I had high hopes for Kingsman: The Secret Service. There are gifsets of it all over Tumblr. Everybody said
it was great and fun and refreshing. Even my beloved Foz Meadows praised it as
‘a biting debunk of the James Bond franchise… it takes all of Bond’s hallowed
trappings – the spy gadgets, the sharp suits, the suave badassery – and
explicitly removes both the misogyny and the classism that traditionally
underpins them.’ So, having grown up on the Bond movies, I was eager to witness
it for myself. And indeed I spent most of the film half-convinced that I liked
it, or at least that I was going to,
any minute now.
But despite the excellent direction,
choreography, and clever humor, I was left wondering what the hell everyone else had been watching when they said it was progressive.
As much as I enjoyed Kingsman (and I’m a big fan of the movies it was pastiching, with the understanding that they’re problematic as hell), there’s a lot of truth to this analysis of the movie. It’s part of why I’m not getting my hopes up for the sequel.
Film crit hulk had a very long analysis that touched on these same points but with the opposite conclusion (hulk [whose gender is unknown to me] liked it and thought it was a successful satire). Can’t find link right now but will update when I do.
But yeah, I don’t expect the sequel will be what I want at all.
I kinda went with the Hulk’s analysis, but I’m also deeply scared about part 2
I didn’t enjoy Kingsman at all for some of the reasons above but also because I didn’t enjoy the hyper-violence being played for amusement. There were moments of humour elsewhere, and enjoyable parts, but overall it left a really sour taste in the mouth and was a real disappointment, dressed up in a shiny suit.
