of all three films are that they are very much about British ideals such as going to the pub or banding together and in in two of the three films the aim is to reach a pub, the realism within these films is quite unrealistic but if they were to happen the way the film dealt with the situation would be the British way for instance a quiet countryside village being a cover for conspiracy and murder and the policeman rather dealing with a duck that is loose, the humour is very British and so is some of the situations they find themselves in.
In the cornetto trilogy the main theme that is consistent with each film is friendship with Simon Pegg and nick frost being best friends in each film and in each film their friendship is tested meaning they must work together to get through the challenges that lay ahead, other themes that are present in the films is danger as In 2/3 films there is an end of world scenario and in one of the films there is a mass conspiracy meaning they must work together to get through everything, another little key theme is the reason why the trilogy is named the cornetto trilogy, The name originates from a silly joke during the promotion of Hot Fuzz. Wright had written in the use of Cornetto ice cream as a hangover cure for Frost's character in Shaun of the Dead based on his own experiences. Within Hot Fuzz, Wright included a brief couple of throwaway scenes that called back to the Cornetto joke in Shaun of the dead, On the promotional tour of Hot Fuzz during production of The World's End, one interviewer pointed out the use of Cornetto in the first two films, to which Wright jokingly stated they represented a trilogy comparable to Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colours film trilogy, Each film in the trilogy is connected to a specific Cornetto flavour appearing in each film, Shaun of the Dead features a strawberry-flavoured Cornetto, which signifies the film's bloody and gory elements, Hot Fuzz includes the blue original Cornetto, to signify the police element to the film and The World's End features the green mint chocolate chip flavour in a nod to aliens and science fiction.