Seriously. It's so nice to hear Surface of the Sun on a film trailer.
AGAIN.
Wednesday, 28 August 2013
Thursday, 1 August 2013
Hopefully The End: The World's End (Part Four)
Before we start, let's get one thing straight.
No film has stayed with me, or made me think so much, or engaged me in the way that The World's End has for years.
It's left me thinking about it on and off for what will be, tomorrow, two weeks straight. It's interesting and thought-provoking and, on-and-off, funny. I'd even go so far as to say that it is, in a lot of ways, unique.
I'd like to thank Pegg, Frost, Wright et al for making a film that will speak to a certain type of people on a deep level. (I know they're not reading this, but I'd like to thank them anyway. Something tall of flowers but short of a box of Milk Tray, maybe. Something tasteful.)
With all this in mind, I still have a couple of things to discuss.
Let's throw in that Spoiler Warning again - because I understand that the film's not out in America quite yet, so to all those people across the Atlantic, come back when you've seen it? Maybe? Perhaps? Anyway:
No film has stayed with me, or made me think so much, or engaged me in the way that The World's End has for years.
It's left me thinking about it on and off for what will be, tomorrow, two weeks straight. It's interesting and thought-provoking and, on-and-off, funny. I'd even go so far as to say that it is, in a lot of ways, unique.
I'd like to thank Pegg, Frost, Wright et al for making a film that will speak to a certain type of people on a deep level. (I know they're not reading this, but I'd like to thank them anyway. Something tall of flowers but short of a box of Milk Tray, maybe. Something tasteful.)
With all this in mind, I still have a couple of things to discuss.
Let's throw in that Spoiler Warning again - because I understand that the film's not out in America quite yet, so to all those people across the Atlantic, come back when you've seen it? Maybe? Perhaps? Anyway:
SPOILERS!
(Really!)
Got that?
Okay?
Let's crack on.
Suicide Is Painless
There's one thing that, having thought - and probably over-thought - about it for a while now, leaves me really uncomfortable.
(And when I say "For a while now", bear in mind that I've probably spent ten times as long thinking about and writing about the film as actually sitting down and watching it.)
Gary King is suicidal. At least, he was before the film's narrative starts; he's in a mandated therapy group, having been placed in care where, as we find out, 'they tell you when to go to bed'. (I may be paraphrasing here; it's nearly two weeks on. Run with it.)
This is the driving trigger behind Gary's truly obsessive need to bring his friends back together and try to recapture their youth.
Primarily, this is because after the dizzying high of youth, Gary's apparently been flailing about for twenty-two years without finding some way of making peace with his younger self.
(Note: the maths here is based on the characters being 18 in 1991. This may or may not be completely correct. So, for a second time, run with it.)
This is all find and dandy in terms of a narrative of obsession - one of the strengths of the film is setting up just how obsessed and determined Gary is, down to drinking second-hand pints from one pub after finding out that his bar still stands (twenty-two years later, because it's such a small town that the bar is still run by the same people who can tell who Gary is even though he looks completely difference because comedy).
Even if you're determined on a pub crawl, I'd recommend against this course of action, for many reasons.
Skip to the end, and Gary is presented with his doppelganger, a Blank version of his younger self. Gary's eyes melt for a second, he gently cradles his hands around his younger self's neck, and...
Twists it off. "There's only one Gary King", apparently.
I find this more troubling than maybe anyone really should, but look at it in simple terms; Gary King just killed himself. Again. (Although the first time was more of a practice run-through.) For a film that treats Gary's previous suicide attempt and the ramifications thereof with a refreshing honesty and truthfulness to his grief, this is a little jarring; he's being offered everything he ever wanted, but, recognising it as a false offer - he'd still be him, and younger, but would have his pesky free will and independence stripped away from him, along with that kicking Sisters of Mercy tattoo - he turns it down.
In some ways, this ties back into a previous issue with catharsis raised in my previous entries in this obsessional quest to understand a film by making meaning where there may not truly be any.
Gary's rejection of Younger!Gary is his cathartic moment; he recognises that, for good or for ill, bandaged arms and hospital bracelet and all, he is Gary King, and to be anything else would to not be true to his self. It's a defining moment, it's full of emotional impact, and it works.
Until the epilogue.
Because as was also discussed before, the ending invalidates any character development on Gary's part. To be glib, there may be only one Gary King, but it's perfectly okay for there to be two of his friends; the humans, who go about doing human things, and the teenage blank versions, who seemingly blindly follow Gary while he's walking the earth. Gary's rejected any notion of catharsis and personal growth to embrace a false idea that getting in bar fights in the name of Blank rights is a good thing to do.
I'm still not entirely sure how the Blanking system works, either. As far as I could work out, if you go willingly, you retain your personality and memories in an ageless body, but you do so in service of The Network. If you don't go willingly, you get mulched and replaced but there may be a trace of your personality stored in a backup somewhere in case you need to interact with people who might previously have known you.
So if you believe in altruistic motives, Gary is trying to teach the teenage - and, potentially, functionally ageless - replicants of his friends what it means to be Human, and, yes, in this respect - and as proven by the dialogue with the Network Representative - Gary's probably not a bad teacher in that respect. But it's arrested development at best, unless you take the point that Gary fits much better in to a feudal society than he ever did into the previous one, which might be the case. However, the debate about blanking leads us to the next point;
What's the deal with the two Human Collaborators?
I know they're just thrown in for comic relief - and it saddens me that I can't even find out what Reece Shearsmith's character was called more than I can put into words - but doesn't it point to a pair of deficiencies, i.e. on the part of the two humans and on the part of The Network as a whole?
The comedy is that these two are just there; they've escaped Blanking by just living with the way things are and not complaining. This is not inaccurate, really, because humans adapt to all manner of situations.
But how does it benefit The Network?
As far as we can tell, their intrusion on Earth hasn't even been noticed - or, perhaps, it has been noticed but has been covered up each time before (with, mostly likely, a judicious mulch-and-replace). But this is where the creepy thought comes in; if these two humans willingly went along with the plan, why didn't everyone else?
Look at it from a bargaining perspective. "Hey, we're a massively powerful alien race that wants to bring your planet up to the kind of level where it can interact on the galactic stage. We'll do this quietly, by replacing certain population centres and..."
Well, the steps between are never really brought out, i.e.
STEP ONE: Replace population centres with controllable Blanks.
STEP TWO: ?
STEP THREE: ?
STEP FOUR: Profit!
Except that Profit! is replaced with 'leave in a huff because one human annoyed us so much that we'd rather raze their civilisation than try another approach'.
But if humans can willingly go along with The Network's plans, why replace them? This may be a bit of a stretch, because the two un-Blanked humans were, more accurately, simply going with the flow to avoid mulching - and, to be fair, living in Newton Haven as a human might be good, considering the low crime rate, lack of social disorder, and the potential for interlopers to be mulched-and-replaced; it's probably nice and quiet.
(Also, if I remember correctly, Those Two Humans end up perishing in the subsequent Newton Haven Apocalypse, which seems a little harsh.)
I like to think that this is a cultural issue on the part of The Network; we don't know what other civilisations they've encountered in the past, but maybe they had no problem with offering up a percentage of their population to receive all the benefits that The Network can offer, which leads us to our next point.
Screw You Guys, I'm Going Home
It's true that the fact that Gary King manages to save the world from the Invasion Of The Body Mulchers simply by being irritating, self-centred, arrogant and human is incredibly well-done, Primal Scream lyric-quoting and everything.
But it kind of fucks things up for everyone.
What's implied by the epilogue - that bloody epilogue - is that all technology from the past, say, hundred years or so - and it's not strictly explained - is simply gone, goodbye, adios.
Think of how much we rely on technology. I wouldn't be expressing these opinions - I know, what a lovely world that would be - to such a huge audience (and it's gone up fivefold in the last week or so to nearly twenty pageviews per post) without technology.
No communications. No modern medicine. No shared repository of knowledge (and cat pictures). Anyone reliant on any of these things to survive? Dead. So you can give us your 'I reconnected with my family and we're farmers now, comically mismatched glasses and all' spiel, and try to make out how things are difficult but survivable now all you like, but that's a harrowing and a winnowing right there that simply kills off anyone not nominally healthy and self-reliant.
All because Gary King talked an alien intelligence out of trying to help, albeit in, and let's say this again because it's worth mentioning, a mulch-and-replace way.
Seems a little harsh.
The central joke here is that the supposed Saviours Of Mankind, The Network, react as a human would to criticism and spite, and instead of trying to negotiate or talk down the humans, get in a huff and first throw their toys out of the pram then take them home with them.
There's a fair amount of chatter on the IMDB boards about the bleakness of the film, and that's a fair point; the central character is a suicidal obsessive arrested development case, and his four friends are apparently stuck in terminal ruts - whether in mind-numbing employment, family crisis, or mid-life crisis - and, it turns out, the future of the human race is at stake, too.
Not bad, for what's ostensibly a comedy.
So if you go in expecting dark humour, then it shines. (And both Shaun and Fuzz have hefty bleak spots too, it's worth mentioning.)
But let's go back to the start of this piece to end it.
No film has stayed with me, or made me think so much, or engaged me in the way that The World's End has for years.
It's left me thinking about it on and off for what will be, tomorrow, two weeks straight. It's interesting and thought-provoking and, on-and-off, funny. I'd even go so far as to say that it is, in a lot of ways, unique.
Gary's rejection of Younger!Gary is his cathartic moment; he recognises that, for good or for ill, bandaged arms and hospital bracelet and all, he is Gary King, and to be anything else would to not be true to his self. It's a defining moment, it's full of emotional impact, and it works.
Until the epilogue.
Because as was also discussed before, the ending invalidates any character development on Gary's part. To be glib, there may be only one Gary King, but it's perfectly okay for there to be two of his friends; the humans, who go about doing human things, and the teenage blank versions, who seemingly blindly follow Gary while he's walking the earth. Gary's rejected any notion of catharsis and personal growth to embrace a false idea that getting in bar fights in the name of Blank rights is a good thing to do.
I'm still not entirely sure how the Blanking system works, either. As far as I could work out, if you go willingly, you retain your personality and memories in an ageless body, but you do so in service of The Network. If you don't go willingly, you get mulched and replaced but there may be a trace of your personality stored in a backup somewhere in case you need to interact with people who might previously have known you.
So if you believe in altruistic motives, Gary is trying to teach the teenage - and, potentially, functionally ageless - replicants of his friends what it means to be Human, and, yes, in this respect - and as proven by the dialogue with the Network Representative - Gary's probably not a bad teacher in that respect. But it's arrested development at best, unless you take the point that Gary fits much better in to a feudal society than he ever did into the previous one, which might be the case. However, the debate about blanking leads us to the next point;
What's the deal with the two Human Collaborators?
I know they're just thrown in for comic relief - and it saddens me that I can't even find out what Reece Shearsmith's character was called more than I can put into words - but doesn't it point to a pair of deficiencies, i.e. on the part of the two humans and on the part of The Network as a whole?
The comedy is that these two are just there; they've escaped Blanking by just living with the way things are and not complaining. This is not inaccurate, really, because humans adapt to all manner of situations.
But how does it benefit The Network?
As far as we can tell, their intrusion on Earth hasn't even been noticed - or, perhaps, it has been noticed but has been covered up each time before (with, mostly likely, a judicious mulch-and-replace). But this is where the creepy thought comes in; if these two humans willingly went along with the plan, why didn't everyone else?
Look at it from a bargaining perspective. "Hey, we're a massively powerful alien race that wants to bring your planet up to the kind of level where it can interact on the galactic stage. We'll do this quietly, by replacing certain population centres and..."
Well, the steps between are never really brought out, i.e.
STEP ONE: Replace population centres with controllable Blanks.
STEP TWO: ?
STEP THREE: ?
STEP FOUR: Profit!
Except that Profit! is replaced with 'leave in a huff because one human annoyed us so much that we'd rather raze their civilisation than try another approach'.
But if humans can willingly go along with The Network's plans, why replace them? This may be a bit of a stretch, because the two un-Blanked humans were, more accurately, simply going with the flow to avoid mulching - and, to be fair, living in Newton Haven as a human might be good, considering the low crime rate, lack of social disorder, and the potential for interlopers to be mulched-and-replaced; it's probably nice and quiet.
(Also, if I remember correctly, Those Two Humans end up perishing in the subsequent Newton Haven Apocalypse, which seems a little harsh.)
I like to think that this is a cultural issue on the part of The Network; we don't know what other civilisations they've encountered in the past, but maybe they had no problem with offering up a percentage of their population to receive all the benefits that The Network can offer, which leads us to our next point.
Screw You Guys, I'm Going Home
It's true that the fact that Gary King manages to save the world from the Invasion Of The Body Mulchers simply by being irritating, self-centred, arrogant and human is incredibly well-done, Primal Scream lyric-quoting and everything.
But it kind of fucks things up for everyone.
What's implied by the epilogue - that bloody epilogue - is that all technology from the past, say, hundred years or so - and it's not strictly explained - is simply gone, goodbye, adios.
Think of how much we rely on technology. I wouldn't be expressing these opinions - I know, what a lovely world that would be - to such a huge audience (and it's gone up fivefold in the last week or so to nearly twenty pageviews per post) without technology.
No communications. No modern medicine. No shared repository of knowledge (and cat pictures). Anyone reliant on any of these things to survive? Dead. So you can give us your 'I reconnected with my family and we're farmers now, comically mismatched glasses and all' spiel, and try to make out how things are difficult but survivable now all you like, but that's a harrowing and a winnowing right there that simply kills off anyone not nominally healthy and self-reliant.
All because Gary King talked an alien intelligence out of trying to help, albeit in, and let's say this again because it's worth mentioning, a mulch-and-replace way.
Seems a little harsh.
The central joke here is that the supposed Saviours Of Mankind, The Network, react as a human would to criticism and spite, and instead of trying to negotiate or talk down the humans, get in a huff and first throw their toys out of the pram then take them home with them.
There's a fair amount of chatter on the IMDB boards about the bleakness of the film, and that's a fair point; the central character is a suicidal obsessive arrested development case, and his four friends are apparently stuck in terminal ruts - whether in mind-numbing employment, family crisis, or mid-life crisis - and, it turns out, the future of the human race is at stake, too.
Not bad, for what's ostensibly a comedy.
So if you go in expecting dark humour, then it shines. (And both Shaun and Fuzz have hefty bleak spots too, it's worth mentioning.)
But let's go back to the start of this piece to end it.
No film has stayed with me, or made me think so much, or engaged me in the way that The World's End has for years.
It's left me thinking about it on and off for what will be, tomorrow, two weeks straight. It's interesting and thought-provoking and, on-and-off, funny. I'd even go so far as to say that it is, in a lot of ways, unique.
It's just that there are what I would call 'issues'. That's all.
I home America likes it, though.
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