That church scene was immaculate. I’m gonna rewatch it just for that scene. The rest of the movie, hmm… lots of hits, lots of misses to me.
Didn’t like the kid actor much. Didn’t enjoy the fact that he goes from a nobody to a superhero because he spends a few months jumping out of airplanes.
Didn’t like the PG factor where they didn’t really kill anyone, not even dogs. Didn’t like CGI firework head explosions nor the silly bit with the Princess of Sweden. I don’t give two shits about any princesses but the scene didn’t fit or was at best poorly executed.
7/10 for me but that church scene will be remembered for years to come.
Pffft, in Hollywood you can kill dozens of people in a PG-13 movie. But you don’t ever kill a dog, unless you’re making a straight up horror movie or some art house thing no one will watch.
A sequel to the surprise blockbuster “Kingsman: The Secret Service” is in the works at Fox.
There was no announcement by the studio or a timetable, but there will be a followup to the R-rated comic book adaptation directed by Matthew Vaughn and starring Colin Firth, individuals with knowledge of the project told TheWrap.
It makes sense. The London-set “Kingsman: The Secret Service” crossed the $400 million mark at the global box office this weekend. It generated most of that — about $275 million — from abroad.
Movie would have worked much better for me if they had kept SOME edge and let the tests be lethal and let the dog deaths actually matter. The explosions were just crap silly though.
Thought I would hate this. It has all the things that I should hate, even. But for some reason, I just loved it. Sad about Firth, but the whole thing was a blast. Maybe because I was expecting so little. :)
I’d completely forgotten that Millar had written a comic called The Secret Service or that I’d read it, but when the end credits reminded me I dredged up some recall, and I definitely think Vaughn’s version is better. I don’t remember exact details but I’m pretty sure Millar’s version was way more self-serious and sadistic. I think I liked it all right in the end, but Vaughn’s sense of fun was a welcome addition. And god, don’t ever read Kick-Ass. What a piece of misanthropic shit. A lot of people have a hate on for Wanted that I think comes at least partially out of misunderstanding what Millar was doing there, but Kick-Ass is worse.
There were fun bits in it but disjointed is the word for it overall. For instance, in the first test they fail due to lack of team work. What?!?! Only one of them will pass. Why the hell would they think they need to work as a team with people who they’re competing against? And they’re super secret right, hence the amnesia weapons and such. So how does the villain know who to talk to in their organization? If that was explained I missed it.
I think I would have enjoyed it less if it hadn’t been so British, that made the material feel a lot fresher than it really was. Hanging out in pubs, ramming a police car, stuff like that. Also, the anal sex thing didn’t feel right, it felt forced. Sure they want a James Bond type double entendre but that wasn’t in keeping with the way everything was playing out. They showed the female agent doing part of the mission as well as the male agent. She succeeds in her part. He succeeds in his. He gets anal sex with a princess as his reward, she gets…to walk home I guess. Let’s say for a second she rescued a locked up prince as her part of the mission, does the movie end with him offering her the chance to give him what for? Best to simply cut that part out of the script for either character if it’s so obviously one sided.
I’m all for blaming Mark Millar for everything bad in the world, but I’m pretty sure that one is squarely on Goldman/Vaughn.
Double entendre is about about the last way I’d describe it. The joke is taking the Bond trope of being rewarded with pointless sex from an inconsequential character and presenting it as bluntly as possible. I think it’s supposed to make you squirm.
Sure, only one of them will graduate to be a Kingsman, but the training is to equip them for that role and, in theory, they will need to work with other Kingsman agents as a team. (Mostly we see them running solo in the movie, but nevermind. )
Accidentally deleted this post in editing because touch interfaces are fucking awful. So try two.
The point of the training is to equip them to become Kingsmen. Only one will make the cut but the one that does will still theoretically need to be able to work with a team (basically every time we see a Kingsman in operation it’s solo but nevermind). And it wasn’t directly explained but I think the idea was that Arthur was one of the prominent people that Valentine was kidnapping in his civilian capacity, not that Valentine knew he ran Kingsman.
In Moonraker there was that line about “I think he’s attempting re-entry” or something. You can’t have a line like that work as a joke too unless he’s doing something sexual at the time. The reason it works, imo, is that Bond works alone. Ultimately he’s the one agent we are following through the movie. In this movie there were three different people working together, which is why I thought stealing the Bond approach failed. One character gets the Bond payoff while the other two equally important characters get nada. The fact that one of the other characters is female just makes it look that much worse.
Still, lots of fun stuff in the movie. The church scene is the high point of course. The way some people see the hallway scene in Oldboy is how I see that church scene, it justifies watching the movie just to see that one scene.
What a relentlessly chippy movie. It’s a 129 minute ode to class insecurity. I suppose the princess subplot may seem like a non sequitur, but it’s not. It’s not that Millar despises his imagined elites, he wants to be one of them.
Finally watched this about a week ago. After that final butt shot, I said out loud: “This dude might have some issues with women.”
Then the credit screen comes up thanking his mother for making him a gentleman or something. Ass joke -> thanks, mom.
Like Tman, on the balance I think I liked about half of this movie. The action was fun and lively, but yeah, the Mark Millar-ness was sometimes a turnoff too. Most unforgivable were those terrible digital effects throughout though, from the fake blood to the heads exploding to the video-gamey looking scenes of violence worldwide in the climax.
I can’t figure out if I liked this. It was a little too violent for my tastes in terms of a “Bond” style spy-thriller, but that didn’t really turn me off by itself. Just something about the tone sort of put me off somehow. I did mostly enjoy it though, overall, I just… kind of which it was a bit … something else. I think in terms of world-building I prefer John Wick, which seemed like a more interesting “world” overall.
