THE GENIUS OF: Edgar WrightBy Quinn OxleyJune 27, 2017I was going to call this piece “The Edgar Wright Stuff,” but I decided to go easy on you guys.

Major spoilers ahead for Hot Fuzz, which is definitely a movie you’ll want to go into blind if you haven’t seen it.

Baby Driver is in theaters this weekend and it’s already striking a chord with audiences and critics alike. IMDb, Metascore, and Letterboxd have all given it more than positive reviews, and Edgar Wright’s latest work currently holds a coveted rating of 99% on Rotten Tomatoes. I still plan to be 100% impartial, but suffice it to say I’m plenty excited.

With all Edgar Wright hype swirling about, I decided to check out one of his most notable titles - Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. It took me about four minutes in to become near-heartsick that we didn’t get to see his Ant-Man.

Scott Pilgrim is stylized to perfection. In the best way possible, the viewer has no idea what could happen next on screen - plot-wise, yes, but also effects-wise, transition-wise, exposition-wise, humor-wise, and tone-wise. But he doesn’t promise any kind of security; you can tell from the first few minutes of the movie that it’s not your average rom-com, so these shifts make sense, and they’re handled deftly.

And that’s not the only thing the movie has going for it. In both of the Wright movies I’ve seen, I’ve noticed a few notable trends.

He doesn’t seem at all bound by what’s normal or conventional, especially when it comes to genre. In the case of Scott Pilgrim, Wright blends the rom-com genre with the comic book movie; with Hot Fuzz, you find a mystery/thriller/comedy like RED, but again, with Wright’s signature style. Perhaps it’s the comedic promises made in the opening moments of his films that allow the audience to tolerate such a deviation from convention.

Wright’s films also feature characters that are part character and part caricature. Now, sometimes a caricature is an unwelcome addition in a movie, but again, Wright sets the tone early on, which lets his audience handle a lot more exaggeration. In Scott Pilgrim, many characters (except for Knives, who started off annoying but became a sweetheart) were deliciously blunt, sarcastic, and melodramatic, while most of the players in Hot Fuzz (SPOILERS) are in a conspiratorial cult, which really says it all. Wright really gets this generation’s sense of humor.

Both movies are also quite energetic, which keeps people engaged. There are no Transformers-style action sequences that go on for way too long; the story moves at an appropriate pace with a certain skater-style zigzag movement - and with just as much finesse.

It took two movies to bring Edgar Wright onto my “highly anticipated” list, and I can’t wait to see more of him this week.

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