Every Edgar Wright Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

For many cinephiles, Edgar Wright's ascent over the past two decades has been particularly gratifying. As he's made the jumps from British TV to cult comedies to full-blown studio filmmaking, Wright's profile — and his budgets — have increased, and yet none of his success has diminished the dynamism of his signature style.

Edgar Wright's love of everything from schlocky B-movies to canonized masterpieces shines through in the affectionate remixes and homages that appear in his own work. But remarkably, Wright's films never feel like a catalog of references meant to make those in the know feel smarter. They don't simply regurgitate or replicate genre tropes, but build on — and interrogate — their legacies.

With Wright debuting two new features in 2021, including his first documentary, the time is ripe to reevaluate the director's filmography. Both "The Sparks Brothers" and "Last Night in Soho" should feel familiar to the director's fans, while still opening up exciting new avenues for Wright to explore. Here's where Wright's 2021 output ranks among his previous work.

In 1995, young and scrappy 21-year-old Edgar Wright pulled together his first feature, "A Fistful of Fingers." The film is a proudly British parody of spaghetti Westerns, and it leans into all the peculiarity of the concept. Wright cleverly wraps the shoestring budget into the story itself, cheekily incorporating anachronisms that poke fun at the film's own construction. Had he continued down this road, Wright could have become his generation's Mel Brooks.

Yet even at 78 minutes, the film wears out its welcome. The "Monty Python"-inspired humor feels one-note, and the limitations of Wright's craft become more apparent with time. "A Fistful of Fingers" becomes less subversive, and more of a series of winks at the end of well-staged sequences, showcasing Wright's prodigiousness as a filmmaker and his mastery of genre conventions. But this is still a freshman film, and it's evident that Wright lacks the confidence to fully subvert and explode genre in the way that he'd later become famous for. "A Fistful of Fingers" is a fascinating sign of what's to come, even if it's not fully realized in its own right.

Wright's most kinetic movie is his graphic novel adaptation "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World," an imaginative action-romance in which Michael Cera's titular hero must do battle with his new flame's seven evil exes. More than simply mimicking the look and style of a video game, Wright transposes gaming's visual and narrative logic into a feature film format. Not every bit of trickery works, and the film's quirky sensibility can be overwhelming. And yet, it's exciting to watch Wright take big swings, and to see him connect on a good number of them.

If nothing else, simply marvel at how well Wright cast the film, anticipating the stratospheric ascent of performers like Brie Larson, Aubrey Plaza, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and knowing how to use actors like Chris Evans and Kieran Culkin to their full potential years before they took their signature roles. "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" is also probably peak Michael Cera, debuting at a time when Cera's pouty persona was laughable but not yet a punchline. As Scott, Cera is pathetic enough to sell the jokes, but heroic enough to be a believable action lead, at least within the parameters set up by the film.

Wright burst onto the scene in 2004 with "Shaun of the Dead," a mash-up of genre deconstruction and social commentary that takes the form of a zombie comedy. The film takes high-concept hijinks — Simon Pegg's aimless titular character manages to sleepwalk through the zombie apocalypse occurring around him — and amps up the ridiculousness, even while keeping events grounded. Leave it to Edgar Wright to find a way to marry the madcap and mundane.

Filmmakers should naturally grow and improve as they make more movies, yet it's quite astonishing to see just how fully-formed Edgar Wright's style was from the jump. While he's honed many of the elements introduced in "Shaun of the Dead," none of that detracts from the joy of seeing Wright realize his singular vision for the first time. A devilish wit runs through the film, and a number of its gags and sequences would scare off more seasoned filmmakers. But Wright just seems excited to be making a feature-length movie, lending "Shaun of the Dead" a vibrancy that none of Wright's later accomplishments will ever fully diminish.

All of Wright's strengths as a director come together seamlessly in "Hot Fuzz." His go-to duo of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost is in top form for this buddy cop comedy, playing an odd pairing in an overzealous sergeant Nicholas Angel (Pegg) and the decidedly less ambitious Danny Butterman (Frost). The rule-abiding Angel makes a fuss in the small town of Sandford, while native son Danny takes his cues on how to perform police work from action movies. Together, their absurd antics play like a gleeful send-up of the cop movie genre, which Wright replicates in startling aesthetic detail just so that he can affectionately poke fun at it.

But Wright does more than satirize the genre. Yes, he comments on and criticizes the inanity of action movies, but he also digs deeper, finding a darker truth lurking underneath: The idyllic small town so often presented in police procedurals is often a hotbed for dangerous insularity. Rather than leaving this as subtext, Wright elevates it to a central plot point in ways that are both startling and satisfying. Wright isn't picking on the action genre so much as picking it apart, laying the framework bare so that other filmmakers can build even smarter structures on top of it.