Kingsman: The Secret Service (Matthew Vaughn)

[[ETM]]

It's unusually crass and distasteful. Plain ultra violence barely registers these days.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Also, the church scene is quick to show reactions from other characters, notably the hero, who's repulsed, and the lead villain, who's grossed out by the violence. As a satiric provocation, it announces itself more clearly than the anal sex gag, and the film in general pays much more attention to Bondian violence/weaponry/strategy than it does Bondian sexual politics, which makes the anal sex gag more left-field. I don't think Western Puritanism is the only reason people criticize the ending.

[Neclord]

Millar's thing with exploding the boundaries of good taste generally rubs me the wrong way, and I really disliked he and Vaughn's Kick-Ass, but for some reason this one kind of worked for me. The characters were kind of fun, I was really digging Firth and Jackson in particular, and that church scene was just audacious and insane.

[TGM]

[Sycophant]

What an ugly movie. Frustrating for all its potential. Charismatic performances from most of the cast, including a wonderful Firth, squandered in one of the most misanthropic masculine power fantasies I've had the displeasure of sitting through since, well, probably Wanted.

Was the parkour scene a satirical jab about the fetishization of parkour as the highest of cool cache in the contemporary youth action film? Or is it just another participant?

The anal sex princess thing is the sourest note to close the movie on. Though the mid-credits sequence is pretty tacky too.

The action is almost all aesthetically repulsive.

Anyway. Hated this thing.

[transmogrifier]

65/100


As deep as a puddle and as nourishing as a lollipop, this is an unapologetic teenage wish-fulfillment fantasy that nevertheless has a fantastic eye for action and a compelling narrative momentum that helps to cover for these flaws. Both Firth and Jackson get to tweak their cinematic personas to great effect.

[Peng]

Yeah, Firth is so good that...

[

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...once he's out of the picture, it's like the film loses its heart somewhat. Not that the film is particularly emotional or deep before, but his warm presence really anchors my emotional involvement. After that, it works only on a empty spectacle level for me, which is still fun.

]

[Grouchy]

When did "wish fulfillment fantasy" develop such negative connotations? Isn't that what most fictional heroes are?

[KK2.0]

The parkour was probably a nod to Daniel Craig's scene in Cassino Royale.

I still don't see why the anal sex joke is an issue, the whole film was tongue in cheek and the bad taste was already very prevalent with all the gory deaths and jackson's puking stuff, the butt is barely on screen for a second. That said, Kick Ass didn't do anything for me but I enjoyed Kingsman, yes, it's shallow but who expects complexity out of a spy action comedy flick anyway?

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But I agree that the film loses his heart as soon as Colin is out, though.

]

[amberlita]

Ugh. This movie was atrocious.

Why am I reading words like "emotional anchor" in reaction to this movie? The most heart-tugging moments all required JB to waggle his tail on screen. Not a single emotionally resonate note in this entire movie, which may not be necessary if all you're trying to do is have a bit of fun but when the music swells and the main character's eyes tear up, I'm going to assume that I am meant to care that a character just died. There's no stakes because nobody has much of a basis for what they do in this film so why should I care if they succeed if I don't even know why they want to?

The action is messy and boring and been-there. Oooooh, I know! Let's make it all happen in one big long pseudo-take. Then it'll feel all fresh and new to the audience!

I have no problem with anal sex or jokes of the sort. I have a big problem with introducing an utterly pointless female character for the sole purpose of rewarding our hero with the opportunity to drill her in the asshole. This movie starts out with an air bombing of a building that literally has the digital effects equivalent of a Metal Gear Solid opening, and it ends with Mario rescuing Princess Peach from the dungeon after defeating the boss. Gross.

And what the hell was Samuel L. Jackson thinking? It doesn't bring something "new" and "dimensional" to incorporate a pointless lisp. It's just distracting and stupid.

The collective opinion of Match-cut is really going to shit these days. I think you all are getting too old or something.

[Skitch]

I agree with Amberlita for all different reasons. So much green screen nonsense I thought I was watching Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow part 2. That end joke was so rapey and icky and ungentlemenly it completely didn't fit.

[Grouchy]

thanks to youtube I've seen the infamous "princess joke" and I'm baffled that such a thing would cause any controversy but not the violent church massacre, well, people are weird.

This.

[Dead & Messed Up]

How can a joke be rapey if the girl literally requests it and clearly wants it? If you think it's gross, sure, whatever, but it is the opposite of rape.

[Watashi]

I think the controversy isn't that it's "rapey" (it's not), it's just that she's is such a non-character throughout the entire film and the film just decides to end on her. We don't care about her. The fact that she is a princess just reinforces the video game trope that she needs to be rescued by the hero and gives herself up as the reward. It's more than wish fulfillment, it comes out of nowhere as she isn't sexually portrayed earlier on in the film.

The film is better than Kick Ass which has similar misogynistic problems, but at least the supporting cast is interesting though the film really suffers when Firth departs. I rather have had Roxie as the lead.

[Skitch]

It feels rapey to me because its just so ungentlemanly to accept, the same way street prostitution feels rapey to me when a guy is paying a person to plunge them and they have no sexual desire but wanting to survive. Perhaps rapey isn't the right term, but it just feels terrible to me. I'm not offended by the act I guess, but...I don't know. It just felt off to me. If him trying to get anal from his girlfriend or whoever had been a running gag throughout the film, it wouldn't have been so strange.

[Grouchy]

Like with many similar scenarios, I have zero clue what's going on through your heads when you say stuff like this.

The movie ends on that note as a reference to the many similar double-entendres in James Bond films. The line is extra raunchy because it's a parody of that type of movie.

[[ETM]]

It's not a good parody if you have to keep telling people what it is.

[Dead & Messed Up]

It's not a good parody if you have to keep telling people what it is.

I don't know. It depends on the goal of the satire. I mean, there are many kinds of satire, right? Airplane is mostly a spoof, hazing its genre broadly and obviously. Dr. Strangelove is a different kind, very deadpan and eerily plausible. The first time I watched it, I barely laughed at all, but I also thought it was pretty great. Verhoeven plays his satire almost like two simultaneous movies are occurring, the movie and the movie under the movie.

Film Crit Hulk wrote some interesting thoughts on the film (if you can stomach the all-caps), and I think there are some good points. For example, how the soundtrack adds to the film - "Money For Nothing" and "Pomp and Circumstance" both being songs that provide enjoyment to an intended audience while simultaneously chiding them lyrically.

[KK2.0]

I think the controversy isn't that it's "rapey" (it's not), it's just that she's is such a non-character throughout the entire film and the film just decides to end on her. We don't care about her. The fact that she is a princess just reinforces the video game trope that she needs to be rescued by the hero and gives herself up as the reward. It's more than wish fulfillment, it comes out of nowhere as she isn't sexually portrayed earlier on in the film.

The film is better than Kick Ass which has similar misogynistic problems, but at least the supporting cast is interesting though the film really suffers when Firth departs. I rather have had Roxie as the lead.

I agree that she's a mere reward but my opinion about the scene is the same as Grouchy, it was a version of the 'James Bond ending' and making her a princess reinforced the trope, yes, I believe it was intentional. The whole movie keeps doing this: it frequently parodies and makes nods to spy movies while building it's own origin story at the same time, like DaMU said above, it's like two movies playing at the same time.

About the controversy, I don't think people rationalized much about the cinematic values, some of them seemed clearly offended by the imagery in itself, one co-worker told me the scene was borderline porn, which is a silly hyperbole and it surprised me coming from him. Looks like watching a butt in first person evokes some primitive reactions on people.

[Spinal]

Finally got around to this and now I'm definitely going to try to catch the sequel in the theater. I loved that it wasn't afraid to go gonzo.

[Russ]

I also loved it for that same reason.

[[ETM]]

I still think it's overrated crap.

[Spinal]

For the record, I thought the princess gag was funny, but I don't know if it's worth defending because the reasons why I liked it seem to be the reasons why others don't. People complain about the character being there solely for the gag, but to me, that unexpected quality is why it's funny. Here is this minor character that we've mostly forgotten about. The protagonist, on the verge of saving the world, realizes that he's stumbled into an action movie cliche and requests a kiss for his services. In response, the princess offers far more than is really necessary. There are two different things we expect in this moment: 1) The Bond moment, sanitized innuendo, "Oh, James!", cut away before anything too steamy happens; or 2) The 21st century feminist revision in which the princess scolds the protagonist for his coercion and for treating her like a cheap prize. Instead we unexpectedly get #3, in which the princess is into it and just flat-out asks for what will give her pleasure. That, to me, is not a regressive joke. That's a joke that trusts you are very familiar with options #1 and #2 and decides to amuse you by veering off in another direction that fits the rest of the film's gonzo attitude.

[Irish]

You're a grown man on the internet and you've now written 214 words explaining why you enjoyed an anal sex joke.

Isn't technology wonderful?

Anyway -- for the life of me, I couldn't remember what "Kingsman" was, who was in it, or any single scene until I paged back and re-read the thread. (Apparently, I liked it.)

[Skitch]

I don't disagree with anything Spinal said, I agree. BUT the part that still bothers me about it (scratch that, its been too long, "bothered" me at the time), was that he was endlessly preached "Be gentlemanly gentlemanly gentlemanly!", and it just didn't seem to be. Seemed to go against everything the character was taught.