Speaking of unnecessary sequels, here’s an unnecessary prequel. Did we really need to know how The Kingsman secret spy organization started? Wouldn’t we rather know about MI6 or the “Double Oh” program? And assuming we wanted to know, this bizarre take on early 20th Century Eurohistory doesn’t get around to the founding of The King’s Man until the end credits. What’s up with that?
Oh, and writer/director Matthew Vaughn also completely lost touch with the tone of the first two Kingsman movies … but other than that, hey, action film.
Set 100 years previous and having nothing whatsoever to do with secret spy organizations, The King’s Man bears little resemblance to its kin, man. Vaughn clearly desired a tongue-in-cheek conspiracy-eye view of WWI and didn’t want to make a film that might need a new audience, so his newest project wears the Kingsman label, but other than being chaotic, politically-juiced action films, the prequel doesn’t look much like its enablers.
Banking on the premise that Ralph Fiennes can still carry a film, The King’s Man tells the tale of Orlando, Duke of Oxford (Fiennes), an instrumental player in the politics of WWI. He was present when Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. In fact, it would seem, the Duke’s son Conrad (Harris Dickinson) thwarted a first attempt on the Archduke’s life, which –in turn- caused zero change in security measures, because of course it didn’t.
The assassination is the work of a group run by “the Shepherd” that –literally- meets in a barn on the top on an otherwise inaccessible mountain. Despite such humble digs, this lonely goatherd high on a hill (♪Lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo) has managed to place some fairly noteworthy agents in high places of government. Among this organization’s pawns are Rasputin (Rhys Ifans) and Lenin. Because of course they are.
“Hey, Lenin, Rasputin failed, it’s up to you to bring down the Czar.”
“No prob.”
I mean, hey, it’s fun to think of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (aka Lenin) as a mere cog in a secret Spectre/Hydra/MAGA cabal intent on creating chaos and shifting power on the world stage … but it takes a few things for granted. A few VERY LARGE things, like, do we actually believe that Lenin stood for nothing (like Trump)? Lenin is many things, and one can call his belief
system many things, but nihilist ain’t among them. Also, the fairly large assumption that Russia went from monarchy to communist on the whim of some foreign goatherder is beyond comic or far-fetched. That’s bizarroworld. The retort: “Well, it happened, didn’t it?” just isn’t doing it for me. You may as well believe January 6 was caused by Antifa or BLM. You can pretend that’s the truth, but it ain’t … and at the end of the day, the joke isn’t funny.
These are things you think about when a movie opens with the accidental death of an innocent woman (the Duke’s wife) in the Boer Wars, 1902 … which have nothing to do with the rest of the movie except to say that Conrad grew up without a mother. (Wait. Is this a Disney?) This death set such a non-comic tone for the film that it was hard to remember the movie was made under The Kingsman title. Even when the film found the gleeful chaos it had been searching for, like a duel between the Duke and Rasputin, the moments are set up by something even more bizarre, like an extended homoerotic encounter between the same pair.
This isn’t to say The King’s Man didn’t have anything fun on screen. I can’t loathe any film that cast Tom Holland in the roles of King George V, Kaiser Wilhelm, and Czar Nicholas II all at once –what, you couldn’t make him play Woodrow Wilson as well? Aw. However, I can’t possibly love a film that has such a casual take on historical conspiracy at the time we are currently living in. That and the tone really set me off. Look, are you the kind of film where a soldier chooses the ultimate act of tragic heroism or are you the kind of film where Rasputin makes an cringeworthy play for Ralph Fiennes? Because while I saw both, I don’t believe both belong in the same movie.
My fear of trolls has forever increased
For their monstrous re-writings, and theories at least
In their eyes, with a grin
They’ll say, “Trump DID win …
And Hitler was a misunderstood artiste”
Rated R, 131 Minutes
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Writer: Matthew Vaughn, Karl Gajdusek
Genre: History?
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: People who mistake conspiracy for history
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Strict historians
