Edgar Wright's Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy, Ranked

Edgar Wright's "Three Flavours Cornetto" trilogy is called that because each film features a different flavor of Cornetto ice cream, but there's a bit more to it than that. Each film, written by Wright and star Simon Pegg, is also a different flavor of genre movie, playing with the tropes of genre cinema while still maintaining a lot in common (just like the ice cream treats). The first film to come out chronologically was "Shaun of the Dead" in 2004, starring Pegg as the titular Shaun and Nick Frost as his best friend Ed, a couple of guys in their early 30s who must contend with a full-blown zombie apocalypse, and it showed the whole world what Wright, Pegg, and Frost could do. 

The next film in the untraditional trilogy was "Hot Fuzz" in 2007, riffing on action cinema, and the final film was "The World's End" in 2013, tackling the science fiction genre. There's no true correct order to watch the films in because they're only connected thematically and through things like recurring visual gags and shared casts, but each has a totally unconnected story with some of the same actors playing completely different roles. 

Which of these films is the best, though? Like the ice cream flavors, everyone's preferences are different, and there's really no wrong answer when trying to rank the "Cornetto" trilogy because all three movies are utterly fantastic. There are compelling arguments for why each film could be the best, but here's my ranking, from great to greatest. 

"Shaun of the Dead" is both romantic slacker comedy and intense zombie horror film, following Shaun and Ed as they try to rescue Shaun's recent ex, Liz (Kate Ashfield) and his mum, Barbara (Penelope Wilton) and get to their local pub, the Winchester, to ride out the zombie attacks. "Shaun of the Dead" introduced the world to the particular comedic sensibilities of Wright and Pegg while also succeeding in all of the genres it's playing in. That's a pretty tough task, but "Shaun of the Dead" is surprisingly romantic, wildly funny, and also incredibly scary when it wants to be. 

A fight scene with zombies — excuse me, zeds — set to Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" is a great example of Wright's madcap action style, ending with a brutal, gory death. (The Cornetto flavor featured in "Shaun of the Dead" is strawberry, which feels appropriate given the pink and red blood, brains, and guts on display.) 

Though "Shaun of the Dead" has aged surprisingly well in its comedy, save for one joke, the one thing that holds it back from being the best of the "Cornetto" flicks is that its characters are pretty immature and its lessons are blurry. Sure, it's a story about love and friendship overcoming all, but lessons about growing up get a bit lost in the blood and guts of it all. Thankfully, as Wright and Pegg matured as people and filmmakers, their films matured as well.

The second film in the "Cornetto" trilogy ups the quality a bit, stepping fully into the action genre with a buddy cop comedy once again starring Pegg and Frost. This time, Pegg plays the highly efficient and skilled Metropolitan Police Sergeant Nicholas Angel, who gets reassigned to the tiny rural town of Sandford, Gloucestershire, where he's partnered with Frost's utterly incompetent Officer Danny Butterman. The two discover some seriously shady business going on in the town when there is a series of mysterious, violent deaths, leading them to have a beautiful friendship and working partnership. 

It's a pretty perfect buddy cop movie that manages to dodge potentially problematic material by being set in rural freaking Gloucestershire, and it shows off Wright and Pegg's purest love: their love of action cinema. There are homages to zombie cinema in "Shaun of the Dead," but "Hot Fuzz" is an ultimate love letter to action movies from around the world. The Cornetto flavor in "Hot Fuzz" is Classico, the original vanilla with chocolate and nuts, and it's the most purely distilled film of the three, thematically.

Look, "Hot Fuzz" is incredible. It's pretty much perfect, taking the good bits of "Shaun of the Dead" and improving upon them, and there's plenty of great arguments that it's the best movie of the trio, but the final film in the trilogy is by far the most emotionally powerful and features the most important message. 

Both "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz" use big life-or-death adventures to help its emotionally stunted central characters grow and change. In "Shaun," Shaun has to grow up a little bit to survive and win Liz's love, while in "Hot Fuzz," Nicholas Angel must let go of his obsession with work a bit in order to live a more fulfilling life. In "The World's End," 40-year-old alcoholic Gary King (Pegg) wants to relive his glory days with his friends and can't quite wrap his head around growing older because he feels left behind by the world and his friends. As they go on a pub crawl that his friends clearly don't want to be on to begin with, they realize that many of the locals have been replaced with robotic replacements, like a super high-tech "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." 

In order to try and avoid suspicion, they continue the pub crawl, gradually working through some of their issues before confronting the alien invaders responsible for the replacements in the end. The film's ending is as complicated as its protagonist, making for a much more divisive film than its crowd-pleasing predecessors. But "The World's End" is a coming-of-age movie about middle age that allows for its lead to be both relatable and despicable, and it's a reminder that the most beautiful part of human nature is our free will and what we'll do to maintain it. 

The ice cream flavor in "The World's End" is mint, and while that's likely a cheeky joke about green aliens, it's also a perfect example of the more mature flavors present in the film. The older I get, the more I relate to "The World's End," and hey, life gets more complicated as you get older, so the movies that resonate do, too. It's really a shame that we're not going to get another movie about going into your 50s or 60s, because it'd be a blast to see the crew tackle another genre and deliver even more refined, potent life lessons.