What 'Shaun of the Dead' and 'Hot Fuzz' and 'World's End' do is smuggle a different movie under the guise of a zombie movie or a cop or alien invasion movie. Even though they all have action and carnage, they are really films about growing up and taking responsibility.
Interpretation
The quote highlights that certain films, while appearing to be about surface themes like zombies or aliens, actually explore deeper issues of maturity and accountability.
In this quote, Edgar Wright reflects on how his films, like 'Shaun of the Dead', 'Hot Fuzz', and 'World's End', use genre elements to captivate audiences while simultaneously addressing profound themes of growing up and the responsibilities that come with adulthood. This commentary suggests that the true essence of storytelling often lies beneath the surface, inviting viewers to engage with deeper social and personal issues through the lens of entertainment.
In practice
In a film studies class discussing genre conventions and deeper meanings.
Maybe directors who are more interested in realism and naturalism come from cities, where they see things on their doorstep every day. But growing up as a kid in a very pretty but ever-so-slightly boring town, where not a great deal happened, encouraged me to be more escapist, more imaginative, and more of a daydreamer.
There are plenty of movies that you need to chew on a bit. Movies that you return to and see something different in the second time around.
We are all born idolaters, and idolatry is good, because it is in the nature of man. Who can get beyond it? Only the perfect man, the God-man. The rest are all idolaters. So long as we see this universe before us, with its forms and shapes, we are all idolaters. This is a gigantic symbol we are worshipping. He who says he is the body is a born idolater.
The idea that we have the right to inflict suffering and death on other sentient beings for the trivial reasons of palate pleasure and fashion is, without doubt, one of the most arrogant and morally repugnant notions in the history of human thought.
I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you.
A large portion of our citizens, who will not believe, even on the evidence of facts, that any public evils exist, or are impending. They deride the apprehensions of those who foresee, that licentiousness will prove, as it ever has proved, fatal to liberty.
As for oblivion, well, we can wait a little while for that.
...But there's always suffering, Pudge. Homework or malaria or having a boyfriend who lives far away when there's a good-looking boy lying next to you. Suffering is universal. It's the one thing Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims are all worried about.
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