Gimme Something That I Missed
I actually have a potentially more depressing read on Gary's life, one the creators might not have even intended, in The World's End. 'Cause I'm special like that.
I'm not gonna deny that Gary hasn't grown up mentally and is fixated on a time in his life when he felt like he had the world on a string and the future was full of potential, but some of the details around him make me wonder if there's more going on because old clothes, an old and often repaired car, and an old and clunky phone also read "poverty" to me. Gary's a grandiose and unreliable alcoholic with a history of drug abuse, so I think it's more than possible that he didn't have a decent-paying job even before his recent major breakdown.
Not long after introducing the contemporary version of the Beast the movie shows some practical considerations of keeping it: that it's in someone else's name and Gary's been identifying himself as said person every time he's pulled over for something. I know from experience that repairing even an expensive problem on an old car, paying for it with a credit card, is cheaper than buying a new or used car and paying big installments monthly. Plus, I don't know if this is true in the UK, but in the US you have to give a ton of information over about yourself when buying a car--like whether you have insurance, which I doubt Gary does--and somebody generally looks into your credit history. Gary doesn't seem to have a driver's license either. (You can buy a used car in a private sale, but it's hard to know what that car's really been through. He knows the Beast's history.)
He's a con man, has been at least since his adolescence, but people with little money living in a society that runs on it also figure out work-arounds.
The phone is more of a laugh line thing, since I don't know where he'd even find replacement batteries for it (and cell phones aren't era-specific to where Gary prefers to be living in). My own cell phone is much newer since my plan lets me replace it every two years, which is about the time it's really falling apart, but it's just about the most basic piece of crap available for price reasons.
If I had the money I'd have a new car and a cool smartphone. (Though I'm not dying for a smartphone. I know people who can't live without theirs ever since getting one, but since I've never had one I don't know what I'm missing or feel that deprived.)
When you can't buy new things, it's depressing but you can't think about it all the time so you come to a point of "I love my stuff and maybe it's better this way" to help get through. You also develop more of a personal relationship with items you have and use for a really long time.
So a large part of the problem is Gary but some of it might be that his situation helps focus him in that direction. Gary's kept a lot from his friends, so it wouldn't surprise me if he kept that from them too. I can see him gathering together everything he has to pay for this hugely meaningful Golden Mile quest... when he isn't cadging drinks off his friends.
I'm curious about what he wears when he's not reliving the past with childhood friends or in group sessions. That Sisters of Mercy shirt would've fallen to pieces if he wore it a lot over 20+ years, so....
I enjoyed seeing Simon Pegg playing the idiot for once and Nick Frost as a mostly mild-mannered guy who's a one-man wrecking crew when he's ticked off. I was the only person in the theater laughing during the vocal run from "This Corrosion" during the reveal of Blank young Gary, so I'm not sure how many people got it, even after the end of the movie played the song in its entirety.
I'm not happy with the epilogue and would've been happier if they'd ended the movie on the hill, watching everything burn. I feel that the epilogue deflated the movie somewhat, though I am amused by the fact that Gary fucking King sent humankind back to the Dark Ages. What's more interesting--and possibly frustrating--to me is that his final fate seems to go against what the movie just showed us at the World's End. Gary rejects the chance to go back to his golden age physically and mentally, he loses the Beast and his hometown, and he and Andy seem to have made peace with their feud. Then in the epilogue Gary rejects his friends to hang with a group that's closer to his mental age and have the music video life of his dreams. I couldn't help having a moment of "bwuh?" even if I am amused that he's happier in the apocalypse.
I'm not gonna deny that Gary hasn't grown up mentally and is fixated on a time in his life when he felt like he had the world on a string and the future was full of potential, but some of the details around him make me wonder if there's more going on because old clothes, an old and often repaired car, and an old and clunky phone also read "poverty" to me. Gary's a grandiose and unreliable alcoholic with a history of drug abuse, so I think it's more than possible that he didn't have a decent-paying job even before his recent major breakdown.
Not long after introducing the contemporary version of the Beast the movie shows some practical considerations of keeping it: that it's in someone else's name and Gary's been identifying himself as said person every time he's pulled over for something. I know from experience that repairing even an expensive problem on an old car, paying for it with a credit card, is cheaper than buying a new or used car and paying big installments monthly. Plus, I don't know if this is true in the UK, but in the US you have to give a ton of information over about yourself when buying a car--like whether you have insurance, which I doubt Gary does--and somebody generally looks into your credit history. Gary doesn't seem to have a driver's license either. (You can buy a used car in a private sale, but it's hard to know what that car's really been through. He knows the Beast's history.)
He's a con man, has been at least since his adolescence, but people with little money living in a society that runs on it also figure out work-arounds.
The phone is more of a laugh line thing, since I don't know where he'd even find replacement batteries for it (and cell phones aren't era-specific to where Gary prefers to be living in). My own cell phone is much newer since my plan lets me replace it every two years, which is about the time it's really falling apart, but it's just about the most basic piece of crap available for price reasons.
If I had the money I'd have a new car and a cool smartphone. (Though I'm not dying for a smartphone. I know people who can't live without theirs ever since getting one, but since I've never had one I don't know what I'm missing or feel that deprived.)
When you can't buy new things, it's depressing but you can't think about it all the time so you come to a point of "I love my stuff and maybe it's better this way" to help get through. You also develop more of a personal relationship with items you have and use for a really long time.
So a large part of the problem is Gary but some of it might be that his situation helps focus him in that direction. Gary's kept a lot from his friends, so it wouldn't surprise me if he kept that from them too. I can see him gathering together everything he has to pay for this hugely meaningful Golden Mile quest... when he isn't cadging drinks off his friends.
I'm curious about what he wears when he's not reliving the past with childhood friends or in group sessions. That Sisters of Mercy shirt would've fallen to pieces if he wore it a lot over 20+ years, so....
I enjoyed seeing Simon Pegg playing the idiot for once and Nick Frost as a mostly mild-mannered guy who's a one-man wrecking crew when he's ticked off. I was the only person in the theater laughing during the vocal run from "This Corrosion" during the reveal of Blank young Gary, so I'm not sure how many people got it, even after the end of the movie played the song in its entirety.
I'm not happy with the epilogue and would've been happier if they'd ended the movie on the hill, watching everything burn. I feel that the epilogue deflated the movie somewhat, though I am amused by the fact that Gary fucking King sent humankind back to the Dark Ages. What's more interesting--and possibly frustrating--to me is that his final fate seems to go against what the movie just showed us at the World's End. Gary rejects the chance to go back to his golden age physically and mentally, he loses the Beast and his hometown, and he and Andy seem to have made peace with their feud. Then in the epilogue Gary rejects his friends to hang with a group that's closer to his mental age and have the music video life of his dreams. I couldn't help having a moment of "bwuh?" even if I am amused that he's happier in the apocalypse.