Kingsman: The Golden Circle Review
They discovered Harry was alive, but with amnesia and went through a recovery arc that felt rushed and unemotional. Eggsy’s romantic relationship seemed taped together from the beginning and didn’t feel like it had stakes. On that point, not to say that he should have dated Roxy instead, but Eggsy’s friend-chemistry with Roxy was much more interesting than his actual romantic relationship and it was squandered in the first ten minutes. The only thing that more or less reached ‘on par’ with the first movie was the villain — Julianne Moore’s performance was well done, and one of the better things about the movie. Not better than Valentine, but I’m looking for saving graces here.
This movie definitely had a new coat of paint. More A-list stars, tons of aerial tracking shots, expensive CGI, a wider degree of filming locations. Which is really at the center of what the problem of this movie was: all sizzle, no steak. The first Kingsman had both sizzle and steak to spare in equal measure. Maybe the bigger budget and the studio expectations hindered them. Maybe the Kingsman comic, though heavily altered in adaptation, is where all of the heart in the first film came from and without a blueprint, no one on the production team had the ability to make an original story that matched up.
What’s really disappointing about the film is that it destroyed so much of what gave the first movie the legs for a potential franchise, and replaced it with new characters, mythology and gadgets that can’t carry another sequel. Gone are the Kingsman, who I wanted to learn so much more about — who are the other Kingsman? What are their stories? I mean, there’s gotta be a Tristan and a Gawain, etc, right? We’ll never know, but we’re amping up to learn more about Tequila and Ginger in part 3 for some reason.
Gone is Roxy, who we all came to love from the first film and is unceremoniously killed off right at the start and barely ever mentioned again, but we’re going to get a whole arc about the Swedish princess who existed in the first movie for less than 5 minutes mostly as a setup for a sex joke punchline. Gone are Gazelle’s awesome scythe feet, but Charlie’s back and he has a cybernetic arm. Gone is all of the aspirational gentleman, better yourself, you-can-do-it mentorship, and instead we get… well, nothing, really.
Gone is the frenzied Harry and the famous church scene, and in its place we get Eggsy and Whiskey spinning around in a gondola in the alps. Gone are the classy, practical spy gadgets, and in their place we get a baseball bat mine detector (who would invent such a stupid thing? What possible espionage scenario could exist where a baseball bat mine detector provides a benefit over a regular mine detector?). It’s like they left out everything anyone wanted from a sequel and included everything nobody cared about.
