A great sequel capitalises on everything that made the first film a success, while simultaneously progressing the characters and plot beyond the formulaic and giving fans an enticing reason to return to the fold. How many times can you say you’ve seen that happen in the past decade?
Let’s see… 22 Jump Street recently managed to pull it off (and happened to star future Statesman Channing Tatum), as did Captain America: Civil War and The Dark Knight. But Aliens and Terminator 2: Judgment Day are arguably the benchmark to beat, both masterpiece blockbusters of the ’80s as they are, and there are far too many examples of the exact opposite situation to list.
The Secret Service followed the hero’s journey closely, so naturally its sequel must follow suit.
So where does Kingsman: The Golden Circle – comic titan Mark Millar’s cheeky subversion of the James Bond franchise – sit on the sequel spectrum? The Secret Service came out of nowhere, blowing unexpecting audiences away, but The Golden Circle does very little to prompt the same delighted gales of surprised laughter. Instead, it’s happy to follow formula, leaving it in the dead centre of the graph – it brought all the good and bad along with it, meaning there’s no room for innovation.
The Secret Service followed the hero’s journey closely, so naturally its sequel must follow suit. The first step in a hero’s sequel is the destruction of the old world, and in that regard, director Matthew Vaughan gets real literal.
Poppy Adams (Julianne Moore) is already head of the world’s largest drug cartel, but now she has larger aspirations – and the first step to achieving them is ensuring no one has the guff to come after her. So, with the help of failed Kingsman applicant Charlie Hesketh (Edward Holcroft), she uses missiles to wipe out the organisation root and stem.
But newly minted agent Eggsy (Taron Egerton) isn’t killed, as he’s off dining with the royal parents of his Swedish beau, Crown Princess Tilde (Hanna Alström). So, with Merlin (Mark Strong) in tow, Eggsy follows the Kingsman’s Doomsday protocol, leading him to America, where new and old enemies and allies alike lie in wait.
In defying convention, the writers have made Tilde more than simply the butt (sorry) of a tasteless joke.
Fans of the first film will be grateful to see that Vaughn remains at the helm. Kingsman is the Kick-Ass director’s aesthetic revamped up to the nth degree – it’s slick, stylish and dizzyingly kinetic, constantly cutting away at the expected tropes of the genre. Eggsy’s London is not Bond’s London – here, discretion is secondary to decorum, dinner suits are bulletproof, and headshots are curable. And every action scene is now as manic as the infamous church sequence from the first film.
In defying convention, the writers have made Tilde more than simply the butt (sorry) of a tasteless joke. Her relationship with Eggsy continues here with dramatic narrative consequence. But sadly, she’s indicative of the misogyny inherent in the film: Golden Circle makes token gestures at wokeness, as Tilde’s eagerness attested before, but she is inevitably damselled, and her female cast members are woefully underutilised.
And that’s not to mention the mission revolving around Eggsy competing with American agent Whiskey (Pedro Pascal) to see who can finger a woman at a music festival first.
No, seriously. That made the cut, computer-generated vaginal entry and all. Vaughn’s mention of “bloody feminists” should surprise no one. Though entirely consensual, it remains objectifying and leaves a sour taste in the mouth from a film that is otherwise narratively, politically and sexually progressive.
That said, the magnificent Julianne Moore is as entertaining as always, delightfully repulsive in the role of Poppy Adams. It’s always refreshing to see A-listers thrive in such outrageous surrounds, and she’s as idiosyncratic and enjoyable as Samuel L. Jackson was – even if her plans are just as absurdly flawed.
But while The Golden Circle hits the ground running and barely lets up, the heart of the first film is lost in the ensuing melee. Secondary characters – some of whom were dearly beloved in The Secret Service – are removed perfunctorily, and new characters equally so. A late-game noble sacrifice is carried off with aplomb, but it’s so enormously signposted that it feels trite rather than parodic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG9_AD1bfnU
As the trailers reveal, Harry Hart (Colin Firth) is back, but hardly as capable as the former Galahad. His words ring in the audience’s ears throughout the film, as they do through Eggsy’s – “Manners maketh man”. And yet somewhere in the process of the Kingsman saga, the creatives took those words too closely to heart. The Golden Circle is too mannered; not in the sense of political correctness but in adherence to ritual. It follows too close in the footsteps of its predecessor, regularly tripping on its heels.
Undoubtedly, it’s more fun than another dry run through the exhausted tropes of the Bond franchise, and takes infinitely more glee in its ultraviolence. But when a film’s defining factor is its freshness and willingness to cast off tradition, seeing it follow its own formula feels somehow wrong. The Golden Circle isn’t seducing us into new, risqué behaviours; it’s going through the motions, doing its duty to keep the relationship afloat.
That’s the irony of introducing the undoubtedly charismatic Yanks into the picture. Even with Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges, Halle Berry and Pedro Pascal in the mix to spice things up, Matthew Vaughn still expects us to lie back and think of England.
Kingsman: The Golden Circle is out now.
