In a new interview at i09 in support of their film The World’s End, which comes to U.S. cinemas on Friday, director Edgar Wright and star Simon Pegg explained that while the film on its face looks like another drunken, misogynistic manchild film a la Old School or The Hangover, it is in fact a desconstruction of that genre, examining the trops of those kinds of movies to reveal that the characters in them are actually quite unlikable and their “good old days” ethos flawed.
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Asked by the reporter to compare the film to movies like The Hangover and The Watch, Wright said, “Both of those films you mentioned, there’s a lot of those ‘manchild’ films. I don’t think they really scratch beneath the surface that much. And a lot of those films glorify that behavior. Whether it’s something like Old School or Hall Pass. Those ‘mid-life crisis’ sort of films. But in this, we wanted to do something where, the fact that they want to go back is a cautionary tale. This is going to have a bad ending if they try to recapture their glory years. It’s not a triumphant quest.”
“A lot of the ‘manchild’ films sort of say, ‘[Adulthood means] conforming, but the best thing to do is to be a kid, and hang out with your guy friends. And be sort of drunken and misogynistic,’” added Pegg. “And what we’re kind of saying is, ‘Conforming isn’t necessarily the right thing to do, but nor is that.’ What’s important is being happy in yourself. You know, it’s finding some kind of level of happiness, and that might not mean going back, because going back isn’t always a good thing. And it also doesn’t mean becoming something you think you should be, because that isn’t a good thing.”
