In 2012, Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons released The Secret Service, a creator-owned comic book miniseries published by Marvel that was more or less a 2010s version of a 1960s British spy thriller.
It proved hugely popular, and it was optioned by Matthew Vaughn, who had already successfully adapted another Millar-written comic, Kick-Ass, into a couple of films.
The secret service of the comics’ title was called Kingsman, and when Vaughn optioned it, he decided to use that as the main title, as it was a bit more distinctive than the rather generic The Secret Service, though that was maintained as the subtitle.
The story of a young man who is recruited by his uncle to join Kingsman, The Secret Service proved easy enough to adapt to the big screen, especially given the long history of spy thrillers on film.
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Vaughn co-wrote the script with his usual collaborator, Jane Goldman, the pair having already worked, not only on the two Kick-Ass films, but also on X-Men: First Class (all directed by Vaughn) and on the story for X-Men: Days of Future Past. The basic story of the comic book was kept intact, though many small changes were made: for example, Eggsy is no longer related to his recruiter and Kingsman is an independent organization rather than part of the British government.
Taron Egerton and Colin Firth star in the film as, respectively, Eggsy and Harry Hart, codenamed Galahad. (All the members of Kingsman have codenames from Arthurian legend. Eggsy winds up inheriting the Galahad codename from Hart.) The supporting cast includes several familiar faces from this rewatch: Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury his own self in many many many Marvel Cinematic Universe films, The Spirit) as Richmond Valentine, the villain of the piece; Michael Caine (the Christopher Nolan Batman films) as Arthur; and Mark Strong (Green Lantern, Kick-Ass) as Merlin. In addition, we’ve got Jack Davenport—who was pretty much born to play a dashing British spy—as Lancelot, Sophie Cookson as Roxy, Edward Holcroft as Charlie, Mark Hamill as the professor, and Sofia Boutella as Gazelle. Originally Gazelle, who is a double amputee, was to be played by an actual double amputee, Amy Purdy, a snowboarder, but when filming was delayed she had to drop out so she could participate in the Olympics.
The film was successful enough to spawn a franchise, both in comics and film. In 2017, a Brexit-inspired one-shot was published in Playboy called “The Big Exit,” and a second miniseries subtitled The Red Diamond was published by Image the same year, retitled Kingsman to better be linked with the movies (the trade paperback collecting the original 2012 miniseries was similarly retitled). A second movie, The Golden Circle, came out in 2017 (we’ll cover that next week), a prequel (The Great Game) is being filmed, an as-yet-untitled sequel is in pre-production, and a spinoff (featuring the Statesmen introduced in The Golden Circle) is in development. Egerton, Firth, Strong, Holcroft, and Cookson will all return for the 2017 sequel.
“Manners maketh man”
Kingsman: The Secret Service
Written by Jane Goldman & Matthew Vaughn
Directed by Matthew Vaughn
Produced by Matthew Vaughn, David Reid, and Adam Bohling
Original release date: February 13, 2015
In 1997, three Kingsmen are on a mission in the Middle East, interrogating a terrorist. A probationary agent, Lee Unwin, sacrifices his life to save the other two when he notices a grenade the prisoner was hiding. Unwin’s mentor, Harry Hart, codenamed Galahad, and his partner, codenamed Lancelot, return to the UK and drink a toast to Unwin, and then Galahad brings the bad news to his widow Michelle and young son, Eggsy. Galahad gives Eggsy his father’s medal of valor and says that if he’s ever in trouble, to call the number on the back of it.
Seventeen years later, Lancelot, while on a mission to find out what a team of mercenaries has been up to, discovers that a professor has been kidnapped. He attempts a rescue, and succeeds in taking out the professor’s guards, but is killed by Gazelle, a double-amputee with razor sharp foot prosthetics. Gazelle’s employer is industrialist Richmond Valentine, and she covers the dead bodies in sheets before letting him in, as Valentine can’t stand the sight of blood.
The Kingsmen drink a toast to Lancelot, and the leader, Arthur, instructs everyone to recommend a new recruit to possibly become the new Lancelot.
Eggsy is now a young man, having cut short both a career as a gymnast and a stint in the Marines to care for his mother, who has taken up with a gangster named Dean Bell. Eggsy and his friends get into an argument with Bell’s thugs, during which Eggsy lifts one thug’s keys and steals his car. He’s caught by the police and arrested, and he decides to call the number on the back of his father’s medal.
Released shortly after making that call, he’s picked up by Galahad, who tells Eggsy that his father saved Galahad’s life, and he wishes to repay that favor. They’re interrupted by Bell’s thugs, who wish to remonstrate with Eggsy. Instead, Galahad remonstrates with them, using his bullet-proof umbrella (which is also a modified gun), but mostly just using his mad fighting skillz to take them all out single-handed.
Galahad brings Eggsy to the Kingsman mansion in the country, where half a dozen candidates are gathered to compete for the job of being Lancelot. They include four boys from rich families, and two girls also from wealth—Roxy and Amelia. The training, overseen by Merlin, the Kingsman tech guru, is brutal, and starts with their dorm being flooded, and they have to figure a way out. Amelia doesn’t survive that ordeal, and the candidates realize that this shit is real.
Next, they’re each given a puppy, which they have to care for and train with. Eggsy picks a pug, who is particularly cranky and recalcitrant (but also cute as heck). Eggsy names him J.B. after Jack Bauer (though at one point, Arthur guesses James Bond and Jason Bourne).
Galahad continues Lancelot’s investigation. What’s particularly strange is that he was trying to rescue a professor who was kidnapped—but that same professor was at the university that very morning. Galahad goes to talk to him, but in mid-interview, the professor’s head literally explodes. Galahad himself has to use a grenade to cover his escape, and he is concussed and falls into a coma.
While he recovers, Eggsy’s training continues. The six surviving candidates jump from a plane where they must open their chutes below radar so they’re not detected, and land in the Kingsman logo in the grass. After they jump (Roxy the last to do so as she’s afraid of heights), Merlin informs them that one of them doesn’t have a parachute. Eggsy brainstorms a plan to pair up and each team has one person pull and hold the other one so that whoever’s got the empty chute will be safe. However, one of the boys pulls his chute early, so they get in a circle instead. If someone’s chute doesn’t go off, the person to his or her right will grab them.
It comes down to Eggsy and Roxy, and they hold each other and pull Roxy’s chute very close to the ground, landing right in the logo. Three candidates wash out at this—one opened too soon, the other two missed the logo. Roxy, Eggsy, and Charlie are the last three. (Eggsy is pissed that he was the one without a chute, and then Merlin pulls his chute—turns out he was lying about that part…)
Galahad awakens from his coma. Merlin traced the signal that blew up the professor’s head to a tech firm owned by Valentine—who has just announced that he’s giving away free SIM cards to anyone who wants them, so everyone can have free phone and internet.
Meanwhile, Valentine himself is seen talking to many world leaders about his plans, including the president of the United States, as well as the prime minister and princess of Sweden. The former two go along with it, the latter does not—for her intransigence, she is taken prisoner. Meanwhile, the prime minister and president are both given implants similar to the one given to the professor…
Valentine has not been able to identify Lancelot, despite his and Gazelle’s best efforts, and he’s particularly concerned because he overheard Galahad telling the professor (before his head went boom) that his colleague was killed, so he knows there’s an organization after him. Valentine is holding a gala for the donors to his foundation, and Merlin gets Galahad in as an idle rich gentleman.
Valentine cancels the gala quietly, so it’s just him and Galahad. The meal is from McDonald’s (eerily prescient, that), and the two talk around each other. Galahad also noticed that one of Valentine’s employees had a brochure from a fundamentalist church in the U.S.
The final three candidates’ next assignment is to seduce a woman at a club. They all take their shot, but then their own drinks are drugged and they’re tied to a railroad track, where a nasty-looking man asks them to tell the secrets of Kingsman. Eggsy and Roxy don’t talk—Charlie cries like a baby and tells them everything, so he washes out, too.
Galahad takes Eggsy to a tailor shop on Savile Row to get him fitted for a suit. If he becomes Lancelot, he’ll need it, and if he doesn’t, at least he’ll have a nice suit. Valentine is there also, getting a suit of his own. Galahad recommends a place to get a top hat. In addition, there’s a listening device in the suit, and Merlin monitors it.
The last test for Roxy and Eggsy is to shoot their puppy. Eggsy can’t do it—Roxy does. Eggsy steals a car and drives home. He intends to beat the crap out of Bell, but before he can, the car locks him in and drives him to Galahad’s place. It turns out the gun was full of blanks—if he had tried to shoot J.B., the dog would’ve been fine. Also Amelia is a member of Kingsman tech support in Berlin and is alive and well—they were both tests that seemed real so that the candidates would do their best, but no one was actually hurt, or would’ve been.
Merlin learns that Valentine is going to the church on the brochure. Galahad travels there, leaving Eggsy in his house. Valentine is going to use his giveaway SIM cards to trigger aggression and cancel inhibition in people who are near it. He tests it on the church, and they all start to fight each other. Galahad being much better trained, he kills everyone there efficiently, to his horror. Valentine then shoots him in the face.
Furious, Eggsy goes to Kingsman HQ, where Arthur says they just drank a toast to Galahad, and Arthur offers him a glass of brandy to do a toast also, which bends the rules a bit. After drinking, Eggsy is suspicious of Arthur breaking the rules, plus he saw that Arthur has a scar under his ear like the professor did. Turns out that Valentine suborned Arthur as well, and Arthur also poisoned Eggsy’s brandy. A flick of a fountain pen and the poison will activate and kill him. Arthur offers Eggsy a chance to live and join Valentine, who plans to kill most of humanity, thus saving the planet. The people with implants will survive the SIM card-induced madness that claimed the church.
Eggsy tells him to sod off, and Arthur activates the poison—which kills him, as Eggsy switched the glasses when Arthur wasn’t looking after seeing the scar. He learned sleight of hand at a young age, after all…
He cuts the implant out of Arthur’s corpse’s neck, and also takes his cell phone, which has a countdown clock on it. He brings it to Merlin and Roxy, now officially the new Lancelot. Merlin doesn’t know who to trust, given that Arthur was compromised, so the three of them have to stop Valentine. The chosen few survivors are invited to a mountain redoubt of Valentine’s to celebrate the end of the world and avoid the carnage. Eggsy and Merlin head there in a plane with Arthur’s invite, while Lancelot uses atmospheric balloons to go into the upper atmosphere and destroy one of Valentine’s satellites with a missile, which will stop Valentine’s hysteria long enough for Merlin to break into the system and stop it.
While Lancelot’s part goes off with hardly a hitch, Eggsy and Merlin have a harder time of it. Charlie recognizes Eggsy—his family is rich, and he was among the chosen few to stay safe—and then Merlin discovers that the program that activates the SIM cards is biometric. He can’t hack it.
As a delaying tactic, Merlin sets off the implants the way the professor’s was, and the heads of all the chosen folks explode—including the U.S. president and most of his staff, as well as everyone in the redoubt save for Merlin, Eggsy, the prisoners, Valentine, and Gazelle. The Swedish princess asks to be released, and Eggsy asks if he can get a kiss—he’s always wanted to kiss a princess. When the shit hits the fan moments later, Eggsy says he has to go save the world, and the princess promises to let him have her way with him anally if he saves the world. Okay, then.
Valentine is able to call a friend who owns a nearby satellite and use it to reset the network. Eggsy fights Gazelle, eventually killing her with the poison needle in his shoe, and then using her prosthetic to kill Valentine.
Eggsy then goes to the princess’s cell, which Merlin hacks the code for, and claims his reward. Bleah.
Later, he goes to the pub where Bell and his mother are hanging out. He has a house now, which his mother and half-sister can live in away from Bell. When Bell objects, Eggsy takes him and his thugs the exact way Galahad did earlier in the film.
“There’s a reason why aristocrats developed weak chins”
I keep going around and around on this movie. On the one hand, it’s a fun romp, a nifty tribute to old-time spy films. It doesn’t just wear those influences on its sleeve, but indeed on the entire shirt, from the story structure to the locale-jumping to the secret hideouts to the conversations on the subject of spy movies to Jack Davenport’s entire performance in Lancelot’s attempted rescue of the professor. Davenport is a magnificent throwback to 1960s spy films, from his banter to his posing with his gun to his being sure to save the drink glass from spilling.
But sometimes the movie tries too hard. Those spy-movie conversations are very on-the-nose, and it comes across as the characters protesting a little too much.
And it kind of half-asses the updating. On the one hand, it’s really nice to see that, for about 90% of the movie, it takes killing seriously. Something that makes old spy movies hard to take is how casually lives are thrown away in them, and that isn’t the case for most of The Secret Service. The training emphasizes the risk, but doesn’t actually put the candidates’ lives in real danger—the guns to shoot the dogs with are filled with blanks, Amelia isn’t actually dead, they all have chutes, and the candidates aren’t actually run over by trains. Lives are only taken in combat situations—
—with two exceptions, only one of which works, and that only partly. The first is the church massacre, which is supposed to be horrible. Galahad’s fighting style is far more brutal here than it was in the pub, where he was only trying to subdue Bell’s thugs. He kills tons of innocent people here, and it’s to Colin Firth’s and Matthew Vaughn & Jane Goldman’s credit that Galahad is disgusted when he realizes what he’s done. And then right after that, Valentine kills someone for the first time ever, and he’s absolutely revolted by it. (He’s caused plenty of death, but it’s all indirect and he can avoid looking at it.) It honestly would’ve been nice if that had had a noticeable effect on him after that scene, but he went right back to being the evil bad guy after that.
It all goes to hell, unfortunately, with the second exception, which is when Merlin sets off the implants, thus killing hundreds of people (including the president of the United States, who is very obviously supposed to be President Obama), and it’s played for laughs, with the explosive effects looking more like colorful fireworks than the beheading of hundreds of human beings, and with people not even reacting to the people around them having their heads blown off. (If it all happened at once, it would be one thing, but they seem to go off in sequence, yet none of the other people in the room react to the people across the room from them being decapitated, even though they have time to before their own decapitations.)
In both these cases, the music makes it much much worse. The church massacre is done to the tune of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird,” and the implants blowing heads up has “Pomp and Circumstance” playing, making it impossible to take either scene completely seriously. In the former case, it mutes the effect of what’s happening; in the latter, it’s repugnant, combining with the goofy effects to try to make mass murder amusing.
Another issue is the inability to completely update the sexism of those old spy films. On the one hand, you have Roxy, who kicks all kinds of ass as the new Lancelot, both during training and afterward when she blows up a satellite. On the other hand, you have the Swedish princess being set up at the last minute as a sexual prize for Eggsy to win, with the only sop to modernity being the two of them talking more openly about the sex act they’re going to perform than Bond or Flint or the Saint ever did with their conquests. That does not, however, make it in any way, shape, or form better. In fact, it really makes it worse. (The sequel will, at least, mitigate the awful by having Eggsy and the princess be an actual couple, elevating the character a bit beyond being a prize, but it doesn’t make the ending of this film any less icky.)
At the very least, the movie has extremely nifty gadgets—another important trope of the genre—from the umbrella-for-all-seasons to the surveillance/hologram glasses to the fancy lighters and fountain pens and such, not to mention Gazelle’s deadly prosthetics and Valentine’s fancy hardware. I also appreciate that the movie actually covers a span of time. Eggsy’s training takes the better part of a year at least (his half-sister has aged appreciably over the course of the movie), Valentine’s plan is by nature a long-term one (he has to wait until he gathers all his special people to be saved, plus he has to wait for his free SIM cards to proliferate sufficiently), and to help keep Kingsman from learning stuff too fast, Galahad is in a coma for a significant period, the intel from his surveillance glasses inaccessible until he wakes up because he didn’t share his password with anyone.
The performances are all superb. Firth and Davenport are both letter-perfect as the gentleman spies, as is Mark Strong as the tech support. Michael Caine is, well, Michael fucking Caine. Taron Egerton makes a strong protagonist, and he embodies the ingrained classism in Western civilization in general and the United Kingdom in particular, as Eggsy is the only non-aristocrat among the candidates. Egerton’s lower-class Eggsy is played just right. And while I see why giving Samuel L. Jackson’s Valentine a lisp is in the tradition of spy-movie villains having some kind of affectation or impediment (and apparently Jackson actually had a lisp when he was younger), it’s something else that could’ve used some updating, since this kind of he-lisps-so-he’s-a-sissy-and-he’s-destroying-the-world-to-compensate is a 20th-century viewpoint that this 21st-century film could have easily done without. On the other hand, it also makes the character feel less like Samuel L. Jackson, whose presence is so distinctive…
Next week, we’ll cover The Golden Circle, the 2017 sequel, in which both Elton John and the guy who recently played Elton John (Egerton) both appear….
Keith R.A. DeCandido’s most recent novel is Mermaid Precinct, the latest in his fantasy police procedural series, which is now available in trade paperback and eBook from eSpec Books. His Alien novel Isolation, based on both the classic movie series and the hit videogame, is available for preorder from Titan Books.
Good review. I watched this movie and enjoyed it enough but in the end when the sequel came out? Nope. Couldn’t be bothered. What was good was enough for once but the rest was not enough to tolerate the crap a second time.
Matthew Vaughan’s direction is distinctive, but his films always feels both mean and like he thinks he’s a lot more progressive than he actually is — especially with regard to female characters. It’s frustrating because he always nails the casting and gets really good performances out of people, and directs the hell out of an action scene, but I feel like I’m waiting for him to grow up…and he’s older than I am.
Yeah, I was entertained for pretty much the entire time I was watching it, but this review nails many of the problems I wasn’t able to articulate after it was finished. (The exploding heads bit really bothered me, not least because so many of them were real people or were obviously intended to be real people.)
I think the massacre at the secret lair works. First because these are all people who have chosen to let the rest of the population be killed off, and second because it reinforces the “upper class must show noblesse oblige” theme.
For the church scene, I do wonder if Galahad could have gotten away with being less lethal, but it was an amazing scene to watch and I presume he had to dispatch opponents as quickly as possible since he was so outnumbered.
vinsentient: Galahad couldn’t have been less lethal, because he was just as affected as everyone else — aggression turned up and inhibitions turned off. Because of his training, he was much more effective than the others, but he was as much a victim of the SIM card’s broadcast as everyone else in the church.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I was totally down with this movie for being a gory, sloppy, cheeky and cartoonishly violent spy flick (like if Itchy and Scratchy were secret agents, I suppose), and it stars a veritable pantheon of hearthrobs that appeal to this one particularly geeky anglophile (Mark Strong and Jack Davenport? Plus Colin Firth!? Be still my heart!), and Gazelle was a creative take on the sexy girl henchman trope….. but ….
The last scene with Princess Tilde just sort of ruined the whole movie for me. I know, I know, it was the logical extreme when viewing this movie as an over-the-top James Bond/Man from UNCLE pastiche with the groovy clothes, cool gadgets and glorified violence all taken to the Nth degree, so I guess the sex scene and seduction scenes should also be cartoonishly crude and vulgar, but the idea that she is trading sexual favors for her freedom really, really makes me hate Eggsy. Even if he does think to bring some champers first. Ick.
I actually screamed “WHAT THE FUCK” when all the heads blew up, and not in a good way. Almost ruined the movie for me
(On an unrelated note, it wasn’t until I read this article and went back to check my copy of the movie that I finally realized the title is Kingsman, not Kingsmen. Very glad I double checked before demanding a correction …)
The exploding heads and the princess thing are why I don’t re-watch this and skipped the sequel.
I, too, have conflicted feelings about this movie. Honestly the attempts to appear smarter and satirical towards the James Bond films are its flaws: more there to create sniggers from adolescent boys than actual insight into the classism and sexism of Bond (the Swedish princess and Roxy having to seduce a woman being the most obvious). On the other hand, it’s a really GOOD Bond pastiche when it just delivers the thrills straight up.
I do think the use of Free Bird does actually work for the Church massacre. We’ve been primed to realize this church is the most odious of the hatemongering kind, that the music at first seems like a thrilling score to back up Firth’s one-man battle against them. However, as we see how unfocused and chaotic the fight truly is the triumphant guitar solos hitting their crescendo serves as an ironic counterpoint to Firth looking around at the corpses, disgusted with himself.
The Pomp & Circumstance sequence though seems to be Vaughan being purely self-indulgent as a director, regardless of how “cool” the scene is, might work against the rest of the movie (a common problem of his).
Two unrelated observations:
This movie came out the same year as the James Bond film SPECTRE and neither was the best retro-spy film of the year that being THE MAN FROM UNCLE, which, unless you want to use the original 60s Gold Key tie-in comics as an excuse to write about it, probably falls outside the purview of this column.
Also, Colin Firth shows he would make a fantastic John Steed if anyone ever relaunches THE AVENGERS (um, the other one than the Avengers being discussed here).
@10/Montagny: I agree about The Man from UNCLE — a very underrated film (not at all faithful to the show, but then, I didn’t much like the show, which was by far the most sexist and racist of all the ’60s spy shows, and whose lead actors had no chemistry and barely seemed able to tolerate each other, which makes it amusingly appropriate that the movie’s Solo and Kuryakin hate each other).
As for Kingsman, what I’ve heard about the violence kept me away, and this recap has just reaffirmed that, although some parts of the story sound kind of interesting.
Another interesting review (personally, I rather liked the church scenes but did think the beheadings were badly done), but I wanted to ask: will you be reviewing “Stardust” in this review series, which was a comic book first? Or does that stray too far from superheroes?
Samuel L Jackson is in everything![.](//s04.flagcounter.com/mini/Jkzv/bg_FFFFFF/txt_DEDEDE/border_FFFFFF/flags_0/" width="1"/>)
James Mendur: No, Stardust doesn’t fit. I’m stretching the definition to include other things that involve fighting for justice and/or action-adventure, but that’s as far as I’m stretching…
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@14 krad: C’mon, man, what’s a little (more) mission-creep amongst friends?
I file this one under “mostly liked it”. I remember watching it in the theater and the ending bit (exploding heads) was so weird that I honestly didn’t know what to think about the movie. As if it were trying to take itself seriously at the same time as parading around in its theatrical underpants.
Upon rewatch the end is still so absurd and cartoonish that I have to think that it’s an intended poke at Bond flicks with truly bizarre evil schemes. Whether it works as that poke, I couldn’t say. I guess I mentally just gloss over that bit.
Anecdote: my girlfriend and i were babysitting for another couple on their date night. They went to see this movie and had burgers at a local chain called Dick’s. They both enjoyed the movie. I asked them about things I’d heard that sounded troubling. The father (Obama hater, current Trump fan) wasn’t troubled by the heads exploding. The mother didn’t have a problem with the butt sex reward. She also said “I love Dick’s” during the conversation, which led to an “oookay then” pause.
Not sure there was any political intent in blowing off the US president’s head. It is, however, a huge stretch that he and his entire cabinet would go along with a world domination and extermination plot. If they hadn’t used confetti and fireworks, this would’ve been horror movie.
The southern evangelical church seems to be a stand-in for Wesboro Baptist.
When I finally saw it, the movie won me over, even given the objectionable bits.
@10 The ads for the movie had me excited for a film that was like the “The Avengers” TV show starring the great Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg. I have now come to the conclusion that no one can recapture the magic that was “The Avengers.”
I find your comments about the exploding heads scene, specifically those about the fact that no one reacts to everyone else’s heads popping, to be confusing. Maybe I missed something, but I always remember the scene occurring with everything in slow motion (other than the explosions), implying at normal time speeds it would seem much more instantaneous. It has been a while since I last watched this movie though, so maybe my memory is failing me…
Vaughn certainly has a talent for making Millar’s work tolerable.
i was as horrified as Galahad at the church massacre.
When the heads were exploding (to music), I held up my hands so I couldn’t see the cinema screen and said loudly (several times), “This isn’t funny!”
and as to Princess Tilde’s reward, you said it best: Bleah.
I wouldn’t see this again if I was offered a free ticket and a pound of tea. And I won’t see any others in the series. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Blaze1616: There was nothing in the scene that gave any impression of anything being in slow motion at all. People were sitting still mostly so the special effects would work right, but it made the whole thing feel unrealistic.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I also found a bit dubious the movie politics: it seems to imply that environmental consciousness and knowing about the world problems equate to super-elitism and willingness to see the great majority of world’s people to die.
Including, as stated in the review, an obvious spoof of Obama among the people whose head blow off only reinforce that.
I’ll never forgive Golden Circle for what it did to Roxy. “Sobs”.
@11:” I agree about The Man from UNCLE — a very underrated film (not at all faithful to the show, but then, I didn’t much like the show, which was by far the most sexist and racist of all the ’60s spy shows, “
What gets the nod as the least racist? I SPY? I’m assuming that THE AVENGERS (courtesy of Cathy Gale, Emma Peel, and Tara King) was the least sexist.
Great review for a movie that is a lot of fun.
Trying to make sense of the political themes in a Mark Millar piece is probably not a good use of anyone’s time. Millar is a self-described leftist who’s also very pro-Brexit and also a big Jordan Peterson fan, which to me at least suggests some confusion. His idea of satire tends to be 50% “they’re all crooks and perverts” and 50% a Cards Against Humanity deck. There’s an issue he did of Swamp Thing that apparently he intended as a message of support for Bill Clinton in the 1996 election, and it consisted entirely of reimagining Alan Moore’s gentle hippie character Chester as a right-wing lunatic cop who spouts Reaganisms and acts like Dirty Harry and kills lots of people because he’s such a bigot, but it’s supposed to be funny, and he supports Bob Dole—get it? Sometimes he’s trying to say a basically worthy thing, but it comes out in such grotesquely immature ways that you just want him to stop helping. Other times, God only knows what he’s trying to say.
That said, there are also times when he’s a clever writer.
@12 – Stardust was originally a prose novel with illustrations by Charles Vess. I’m not super concerned with defining comics as strictly as possible, but if you call that a comic, then so were all the Oz books and the Moomin books and every other children’s story that had a lot of illustrations; the story is told in paragraphs of text. I think the main reason a lot of people called Stardust a comic was simply that it was published in short installments by DC Comics, before the whole thing came out in a single volume the following year.
To be fair, Chester is more…. Complex than just a gentle hippie, but yeah, that sounds rancid
@26/Amber Bell: I Spy and Mission: Impossible get the nod for “least racist” including black actors in lead roles, but it’s more than that. The Man from UNCLE seemed to go out of its way to tell stories that portrayed as many different world cultures as possible in a negative light, where the villains were traditionalists clinging to their people’s savage past, but there was one good member of the culture who was a Western-educated, culturally assimilated sexy woman. It’s amazing how many different cultures they did this with, from Hindus to Arabs to Native Americans and even “Eskimos” (Inuit). And oddly enough, the totally Westernized “good girl” was often the only guest actor from the genuine ethnic group surrounded by white actors in brownface, with some exceptions (e.g. Victoria Vetri pretending to be Native American).
Mission: Impossible generally avoided that kind of racism pretty much by default, since it focused overwhelmingly on stories set in the Americas and Europe plus occasionally the Mideast, although its occasional depictions of Asian characters were loaded with stereotypes. Unfortunately, the ’88 M:I revival was filmed in Australia and thus focused more heavily on depictions of non-Western cultures, which were often staggeringly racist. But that doesn’t really count as a ’60s spy show.
As for sexism, I’d say both The Avengers and M:I did comparatively good jobs portraying strong, capable female leads, as did Get Smart, while we’re at it (Agent 99 is my favorite spy heroine ever). I don’t know about I Spy, but TMFU tended to take James Bond-style misogyny and womanizing to new depths. Surprisingly, some of the most misogynistic writing was in episodes by Peter Allan Fields, who went on to portray female characters far more positively in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine decades later. So it’s good that he redeemed his past mistakes.
Spot-on review once again. I was able to overlook this movie’s flaws until I saw the sequel. Golden Circle just doubles down on what I didn’t like about Secret Service and adds writing problems I’m sure we’ll discuss next week
@Eli: yeah, Millar’s politics can be confusing and self-contradictory. Part of it is the presumption on the part of some Brits that they understand American politics and are qualified to comment on it. (See some of the talking heads on cable news and opinion writers for so-called prestige magazines (usually right-wing) that Britain has inflicted.)
But it’s not as bad as say the final series of Torchwood, set in the U.S. The level of arrogance and condescension in the critique was astounding. I would even normally agree with going after the targets they chose, but it was pit of hell awful.
To be fair, I’m not sure we comprehend our own politics anymore. The louder we scream, the more partial an understanding it seems.
@28 There are quite a few pro-Brexit leftists around. The Labour Party’s Leader is almost certainly one of them. It’s not that strange a combination.
And even if it was, anyone with more than one moral belief must find them clashing occasionally. Everyone, if pushed into the right dilemma, must reveal themselves to be incoherent or a monomaniac.
@20 The very fact that you could see peoples heads exploding, means you were seeing it happening in slow motion. A real explosion on that scale would be too quick to see it happen. IIRC, the people moving in those scenes were also doing it in slow motion.
This was the first film where I had to say to my teenager: “I get why you want to see this, and I understand that it seems similar to other things I’ve gone with you to see, but this is R for a reason, and knowing that it’s from a Mark Millar comic makes me believe that’s a very good reason, so I can’t support seeing it. Here’s how it’ll go: in a year or two, you’ll watch this on DVD at a friend’s house, and then don’t tell me until after you’re 18.”
The positive outcome of this is that it became a shorthand. When Deadpool came out, he just asked, “This is a Kingsman situation?” And I confirmed that it was, and that’s the end of it. And now he can go see R movies on his own, and I don’t have to worry about it.
@32: Sure– and Millar is specifically a big fan of Corbyn too, possibly for that very reason. I didn’t say it was “strange” or unheard-of; I just think people like that are a bit confused, and I think that’s correlated with a type of simplistic faux-populist thinking (by no means unique to the UK) that shows up in Millar’s work– not least in The Secret Service, where Kingsman is a fantastically wealthy organization that (except for Eggsy) is also very class-based, and kills with impunity, yet they’re nothing like the dreaded “elites” who are in the evil conspiracy; those are international elites, which are all totally interchangeable. And the only people who care about high-minded things like environmentalism are effete international elites who don’t really care about those things anyway, that’s just an excuse to rule the world. This is exactly identical to far-right rhetoric except that those guys would call Valentine a socialist and they’d put Corbyn in the conspiracy along with Obama. I don’t see this kind of thing as a sign of Millar trying to work out some kind of moral dilemma; more like he’s completely failing to recognize one.
In any case I didn’t say it was just those two things. There’s the Jordan Peterson bit as well. Peterson is deeply right-wing, in an incoherent way for sure but I think it’s hard to miss.
I don’t mean to derail the comments into arguments about Corbyn or Peterson, I really just wanted to say that “where the hell is Millar coming from politically” is an age-old question.
Just out of curiosity, is the character name “Eggsy” short for Exeter or something?
Another case of poor marketing? Haven’t seen the film. The synopsis here makes it sound like an enjoyable two hours. The marketing made it look like just another spy movie for bros.
@35
I originally thought it’ll be because he’s intelligent. Eggsy: Egghead.
But turns out he’s named after a school friend of Millers who didn’t like eggs
AHAHHAHAHHAHAHHA
@35 / @37 – the character’s first name is Gary. Incidentally, this is the first of three occasions (or four, counting this movie’s sequel) where Taron Egerton will play a lead character who is known by a nickname or otherwise not by their birth name, and that name begins with the letter E: the other two are Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards (whose first name was Michael) in Eddie the Eagle, and of course Elton John in Rocketman.
@38/CNash: Well, Elton John is a borderline case, since he legally changed his name to that in 1972, so it’s been his actual name for nearly 2/3 of his life. (Turns out his birth name was Reginald Kenneth Dwight. Somehow, I’ve believed since childhood that his real name was just John Elton.)
line: The movie was a big hit that has spawned a sequel and a developing franchise, so I don’t think the marketing really was a problem, since it was, y’know, a massive success. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
The worst part about the part with the princess is that it’s a deliberately awful pun; because, you see, in a Bond film, the hero always gets the girl “in the end”. Yeah. *sigh*
One candidate for the rewatch I haven’t seen discussed yet is Cowboys and Aliens (2011), which is based on a graphic novel
I saw this movie a while ago (Netflix?) and forgot the whole thing basically at once.
It was interesting to read the review and to realize how much I had forgotten –basically THE WHOLE MOVIE, except for Egerton’s undeniable hotness (sadly undermined by his pastiness) and Firth’s first fight in the pub…
I haven’t bothered with the sequel.
@@@@@ 42: I’d be up for that one. I LOVE that movie, warts and all. Harrison Ford is GREAT in it, and it is that rare (only?) Western where cowboys and Native Americans bond while fighting a common enemy.
Has there been another Great Super Hero Movie Re-watch entry where nobody in the comments has mentioned the comic? I count myself a moderately up-to-date comics fan and I don’t remember the source material at all. For a British spy organisation comic adaptation I would have liked to see Greg Rucka’s Queen and Country, personally.
I just looked up the comics and the covers don’t look classic Dave Gibbons to me at all. If anything they remind me of Jacen Burrows, which I guess is fitting if you are looking for something hyper violent.
@@@@@ KRAD I don’t mean commercial failure…I mean failure in tems of accuartely portraying the product.
I love this film. It’s blatantly about UK-style class warfare, which is probably why it puzzles Americans. Note that the three heroes at the end are the working-class boy, the bright middle-class girl (traditionally despised by the upper class boys for being brighter and harder-working than they are, and not a boy) and the classless technocrat, versus the traditional upperclass evil twit, and a whole bunch of evil elites (including if I recall correctly the UK royal family). Oh, and Princess Tilde gets in as the traditional Virtuous Aristocrat who has ethics and noblesse oblige.
And it has the best use of “Pomp and Circumstance” EVER.
Krad: Film Crit Hulk Smash did an interesting article about Kingsman:The Secret Service that posits maybe in making the joke really really obvious, Vaughn made the highest form of satire. And that final bit with the princess was intended to make the audience face what they think they want in Bond-style films. “You said you wanted this, so now you’re gonna get it.” Its pretty lengthy, but still a good read.
Link here: https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2015/07/17/film-crit-hulk-smash-kingsman-and-the-maybe-genius-of-non-winking-satire
@@@@@ 47 Anna_wing: I don’t love the film, but I do love your whole post: It is a spot-on analysis.
I don’t remember if I saw this film or not. I read the comic and saw the trailers, so I’m not certain if I actually saw the music.
@28 – Eli Bishop: Great definition of Millar.
@42 – spoonfan: Interestingly enough, Cowboys & Aliens was always intented to be a movie, the creator had the rights to his idea optioned by a studio, saying he was going to publish it as a comic as well. The film spent years in development hell and didn’t get made, so he did publish the comic. They sold it very cheap, for 4.99 (when it was 105 pages long) and used other marketing tricks, including inflating the sales numbers by giving comic stores huge bulk discounts. It ended up being a top seller, and the studio was interested in making the movie again. It barely made more than its budget, so I bet the studio isn’t happy they were duped.
@45 – vinsentient: Oh man, I’d love a TV show adapting Queen & Country.
47: yes, definitely. Another point; when Michael Caine’s character is dying, notice that his “gentleman” mask slips and he goes back to straight Cockney.
Do we ever get a hint about Galahad’s origins? In the comic he’s very definitely from the same background as Eggsy (he’s his uncle, after all) – can’t remember if the film version is supposed to be similarly a working class boy.
the classless technocrat
Yes, interesting one. Because the actor’s Mark Strong, Hollywood’s go-to for English aristocratic villains, which makes the viewer expect that he’s going to turn out to be a traitor. But the character is Scottish. He doesn’t sound classless; he’s got a middle-class east coast accent. But his nationality puts him off to one side of the English class system – he can fit in with the Kingsmen, and also with Eggsy.
Mark Millar, of course, also Scottish.
@50, huh, that’s interesting. After some digging, it seems like the studio bought the rights to the concept from Malibu comics, and it didn’t enter development until after the Comic was released. So I think that it still qualifies as “based off a comic
@50
There is one. It’s a UK spy series called The Sandbaggers which ran for three seasons from 1978 – 80. Queen & Country was very much inspired and influenced by it, as I believe Greg Rucka has often mentioned. There is a DVD of all three series and I strongly recommend it. It’s often referred to as ‘the greatest spy series you never saw’.
@53 – spoonfan: Yeah, I guess it does, but the concept was optioned years before the comic was actually produced. Plus the whole shennanigans surrounding the comic make for a curious case.
@54 – a-j: Yes, I know Rucka was inspired by The Sandbaggers, but I want a show based directly on the stories he told in Q&C, with those characters. :)
@54, @55 argh you guys, my to-be-read list is already around 300 books long… I don’t need to be adding multi-season TV series to my list of things to try out….
ObKingsman content: re: class warfare… This crystallizes feelings I had about the movie but never explicitly put into words. Thanks!
@50 & 55/MaGnUs: I think in a case where something is developed in more than one medium simultaneously — as is not uncommon these days– you have to focus on what the first actual work is rather than the first unfinished, potential work. If the comic was the first incarnation than got published, then that’s the original form of the work — at least from a legal standpoint, because whoever publishes/releases it first is entitled to credit as the originator.
Nearly the same thing you describe with Cowboys and Aliens happened with Javier Grillo-Marxuach’s late, lamented superhero/spy spoof The Middleman. He originally developed it as a TV series, then did it as a comic when the TV series languished in development hell, and then finally got to make the series using pretty much his original pilot script. But IIRC, the show’s credits still say it’s based on the comic, because it was published as a comic first.
At least Grillo didn’t have to artificially inflate the sales of his comic to get the show made.