Blake Snyder Beat Sheet
The World’s End (2013)
Director: Edgar Wright
Writer: Edgar Wright / Simon Pegg
Starring: Simon Pegg / Nick Frost / Paddy Considine / Martin Freeman / Eddie Marsan / Rosamund Pike
Run Time: 109 mins
Genre: Monster In The House
(IMDb)
Opening Image
“Ever had one of those nights that starts out like any other but ends up being the best night of your life?”
Gary King tells a support group about the night he peaked, when he and his four friends attempted ‘The Golden Mile’, a pub crawl with twelve pit-stops dotted around their childhood hometown of Newton Haven. A pint in each establishment all the way to The World’s End, which, having lacked the stamina, they failed to reach all those years ago.
Theme Stated
After hearing Gary’s enthusiastic account of his teenage antics another member of the group asks him, “Are you disappointed?” When asked to clarify the group member claims he was referring to the unfinished Golden Mile, but we see from Gary’s institutional clothing and squalid living quarters the question has a wider meaning for how his life has turned out since that fateful night.
Set-Up
Gary is a party animal living in the past and undergoing an as yet unspecified form of therapy. From the keenness he tells his story with, the film heavily infers he is being treated for substance abuse. Reliving the best night of his life, when even his wildest teenage expectations were exceeded, has the inverse effect upon Gary as was intended. A bout of visible zeal comes over him. He has a plan.
Catalyst
Gary visits his old friends -Andy, Steve, Oliver, and Pete- one by one. None of them want anything to do with him due to his having offended each of them to varying degrees in the years since their school days. However, he manages to convince them all, with a mixture of guilt, nostalgia, fibs, and horrendous lies, to accompany him back to Newton Haven and complete The Golden Mile. Given particular attention here is the allusion to ‘the accident’ involving Gary and Andy. They were the closest of all the friends at school. Now the atmosphere between them is frostiest. Heavy hints are given that Andy’s sixteen years of sobriety began after the aforementioned accident. Only when Gary repays a £600 loan and tells Andy his mother has died does Andy soften.
Debate
Andy, Steve, Oliver, and Pete are each shocked and relieved to find they have all turned up at the meeting place. It is clear Gary’s charisma deeply influenced them all in their formative years. It is also clear that Gary has failed to develop a sufficient sense of obligation in the years since. The four followers are individually successful as professionals, and their impatience and doubt are visible as they wait on a train station bench for almost an hour past the agreed-upon time, for Gary to come and collect them.
Break Into Two
Eventually Gary does arrive, buzzing like a bee on amphetamine, and typically unapologetic. The gang pile into his ancient Ford Granada -which he calls The Beast, obviously- and drive to Newton Haven, listening to Soup Dragons as the car kicks a heavy trail of black smoke behind.
B-Story
Oliver’s sister Sam joins the group in the second pub on The Golden Mile. Gary and Steve, because of their respective crushes on Sam, begin the kind of chest-puffing displays that must have been typical of their school days. Gary had sex with Sam in the disabled toilets of a nightclub during the first Golden Mile attempt, which evidently serves as one of his fonder memories. Steve, meanwhile, seems to have admired Sam from afar in years gone by, and though he never had a physical relationship with her, clearly retains her favour over his wild, immature friend / love rival.
Fun and Games
From pub to pub Gary’s elation grows while the feigned enthusiasm on the others’ faces begins to dwindle. At teetotaller Andy’s request they order food at the next pub. The group finally begins to relax as they relive fond memories such as the trio of girls they dubbed ‘The Marmalade Sandwich’; two blondes and a redhead.
The uneasy truce does not last long, however, as Pete is unsettled when the bully from his school days asks to borrow a chair and seems not to recognise Pete or remember the damage he inflicted on him as a boy. As Pete relives his painful memories Gary manages to sneak to the bar and return with five shots. His stunted emotional growth is again outlined. He refuses to acknowledge his behaviour as insensitive in the company of others. He opts instead to excuse himself to the toilets. In doing so he leaves his phone on the table. The phone rings. Andy picks it up. The caller ID reads ‘Mum.’
Midpoint
In the toilets Gary lets slip for the first time he knows his attempted recreation of the Golden Mile is not going as he planned. A teenager enters and uses the urinal. Gary first tries to befriend him but upon receiving nothing in return begins to berate him, and eventually shoves him to provoke a fight. In the resulting struggle Gary slams the teenager’s head against a urinal . His head comes off, and in the place of blood Gary is covered with a bright blue substance.
Andy storms to the toilet, followed by the others, to confront Gary for lying about his mother being dead (Which is fair enough). They come upon Gary cradling the lifeless, headless body, blue-blooded body. He’s hysterical. Before any kind of interrogation can begin, into the toilet storm a gang of teenagers. A mass brawl begins after which it is clear the teenagers were cyborgs of some description (not robots. Robot means slave).
This moment is a False Peak. They have survived a cyborg attack, However, there are deep, unresolved issues fracturing the group and they are unsure as to the extent of the danger they are in. They remember some of the strange behaviour they have witnessed from the townsfolk throughout the day and conclude there may be a lot more cyborgs in Newton Haven. In light of this, at Gary’s suggestion, they decide to continue The Golden Mile as a means to remain undetected. It is this moment Andy picks up each of the five untouched shots Gary bought during Pete’s bullying story, and sinks them one by one.
Bad Guys Close In
Through ex-drug dealer Reverend Green and a crazy old man named Basil, Gary and Steve respectively learn the extent of the cyborg takeover. “It’s not an invasion, it’s a merger.” The citizens of Newton Haven become conduit units for an intergalactic confederacy aiming to improve the behaviour of human beings so that Earth may be elevated into a universal network of planets. These conduits are called Blanks, so called because they replace humans in their physical form but retain none of their personality. Blanks have not only infested Newton Haven, but thousands of other locations across the world.
The problem was much larger than the group first suspected. But, being so shitfaced, they take the bad news in their stride. They also fail to notice that Oliver is now chipper as ever, though he half-dragged himself to the toilet earlier on. Sam notices nothing strange about her brother either when she rejoins the group.
All Is Lost
In the next pub the group find their English teacher from school, Mr Shephard. Shephard gives them a creepily restrained speech about the benefits humans will gain from a merger with the Blanks. Andy figures out Oliver has been replaced by a Blank. Blank reinforcements arrive and a mass brawl ensues. The group defends against the first wave but the Blanks quickly regroup. Mr Shephard, now with bright blue light shining from his eyes and mouth, admonishes their stubbornness. “Humans, you leave us no recourse!” The damaged Blanks reanimate and swarm the group again.
Dark Night of the Soul
Gary and Sam manage to flee and find her car outside the pub. The two address the friction between them. Gary sends Sam away and goes looking for the rest of the group in the bar at the bowls club.
Break Into Three
Andy confronts Gary over the accident they were both involved in years ago. Gary overdosed and Andy drove drunk to rush him to the hospital, rolling the car and cutting his femoral artery. Gary woke up from his drug-induced slumber and Andy was arrested.
The group briefly decide to finish the Golden Mile but Andy forces them all to head towards Gary’s car when Pete is overwhelmed by Blanks in the woods.
Finale
Gary plays along until they reach the next pub. Within touching distance of the ancient Granada but so close to fulfilling his dream, he breaks ranks. Andy and Steve chase him across the final two stops of the Golden Mile. The Blanks are now unrestrained in their pursuit. Steve is briefly captured. Gary and Andy make it to The World’s End. During a struggle between them it comes out Andy has attempted suicide, which was why he was undergoing therapy at the start of the film, and Andy’s wife is leaving him because he is not present.
The floor of the pub mechanically sinks, lowering them both into a cylindrical chamber where Steve rejoins them, and the three debate a blue light in the sky, the inner voice of the Blanks, about the ethicacy of indoctrinating a planet’s population against its will. They are so stubborn in their ignorance the supposedly enlightened voice gives up, and chooses to leave mankind in the lower, self-destructive state in which it was found. The building begins to explode around them.
Sam shows up yet again, just in time to rescue Gary, Andy, and Steve from the fiery wreck The World’s End is fast becoming. On the same hillside he had admired Newton Haven from at the end of his first Golden Mile, Gary watches his childhood home burn.
Final Image
Dressed in rags and sitting with others around a burning barrel, Andy tells the story of how the Blanks triggered an electronic pulse upon their departure that sent mankind back to the dark ages. The remaining Blanks remain functional but are now a resented sub-class in the eyes of all remaining humans. All except for Gary King, who is now a water-drinking marauder, travelling the land with his band of Blanks, content to murder anyone who stands in his way. Which was all he needed to quit drinking, it turns out.
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