Simon Pegg: metaphoric zombies, terrorist patsies, and the war cry of the vegetarian

Why are you obsessed with neighbourhoods overrun by zombies and alien replicants?
"The theme throughout The Cornetto Trilogy is loss of identity in a homogenising force, be that an alien network or the NWA. With franchise pubs and businesses, every high street's become a Little London. We thought it would be funny if a network of planets was doing that to Earth, like we're a corner shop that's being replaced by an intergalactic Tesco Metro."

Do you have a favourite type of pig?
"Er, yes. Those ones on Downton Abbey recently, in that scene with Lady Mary and the guy. Little black and pink ones. They're called… speckled… somethings?"

That doesn't sound right. If there was a kung fu style named after you, what would it be?
"There is! Pub Fu. We devised it for World's End. The drunker we got the more proficient we became in the martial art of half-remembered wrestling moves."

Do you feel under pressure to project an overly sexualised image
"Yes indeed. The older I get the more sexual I become. I think it's called frustration."

Is Tom Cruise's skin hard to the touch?
"Nooo! Silky soft."

Ew. What was the last awkward situation you were in?
"Hmm. I don't really get into them much."

Do you want to come round for dinner to my house tonight?
"Your house? I can't. I would. But I've got to put my daughter to bed."

Tomorrow night?
"Okay, this is awkward."

Does anything annoy you about your house?
"No."

You have a perfect house?
"I have a perfect house. We sort of live out in the boonies now and I catch myself not missing London, which is a weird feeling. It's like… do you smoke?"

No, never. I miss the opportunity of giving it up, though.
"Okay! Well, when you give anything up there's a point in the process when you think, 'Oh, I don't miss that.' And that's how I feel about London now. Like cigarettes."

Do you have a hugs policy?
"Hugs policy? Like no hugs, or…"

Like do you discriminate, or give 'em away like toffee?
"I give them away. If people spot a photo happening, everyone wants one. But when you give out a hug, it means something more. Plus hugging is nice. I like hugging."

At university you wrote a Marxist overview of Star Wars, and have claimed that C3P0 is a gay robot…
"My thesis was about consent. Say you watch a film which is deeply misogynistic, if you get to the end and think, 'Uh, yeah, that was quite good', then you are a misogynist. You've consented."

I like this Simon Pegg as Slavoj Žižek vibe. Slavon Žižegg.
"Yeah! People think something as light as, say, a superhero movie couldn't possibly carry any social significance or meaning but all art expresses our subconscious desires, preoccupations, and fears, which is fascinating."

How about I throw some films at you and you give them the Žižek treatment?
"Yeah, yeah! Absolutely. Hit me."

World War Z

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"Zombies are strongly metaphoric and always have been. Romero used them very candidly to talk about consumerism and civil rights. Post Aids, the era of the virus, these kinds of films speak volumes of our fear of communicable disease- flus, and blood-borne stuff. It's interesting that at the end Brad Pitt injects himself with an unknown virus they use disease to fight disease in that film. In an antibacterial wipe age, it's an understanding that kids have to eat dirt to not get sick. A post-hand sanitiser movie."

Fast & Furious 6

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"Twenty years have been added on to our childhoods and we don't know what to do with it. Our parents became adults sooner, preoccupied themselves with adult things. Maybe that made for a better society, and smarter population? This is pure spectacle: people used to watch films, and they'd remember the car chase. Fast & Furious is essential, in that there are lots of car chases and they've taken out the rest of the film. It's a fantasy of rule-breaking, catharsis for anyone who's been stuck in a traffic jam. Which is everyone."

Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs

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"The war cry of the vegetarian. By anthropomorphising celery you basically give it the same qualities animals have. And thinking, 'Oh no, poor burger!' might help you to think, 'Oh… poor cow'. It's also riding that uneasiness about GM food. It's very literally genetically altered food: appealing but threatening. When we start thinking of strawberries as cute, does that make us not want to eat them? Or anything? Because anything can have a face? Underrated film, very disturbing stuff. Bears up to repeated viewing, which is handy when you have a young daughter."

Iron Man III

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"That brilliant plot twist; it echoes the global con of the Iraq war. And the notion of the media villain, The Mandarin, runs through the whole thing. The enemy used to be the alien, the Other. Then it was within us, in body horrors like The Fly. Now it's the terrorist who walks among us. Do the media construct phantoms for their own ends? Osama Bin Laden, was he a patsy? Did he exist at all? What am I saying? I'm sure he existed. I'm not starting some conspiracy theory."

Man of Steel

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"Terrible film. It's unbelievable, wholesale destruction does show how news atrocities become a banal part of our visual lexicon, though. We know what it means for a building to come down; then it becomes commonplace in entertainment, until it means nothing. New York is virtually levelled in Superman – at the hands of the man who is supposed to save the fucking world, no less – and at the end they're all joking, 'Oh what shall we do this weekend, shall we go and see the Dodgers?' Well, no you won't, because they're probably all dead."

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

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"A revenge film against disaffected youth. You know what it is? It's the lack of a world war. Subsequent generations haven't experienced anything that decimated the population in the way those did. Slasher films are always revenge fantasies by rightwing killjoys, people who want to punish the liberal young. This could play into a similar, paranoid elders' idea that kids learn values and respect when they have to kill each other. But it's also a film about revolution and toppling the old order. Subversive texts have to swing both ways."

Pegg, you've knocked that out of the park.
"Thanks, man. Hey, let's grab a hug!"

You're surprisingly stocky.
"I work out."

The Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy is out on DVD and Blu-ray on 25 Nov