Edgar Wright is back in the limelight with his newest action thriller/comedy, The Running Man, starring Glen Powell. This remake of the 1987 movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger is an adaptation of Richard Bachman’s novel (Stephen King‘s writing pseudonym). The reviews have been mixed so far, but no one can deny that The Running Man is an Edgar Wright movie, for better or for worse.
The Running Man may be the least famous film in Wright’s filmography, though. He’s known for directing several modern cult classics, each of them exciting in its own way. Since The Running Man promises to be among his most divisive efforts so far, we could see how it compares to the other films of Wright’s future films. Here’s every Edgar Wright movie, ranked by how thrilling they are.
8
‘A Fistful of Fingers’ (1995)
Wright’s first-ever feature film is called A Fistful of Fingers, and it’s an ultra-low-budget Spaghetti Western parody; it’s not the greatest in terms of excitement or thrills, but it’s still an indication of Wright’s signature style. A Fistful of Fingers is full of silly visual gags, knowingly cheap effects, and absurd humor. Critics said it’s a movie that likes and respects the genre but still entertains Wright’s peers, combining the seriousness and tropes of Spaghetti Westerns with the silliness of Monty Python and Mel Brooks.
A Fistful of Fingers follows a cowboy known as No-Name (Graham Low). No-Name embarks on a trek across the Old West to find The Squint (Oli van der Vijver), a wanted man who tricked No-Name’s horse into its death. No-Name, angry and motivated, chases after The Squint throughout the film. The movie is charming and playful, but it’s not suspenseful or action-heavy; it’s much more of a fantastic directorial debut with loads of potential.
7
‘Scott Pilgrim vs. The World’ (2010)
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is one of Wright’s most prominent works. Many consider this video game adaptation to be among the best, but in terms of excitement and action, Scott Pilgrim is somewhat tame. The star-studded cast engages in sharp, witty, and playful dialogue, with great running jokes and visual gags. Scott Pilgrim is visually explosive and energetic, boasting Wright’s signature editing style, but the stakes are more emotional than genuinely tense or dangerous.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is about Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera), a 25-year-old bass player from Canada, who meets a mysterious and beautiful Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Scott falls head over heels with Ramona, but if he wants to date her, he has to defeat The League of Evil Exes, which consists of Ramona’s seven exes. It’s pretty much a romance film, and the movie’s characters and concepts are very much video game-like; there’s joke after joke, which sometimes even go over people’s heads, but while the movie is exciting in the sense of being visually stimulating and perfectly paced, the thrills are low, and there’s only a great time.
6
‘The World’s End’ (2013)
The World’s End is the third film in the Three Flavors Cornetto Trilogy, which Wright created with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. The trilogy ends with this sci-fi/action mix that serves as an homage to numerous sci-fi horror classics, from Invasion of the Body Snatchers to The Thing and The Stepford Wives. The World’s End has quite a lot of action, but it builds up gradually and appears mostly towards the end; the movie is more about existential themes, friendship, and second chances, but those themes are dispersed throughout the movie and between some interesting sci-fi combat and escape sequences.
The World’s End follows a group of five friends in their 40s who decide to go on a pub crawl in their hometown after they failed to complete one when they tried it in their teens. All five now lead different lives and are different people, but the ringleader, Gary (Pegg), is the one who insists on their finishing the pub crawl. Seeming like he has something to prove, the movie becomes about Gary trying to solve his existential crisis until it quickly turns into an alien invasion-style film, taking a nearly 180-degree turn. The World’s End is wholesome, emotional, and very fun.
5
‘Last Night in Soho’ (2021)
Last Night in Soho is Wright’s most underrated film. It wasn’t as widely accepted as some of his older efforts, but it’s an interesting venture into horror, and the first time he doesn’t combine humor or gag comedy. It’s probably Wright’s most serious feature film, and it leans into a range of intriguing and genuinely frightening horror tropes, from sudden jump scares to scenes intensified with great sound design. It’s a period film about the price of fame and popularity, often delving into the dark territory of revenge and misogyny.
Last Night in Soho follows Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie), who is obsessed with the Swinging Sixties and moves to London to study fashion. She rents a room in the attic of an old woman’s house and starts having vivid dreams about a gorgeous blonde from the 1960s called Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy). Soon, her dreams start blending with reality, and Eloise becomes confused about her identity and obsessed with saving Sandie from the fate she seems to be heading into. The movie vibes like a neo-noir thriller and shifts into psychologically intense moments. It’s visually gorgeous, the costumes are fabulous, and Wright boasts his signature musical knowledge, but it may not be the purest Wright film for fans of his usual work. Still, it’s quite exciting.
4
‘Shaun of the Dead’ (2004)
Shaun of the Dead is the first film in the Cornetto Trilogy with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, and it is a cult classic by now. Wright and Pegg’s love of horror seeps into the DNA of Shaun of the Dead, and they created a stunning and often quite intense homage to George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, including other zombie movie pioneers. Although it’s genuinely funny and maintains its comedic flair throughout, Shaun of the Dead has some pretty intense fights and pursuit scenes, depicting escalating danger and elevated emotional states. The final moments are also pretty claustrophobic, so if you’re not a fan of close-quarters fights, these battles with the undead will certainly stress you out.
Shaun of the Dead follows the titular character Shaun (Pegg), a shop manager living with two roommates and best friends, and spends most of his free time with his girlfriend Liz or at the Winchester pub. Liz wants him to be more ambitious and to take their relationship seriously, but Shaun doesn’t see a problem with their dynamic. When a zombie virus outbreak hits, Shaun is forced to face himself, his insecurities, capabilities, and fears, turning into the man with the potential everyone around him sees. In a way, Shaun of the Dead is a coming-of-age story, if a nearly 30-year-old man’s transformation can count as coming of age.
3
‘The Running Man’ (2025)
Reviews for The Running Man are mixed; while exciting and thrilling, it doesn’t have some of Wright’s signature editing or sound design, leading to a much slower pace that’s unusual for the director. It may not be such a bad thing, though; as somebody who understands cinema and is a fan of many genres, Wright understood the assignment and created a Running Man that is both an homage to the film he loved when he was younger and a rendition and a vision of his own. Stephen King, who notoriously disliked the 1987 film, gave Wright’s Running Man high praise, calling it the “Die Hard for our time.”
The Running Man is set in a dystopian future and follows Ben Richards (Glen Powell), a blue-collar worker whose infant daughter is sick, but he can’t afford the medicine she needs. He realizes that the best way to get her meds is to try out for a month-long televised death game, in which he has to escape professional killers and survive to win money. The Running Man is all about constant pursuit, high physical stakes, engineered obstacles, and media manipulation. Powell is pretty great as the lead: his star quality goes a long way to making the notoriously angry and stoic Ben a lot more personable, and his exceptional physical agility fits Wright’s filming style. The Running Man is non-stop tension with emotional stakes, and another film that may not be fully for fans of Wright’s canon, but a film for blockbuster action fans, undoubtedly.
2
‘Hot Fuzz’ (2007)
The second movie in the Cornetto trilogy (some might say the best; I’m just saying) is Hot Fuzz. If Shaun of the Dead is an homage to zombie horror and The World’s End is an homage to sci-fi, Hot Fuzz is an homage to action movies, spy thrillers, and police procedurals. Most notably, the film references action classics like Point Break, Lethal Weapon, and Bad Boys, among many others that have shaped Wright and Pegg’s love of film. As an homage to action, Hot Fuzz is naturally quite exciting, and it doesn’t take too long to warm up in terms of high-stakes action sequences, but like the other films in the trilogy, it takes a wild 180 turn at some point.
Hot Fuzz follows London police sergeant Nicholas Angel (Pegg), an overachiever who is exceptional at his job. Because he does it so well, his department decided to transfer him to Sandford, a village near London. This community is tight-knit, but Nicholas’ arrival definitely shakes them up. As they prepare for the annual Village of the Year contest, a string of bizarre and gruesome accidents starts happening, and it’s up to Nicholas and his new partner, Danny Butterman (Frost), to solve them. Hot Fuzz has everything you need in a classic Wright action flick: car chases, fistfights, shootouts, standoffs, and his signature fast-paced editing that amplifies the intensity of events and makes everything a lot more fun.
1
‘Baby Driver’ (2017)
When it comes to Wright’s most exciting films, we have to give it to Baby Driver, an explosive blend of comedy, action, and thriller. Partly a romance and in other parts a crime story, Baby Driver is a stunning example of not just Wright’s snappy and quick editing but also his ability to combine music with action and turn most of the movie’s scenes into audiovisual masterpieces. There are a bunch of shootouts, high-stakes car chases, and intense moments where the protagonist has to fend for his life; it is Wright’s most propulsive film and a huge part of the action movie canon.
Baby Driver follows a getaway driver called Baby (Ansel Elgort), who has had tinnitus since an accident in his youth and soothes it by constantly listening to music. Baby works for a criminal mastermind, alongside a group of experienced bank robbers. When Baby meets Deborah (Lily James) and falls in love, he decides to leave his life of crime, but is blackmailed into doing one more job. The action becomes more relentless and leaves you breathless by the end, and although music-synchronized movie trailers are all the rage nowadays, before Baby Driver, it was hard to see feature-length content like this. Baby Driver was one of the first marketable feature films that showed us how filmmakers can use their love of film and music to create something that is appealing to wider audiences.
