[MUSIC PLAYING]
[GRUNTING]
This is The King's Man, the third entry in the Kingsman
series, which is actually a prequel to the other two films.
And yet, it barely feels like a Kingsman film.
The entire film feels a little flat.
The fight scenes lack any style or panache,
and it feels like it struggles to find its own identity
in the universe Mark Millar and Matthew Vaughn created
for the series.
Sometimes the first films in a franchise
set an extremely high bar, so high
that the subsequent films in the series
actually have trouble reaching it.
When you add some excessive release problems
due to an unexpected global pandemic
onto a film that doesn't quite live up
to audience expectations, you have
a recipe for a fairly mediocre reception.
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Tonight, we will be rogues, not Oxfords.
The Kingsman film franchise is an adaptation
of a series of graphic novels created by Mark Millar and Dave
Gibbons.
Millar had already found commercial success
in adapting his comics with films like Kick-Ass and Wanted.
The franchise was actually born from a conversation
between Mark Millar and director Matthew Vaughn
about the James Bond reboot, Casino Royale.
The two were confused as to why Casino Royale was marketed
as an origin story for James Bond
without ever showing James Bond in an MI6 Academy.
This was the story they wanted to see.
And thus, Kingsman was born.
The film series has made a name for itself
by featuring heavily stylized, high-tech violence
in a modern-day take on the James Bond films of the 1970s.
And the film delivers this in spades.
But as the series has gone on, it
seems to have lost sight about what has made the franchise so
successful in the first place.
Are we going to stand around here all day,
or are we going to fight?
The first Kingsman film is pretty much a perfect movie
as far as action films are concerned.
This is probably because the film sticks extremely
close to the source material on which its narrative is
based on.
It tells an incredible, complete, and relatable origin
story while coming full circle on a high-stakes narrative that
is interesting, dire, and culturally relevant.
Matthew Vaughn's direction shines through
as Taron Egerton's Eggsy and Colin Firth's Harry
Hart battle their way towards saving the world.
And the fight choreography peppered throughout the film
is second to none.
It's fun, frantic, tense, and charming.
[TENSE MUSIC]
Yes, please.
But more importantly, it leaves us
wanting more, which we would eventually
receive in the Kingsman: The Golden Circle.
The second entry into the film franchise
isn't necessarily a bad film, but its departure
from the source material leaves us
with a product that feels a little lackluster when you
compare it to its predecessor.
The second entry into the comic series
is actually called Kingsman: The Red Diamond,
and it shares almost nothing in common with this film.
Kingsman: The Golden Circle almost
feels a little too over the top at times
and plays out more like a parody of spy films than an homage
to them.
Matthew Vaughn set out to make a sequel to The Secret Service
feel more like one of the Roger Moore Bond films.
And since the first film is such a direct nod to the Connery
Bond films, this actually seems like a logical next step
for the series.
It just didn't resonate with the audiences quite well.
It's quite hard to put a finger on what exactly
feels so off about this film.
The action is there, the story is there,
but the vibe feels like it's shifted just enough
to take the film away from what made the first Kingsman
film so great.
The film also suffers from a lack of heart.
In the Secret Service, we were watching a kingsman rise
from an unlikely candidate from humble beginnings
to a fully fledged spy.
Manners--
[SWISH]
--maketh--
[SWISH]
--man.
[SWISH]
In The Golden Circle, we are just
sort of watching Eggsy's character go pretty much
unchallenged while his mentor regains his memory after a near
fatal attack in the first film.
The film features a ton of Kingsman signature,
stylized, high-tech combat, and it's undoubtedly fun to watch.
But without the story to back up the action,
these sequences feel like a martial arts
special effects showcase with themed weaponry.
Manners maketh man.
This brings us to The King's Man.
The third entry into the Kingsman franchise
was released in December of 2021.
And you might not have even noticed
that the film had a theatrical release
at all due to how quickly the film ended up on streaming
services.
There were only 45 days that had passed
between the time the film left theaters
to when it started showing up on platforms like Hulu and HBO
Max.
The King's Man theatrical run truly was blink
and you'll miss it.
You also may have missed it because this film had
eight different release dates.
The initial release date was November 8, 2019,
but that got pushed back to 2020, most likely due
to Fox's merger with Disney.
Then 2020 happened, and every film's release date
was in flux.
In 2021, the studio was looking to bring
Matthew Vaughn's The King's Man to a theater near you
in August.
When news that Mortal Kombat, F9, Godzilla vs. Kong,
and Zack Snyder's Justice League would release around
the same time, they finally settled on an actual release
date, December 22, 2021, just in time for the holidays
and for Spider-Man: No Way Home to become the sixth highest
grossing picture of all time.
What the--
[CAR HORN]
On top of this confusion as to just when people would
be able to watch The King's Man, audiences
were equally confused when they got into the theaters
because The King's Man doesn't feel like the Kingsman movie
they'd expect it to be.
Part of the reason audiences click with the Kingsman films
is because they are a modern, violent, and stylized take
on a genre of films with a very wide appeal, James Bond films.
The King's Man, however, was written
as a pastiche of an entirely different genre of film.
According to Matthew Vaughn, The King's Man
was originally going to be titled
The Man Who Would Be King's Man, and was intended
to be an homage to classic adventure films
like The Man Who Would Be King or Lawrence of Arabia.
These are two of the best films ever made,
but they aren't nearly as prominent
in modern moviegoer culture as something like James Bond.
On top of that, Matthew Vaughn also
tries to tie this adventure pastiche
in with the lore surrounding the Kingsman,
and the end result feels like a vodka martini
with a hot dog inside of it.
It's two things that are fine on their own,
but when you combine them, something
starts to feel a little strange.
You're delusional.
Nothing really reaches out and commands our attention
during The King's Man.
Sure, it's an interesting enough story,
but the complete departure from anything
that feels remotely like a Kingsman film
throws us off throughout the entire duration of the film.
The early 1900s setting removes any
of the exciting technological components
from the execution of the story.
And for a franchise known for not pulling any punches when
it comes to fight choreography, the combat scenes
in The King's Man feel, quite frankly, boring.
Take, for instance, the fight scene
between Rasputin and Shola.
Time to dance on your grave.
The fight scene is heavily inspired by Russian ballet,
but it never really piques our interest in the same way,
let's say, the church fight from the first Kingsman movie feels.
There's no real style to it, no punchy, in-your-face moments.
And they abandon the modern music for Tchaikovsky's 1812
Overture.
It's a good fight scene that highlights
some really interesting cultural elements,
but is it a good Kingsman fight scene?
The war sequences in the film are really amazing to watch,
but they feel a little out of place
from what we'd expect from a Kingsman film.
In fact, almost all the content in The King's Man related
to the development of the Kingsman franchise
feels like someone trying to ram a square peg into a round hole.
It just doesn't feel like it really
belongs, and instead feels like someone
took a pre-existing script and just loosely wrote
The King's Man onto it.
There are no real espionage elements to the film either.
The film removes all of that to weave a narrative
around a period piece.
There are some really amazing sequences involving World War
I and European history, but that's not
what we go to see a Kingsman movie for.
Reputation is what people think of you.
Character is what you are.
Kingsman is a franchise that built itself
by walking the impossibly thin line between parody
and pastiche without ever stepping too far into either.
Unfortunately, this fine line that the first film
was able to walk with such ease started
to fade away into the second film, while almost
completely deteriorating in the most recent entry
into the series.
The franchise known for its frantic and chaotic take on spy
films had devolved into a lackluster take on a somewhat
dead genre, and The King's Man just doesn't really
stand up next to its predecessors.
While this film may have been a bit of a misfire,
it does seem as if we'll be getting
more Kingsman in the future.
Kingsman: The Blue Blood is currently in development,
and according to Matthew Vaughn, will begin production
in September of 2022 in hopes of a release sometime
in early 2023.
That's it for this one.
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section below.
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[MUSIC PLAYING]