King's Man Origins will give you two hours of cringe. And just a couple of funny jokes

The history of the Kingsman franchise began in 2015, when Matthew Vaughn adapted Mark Millar's The Secret Service comic book. The film parodied rather than continued the typical plots of spy action films, but skillfully directed, excellent actors and a witty plot made him one of the best representatives of the genre in recent years. years. The picture instantly captivated critics and viewers and brought a good profit to the studio. And Mark Millar even republished the original comic on this occasion, adding a mention of the Kingsman service (before the heroes were just MI6 agents).

Of course, against the backdrop of success, they immediately launched a sequel, subtitled "The Golden Ring", into development. And even then it became clear that the franchise had nowhere to go. In the second film, they simply twisted the comedic component to the maximum, making the plot more attractive and repeating many of the tricks from the first part. The authors even went to the worst move in terms of drama - they revived a dead character. The picture was not too memorable, but still kept on humor and unusual shootings - Vaughn set the action as difficult and energetically as possible.

And then everything went according to the laws of show business. Since the sequel was successful at the box office, Kingsman decided to develop it into a full-fledged franchise. Matthew Vaughn undertook to shoot a prequel, and the third part and all kinds of spin-offs are next in line.

True, “King’s Man: The Beginning” was greatly delayed due to the pandemic: the picture was originally planned to be released as early as 2019. But in the US and the UK, it was released only in December 2021, and in Russia it started on January 13, 2022.

And now we can say with confidence that such a long wait was in vain. The prequel only confirms that the franchise has stalled before it really developed. The new film is a collection of the most bizarre and clumsy plot twists that can't even be called funny. The authors themselves seem to have not decided on the mood of the work. And besides, they forgot about interesting shootings.

historical madness

At the beginning of the 20th century, an Orlando Red Cross worker, the Duke of Oxford (Ralph Fiennes), along with his wife and son arrives on a charitable mission in Africa. In the ensuing shootout, the wife dies from a stray bullet. Before she dies, she asks Orlando to swear that their son Conrad will never end up in a war.

Time passes, in 1914 the duke, along with his grown-up son (Harris Dickinson), tries to prevent the outbreak of an international conflict. A certain villain has organized a network of spies around the world, which includes Grigory Rasputin (Rhys Ivans), Eric Jan Hanussen (Daniel Brühl), Mata Hari (Valeri Pachner) and other dark personalities. They want to quarrel the Russian emperor, the German Kaiser and the British king (all three are played by Tom Hollander). And all this in order to destroy England and free their native Scotland.

The main characters, along with assistants, need to defeat Rasputin, who poisons the emperor with opium, and stop the war. Everything is complicated by the fact that Conrad dreams of joining the army and serving with ordinary soldiers.

Perhaps, already at the mention of Rasputin and other historical figures, many readers will understand that the script of the film is, to put it mildly, strange. Indeed, the problem of the picture lies partly in the change of format. Previously, Kingsman plots unfolded in some kind of isolated reality: the world is similar to ours, but without specific intersections. Now, the authors take a lot of real people from the past and thrust them into the maelstrom of fictional events.

But the trouble is not in the approach itself, there are a lot of examples of mixing history and fantasy in the cinema. Take Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" or the famous series "Great». The main problem is that "King's Man: The Beginning" does it not even in a parody, but in an almost clownish manner. This is best seen in the small appearances of the rulers. The fact that all three were played by the same actor, you can still find irony, they were relatives. But the incarnation, especially in the case of Kaiser Wilhelm, resembles a scene from the Pun magazine: he only grimaces and shakes his big mustache. What can we say about the moment when Emperor Nikolai is on his knees before Rasputin, and he is drugging him from the cross.

And when it seems that it can't get any worse, Lenin will appear in the frame.

Of course, in the previous parts of the franchise, the villains looked like caricatures. Suffice it to recall the lisping hero Samuel L. Jacksonwho ate collectible wine with hamburgers. But here they tried to show several historical figures at once, and in the end, only Rasputin was somehow revealed. This character already acted as an antagonist in almost a dozen films of various genres. But in King's Man Begins, he's most similar to the version from the 2020 movie Anastasia, with a 2.9 rating on IMDb site. The one where the character participated in a squat dance battle, and then he was defeated with the help of swing.

In our podcastcaretaker» Mikhail Volnykh defined such scenes as “drunken animators on Red Square”. It is hardly possible to be more precise.

Self-repetitions and genre jump

Perhaps even this bacchanalia could be accepted if the plot of the picture was dynamic and intriguing enough. But it seems that here the authors simply had nothing to show.

In previous films, it was interesting how exactly the villains want to enslave the world and why they need it. Although in the sequel with the disclosure of motivation, they coped with difficulty. Now the main secret is the identity of the antagonist. But, firstly, you can guess about it in half an hour, it is too standard to put it into action. And secondly, the answer to this question simply does not change anything. Even when in the finale, following the standards of a spy movie, he begins to talk about his plan, this will not cause either surprise or delight.

Even worse, the film simply falls apart into separate scenes that also differ in genre. It is clear that according to the laws of drama, action must be interspersed with a more serious narrative. But it’s very strange to see gags side by side, as if they came from comedy sketches, and a story about the war, reminiscent of “1917by Sam Mendes.

At some point, it begins to seem that Vaughn and his co-authors are simply trying to glue the historical action movie with the image of Ralph Fiennes from the failed Avengers in 1998 (though compare his imagesThe Avengers (1998) - Secret Agent John Steed Scene (1/10) | Movieclips/YouTube in these pictures) and obligatory references to Kingsman. The result is a strange Frankenstein monster, in which literally every turn just repeats the events from the first films, without even trying to explain them.

In each of the paintings, the main character gets acquainted with the activities of the secret service. But in the first part, this was logically brought to this, and in the "Golden Ring" he was forced to go to the USA and met with the local analogue of Kingsman. Now, cool spies appear in the plot out of nowhere.

In addition, in The Secret Service, the death of the hero Colin Firth was an important tragic event. In the sequel, Mark Strong's character's self-sacrifice was turned into comedy. Now the death of one of the heroes is shown simply by chance.

But worst of all, even ironic dialogues are repeated. So, vulgar phrases from the first film have already been beaten in the sequel: instead of a beautiful princess, Elton John flirted with one of the characters. Grigory Rasputin flirts in King's Man: The Beginning. That is, the same move is used for the third time, and more and more ridiculous. And this causes only Spanish shame.

Boring action and drawn humor

If you ask fans of the franchise which scene they remember the most, most will probably immediately name KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE Movie Clip - Church Massacre |4K ULTRA HD| Colin Firth Action 2014 / YouTube massacre in the church from the first part. The episode was a perfect combination of cruelty, wit and very complex staging.

And in general, the first two films differed precisely in quality. action. Whether it's the unusual choreography of the heroine Sofia Boutella's movements with blades instead of legs or Pedro Pascal's exercises with a lasso. In the sequel, the complexity of filming even increased: numerous fights turned into independent clips, and the camera was forced to jump, fly and roll over with the characters.

So, you can forget about all this beauty and wit. No, of course, there will be some well-staged scenes in the King's Man Origins movie. For example, the Duke's memories of his military past, shown in the first person. And a new level of computer graphics allows a virtual camera to fly into a submarine and give a close-up of the character.

But not only did the authors not come up with anything new, they abandoned most of the complexities shown earlier. There will only be one memorable action scene in the entire film. And she will remain in memory only because of her absurdity.

This is again about Rasputin, who will fight with the heroes for about 5 minutes, while simultaneously performing ballet steps to the variations on Tchaikovsky's music.

The same hero is given some of the jokes. True, they are expressed more often in the fact that the character simply growls or talks about sex. Well, he also instantly eats half the pie with wild sounds.

And in the rest of the scenes, Kingsman's wit, which was already lost so much in the sequel, turns into banal gags in the new part. For example, they try to make the audience laugh by showing the Kaiser's mustache large. Humor only works well in a couple of moments: before the reception scene with the President of the United States, for a couple of minutes you want to believe that the familiar style has returned. But hopes are dashed very quickly.

Alas, "King's Man: The Beginning" completely misses everything for which the audience once fell in love with the first film. If earlier the plot successfully combined different genres, seasoning them with bright jokes and cool action, then now it's a story falling apart with parody characters and a completely inappropriate theme war. At the same time, the picture does not even capture or amuse: the action develops too slowly, and the humor has become extremely flat and vulgar.

Western critics have already scolded the new part, and its feesThe King's Man / Box Office Mojo until the hundred million dollar budget is covered. Apparently, the authors should seriously consider how exactly they want to continue the franchise and whether it is worth doing at all.