Six of the best Edgar Wright scenes

It’s easy to iden­ti­fy an Edgar Wright film. For starters, his name appears in the cred­its. But his unique method of shot tran­si­tion­ing also stands out like an enthu­si­as­tic stu­dent in a class of layabouts. His work is ener­getic and quirky and often par­o­dies genre, mak­ing light of zom­bies in Shaun of the Dead, the action hero fan­ta­sy in Hot Fuzz, the gam­ing and com­ic book worlds in Scott Pil­grim vs the World, and the threat of an alien inva­sion, made worse by beer, in The World’s End.

His fifth fea­ture, Baby Dri­ver, is an ambi­tious depar­ture from his ear­li­er come­dies, veer­ing more towards action thriller, but it still screams his unmis­tak­able style. So what makes an Edgar Wright film? Here are six scenes which we feel best illus­trate his dis­tinc­tive approach to filmmaking.

Aside from pop­ping up on social media in meme form when­ev­er there’s a nation­al dis­as­ter, this end­less­ly quotable scene in Shaun of the Dead is one of the finest exam­ples of Wright’s hyper-kinet­ic film­mak­ing style. It’s like a con­cen­trat­ed burst of his per­son­al­i­ty, bring­ing togeth­er his var­i­ous edit­ing tech­niques in one suc­cinct mon­tage. As Shaun and Ed devise a plan to pre­vent them get­ting munched by zom­bies, we’re bom­bard­ed with swip­ing tran­si­tions, quick action shots of Bill Nighy get­ting blud­geoned with a crick­et bat and extreme close-ups of a mug. He did some­thing almost iden­ti­cal in the sit­com Spaced, which sug­gests he’s quite fond of this form of exposition.

Like in most films or shows where scores of peo­ple are bru­tal­ly mur­dered, a cer­tain amount of expla­na­tion is required at the end. This scene in Hot Fuzz, where the vil­lagers reveal them­selves to be a cult of psy­chopaths who hold week­ly coun­cil meet­ings, gives Wright the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to sum­marise the film’s var­i­ous mys­ter­ies in his typ­i­cal­ly tran­si­tion-friend­ly style. It demon­strates just how intri­cate his method of sto­ry­telling can be – using mon­tages to call back to ear­li­er, sig­nif­i­cant events – while also high­light­ing the ever-present threat of crusty jugglers.

Every­body knows that veg­ans have spe­cial pow­ers. Par­take not in the meat, nor the breast milk, nor the ovum of any crea­ture with a face and you’ll be grant­ed the abil­i­ty of telekine­sis and upward wav­ing hair. At least that’s the case for Todd Ingram (Bran­don Routh), who is able to toss Scott sev­er­al hun­dred feet in the air with his mind. The sus­pend­ed real­i­ty of Scott Pil­grim, which bor­rows its aes­thet­ics from the gam­ing and com­ic book worlds, allows Wright to real­ly exper­i­ment with his style. As it turns out, if you want to seam­less­ly tran­si­tion from one loca­tion to anoth­er, smash­ing through walls is rather handy.

The final instal­ment in Wright’s Three Flavours Cor­net­to tril­o­gy again sees the direc­tor rel­ish mak­ing some­thing as mun­dane as pour­ing a pint look as thrilling as a car chase. The open­ing scene of The World’s End more or less brings things back to basics. Using flash­back mon­tages under a rose-tint­ed fil­ter, it nos­tal­gi­cal­ly sets the scene for a mon­u­men­tal pub-crawl that will nat­u­ral­ly result in var­i­ous deaths. The char­ac­ters are metic­u­lous­ly set up to fore­shad­ow their impend­ing, ine­bri­at­ed doom. Or dis­mem­ber­ment from alien robots.

Wright’s retro gam­ing ref­er­ences cul­mi­nate in an extrav­a­gant finale when Scott takes on Gideon Graves (Jason Schwartz­man) in the final show­down. Set in the Chaos The­atre, which already looks a lot like an arcade or geek’s lair, there are call­backs to a dance mat rou­tine and a pow­er-up sword mirac­u­lous­ly mate­ri­alis­es from Scott’s chest. Even by Wright’s stan­dards it’s an incred­i­bly fast-cut sequence, but the bril­liant chore­og­ra­phy is nev­er lost in the quick tran­si­tions. What’s even more impres­sive is that he some­how makes Michael Cera look like a con­vinc­ing action star.

Hot Fuzz is instant­ly iden­ti­fi­able as an Edgar Wright film. That’s if you wait for Simon Pegg to fin­ish walk­ing towards the cam­era in the open­ing scene. Our intro­duc­tion to Police Con­sta­ble Nicholas Angel imme­di­ate­ly estab­lish­es the action par­o­dy tone of the film, iron­i­cal­ly build­ing up his com­bat capa­bil­i­ties in a humor­ous mon­tage. As his list of skills are reeled off, rid­ing a bike and com­plet­ing a mul­ti­ple-choice test are made to look as dra­mat­ic as car­ry­ing out a drugs raid. It’s yet anoth­er fine exam­ple of Wright com­bin­ing all of his tech­niques in one sequence, while also point­ing and laugh­ing at the genre.