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Kingsman: The Golden Circle


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Just got moved back from a June 16 spot to October 6 (which should force Blade Runner to move back a week).  I think it'll be a very good movie, if it's even only a quarter as good as the first.  So yeah, I'm really excited for this.

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Yeah consider me hyped as well.  Although I am curious as to how Colin Firth survived, I don't care.  Loved the first one and can't wait for the second.

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Man.  What a disappointing year for mainstream blockbusters.

I was hyped as hell for this.  The original made my freaking top ten list.  I've watched the original like at least ten times in the past two years since buying the Blu-Ray.  I...I should have lowered my expectations.

I'm not posting this thinking this is a bad movie.  It's not.  I'm glad I saw it.  But it is an average movie at best though that's for sure.

The acting was enjoyable, the cinematography was great, the action sequences were fun...whenever the CGI wasn't being blatantly obvious (the first film hid it better even though it was there but the direction had those levels of selfawareness that made it clever).  My problems are almost all with the writing.  They were trying to cram way too much into an overly long two and a half hour movie.  It just started to become a mess at times trying to connect all the sequences together.  I sat there bored wondering when they were going to do something interesting with these characters instead of having them hopscotch around the globe from one set piece to the next.

"I always thought the old James Bond films were only as good as their villains."

Remember that funny line from the original?  Well that applies here too.  Not saying Julianne Moore was bad because she was good with what she was given.  I'm serious when I say I enjoyed the acting in this movie.  But what she was given did not make her all that memorable outside of her hidden lair that made me laugh the first time I saw it.  Her character's motives were vvveeerrrry weak and there wasn't enough menace towards her actions.  I hate to compare, but since I brought up the original Kingsman quote, she would be one of the lesser tier Bond villains unlike Samuel L who would have ranked as one of the upper tier.

Honestly, one of my friends I saw it with said it best.  That this gave us more of the same but without the creative spark that the original had.  So true except I would include overly inflated to that as well.  Because this felt a lot like the first movie in terms of how it was giving us more of the same but it just doesn't have the passion applied towards it that just makes the sequel feel like a lamp or any sort of functioning product.  Which I hate to say about a Matthew Vaughn film especially since I consider him of the better directors working today.

Once again, this isn't a bad movie.  But if you were expecting a great one, you're in for a major disappointment like I'm feeling.

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On 9/22/2017 at 7:55 AM, Clappy said:

Man.  What a disappointing year for mainstream blockbusters.

I was hyped as hell for this.  The original made my freaking top ten list.  I've watched the original like at least ten times in the past two years since buying the Blu-Ray.  I...I should have lowered my expectations.

I'm not posting this thinking this is a bad movie.  It's not.  I'm glad I saw it.  But it is an average movie at best though that's for sure.

The acting was enjoyable, the cinematography was great, the action sequences were fun...whenever the CGI wasn't being blatantly obvious (the first film hid it better even though it was there but the direction had those levels of selfawareness that made it clever).  My problems are almost all with the writing.  They were trying to cram way too much into an overly long two and a half hour movie.  It just started to become a mess at times trying to connect all the sequences together.  I sat there bored wondering when they were going to do something interesting with these characters instead of having them hopscotch around the globe from one set piece to the next.

"I always thought the old James Bond films were only as good as their villains."

Remember that funny line from the original?  Well that applies here too.  Not saying Julianne Moore was bad because she was good with what she was given.  I'm serious when I say I enjoyed the acting in this movie.  But what she was given did not make her all that memorable outside of her hidden lair that made me laugh the first time I saw it.  Her character's motives were vvveeerrrry weak and there wasn't enough menace towards her actions.  I hate to compare, but since I brought up the original Kingsman quote, she would be one of the lesser tier Bond villains unlike Samuel L who would have ranked as one of the upper tier.

Honestly, one of my friends I saw it with said it best.  That this gave us more of the same but without the creative spark that the original had.  So true except I would include overly inflated to that as well.  Because this felt a lot like the first movie in terms of how it was giving us more of the same but it just doesn't have the passion applied towards it that just makes the sequel feel like a lamp or any sort of functioning product.  Which I hate to say about a Matthew Vaughn film especially since I consider him of the better directors working today.

Once again, this isn't a bad movie.  But if you were expecting a great one, you're in for a major disappointment like I'm feeling.

I think I enjoyed this more than you did, but yeah, basically agreed on all accounts. My girlfriend and I were both super hyped for this and we went to see it last night and then on the walk back to her apartment we just kept talking about how many problems there were with the writing.

The action was super tight - Pedro Pascal in particular got some of the best material in that regard - and I thought basically all the jokes landed. Everything else was just... off. Still fine, honestly, but definitely off.

Spoiler

I couldn't comprehend why they killed off Roxy and Eggsy's friend (and dog). I get wanting to "raise the stakes" as it were, but, like, come on now. With the way they shot Roxy's death I thought they were gonna bring her back towards the end of the second act or something, but then that rolled around and there was nothing and I had to accept that she was actually dead. I don't even get why Poppy wanted to get Kingsman in the first place. Were they posing a threat to her somehow? They didn't even know she existed until Roxy found traces of The Golden Circle about two minutes before her death, and her plan was pretty much working independently from Kingsman and would've gone off without a hitch if she didn't try to kill them. She was operating from the shadows for a good long while, and someone may have wanted to search into Elton John's disappearance but it's not like they would know where to look. Her whole plan hinged on the President agreeing to her terms, so why not go after the Statesman? Or why not go after, I don't know, the President? Wiping out Kingsman (and, by extension, Roxy's death) just felt like hollow motivation for Eggsy and Merlin.

Going off of that, Merlin's death also really pissed me off. First, he has a talk with Ginger Ale about how he loves the grunt work because without that then the field agents would be totally lost. He has zero desire to go into the field, whereas Ginger Ale really wants to go in and kick ass. Then he just goes into the field anyway? And they even bring along a minesweeper specifically because Poppy has landmines, and Eggsy still steps on a landmine that they should've detected. Merlin freezes it, pushes him off, and steps on it so it'll activate when he moves. Yeah, sure, he takes out a handful of guards too, and he gets that really good musical number (that I may have shed a tear during), but, are you kidding? He has to die because Eggsy is an idiot? He didn't want to be out in the field to begin with, and then he's there for five minutes and blows up? That rubbed me the wrong way. I get that he probably wouldn't have been amazing out there, and I think a sacrificial death was the right way to go for him, but at least... I don't know, maybe have him get killed by Whiskey? Something better than trying to clean up Eggsy's mess.

Harry had a weird plotline that I didn't quite understand. I liked that he came back but I wish his character worked better. He was good at being used to show off how badass Whiskey was, but aside from that he didn't get a whole lot to do until the action stuff at the end. He had that odd butterfly thing going on in his eyes that felt like should've been a bigger deal than it ended up being. It worked as a way to show that he was out of practice, but then they just kind of brushed it aside at the end anyway so I'm not sure what it was doing in the film - and, likewise, I didn't think the amnesia thing worked either. I thought they were gonna do something where Harry wanted an out from Kingsman to go back to a life before all the craziness so he faked having amnesia, but then he actually had it and there wasn't much to do with that plot because this is a movie and not a TV show and that type of thing doesn't really work out too well as a side-plot in a movie. If it were a show then I could see them being able to work with it longer and then have it cured in the mid-season finale, but because movies don't have the luxury of that it just ended up feeling pointless and rushed. They just as easily could've nixed it from the plot but just explain that his body is still recovering so he's not up to snuff yet.

Statesman were a neat idea but they didn't get nearly enough time. I thought Tequila had a killer introduction and I would've loved to see Champagne in action (so we could find out why people call him Champ other than that just being a joke/cool thing to say). Ginger Ale was pretty good too, but she got basically nothing to do. Whiskey, obviously, was a show-stopper for most of the movie, and then they had to turn him evil and that was just weird and stupid. Up until the scene in the cabin where he wants to see the antidote there's practically zero foreshadowing or set-up or any real reason to suspect that he could be evil, and then they had that shot that lingered too long on Eggsy holding the bottle in front of the fire and Whiskey wanting to check it out and from there it was incredibly obvious that he was working against them (to me, anyway - my girlfriend didn't pick up on it). This is another reason why the amnesia/butterfly thing was weird - Harry was right, but no one believed him because they thought he was crazy. When you introduce that plot line, there's one of two ways it goes: either he's right and he's not crazy, or he's wrong and he is crazy. Did anyone watching the movie actually think Harry was gonna be wrong? They had just re-introduced him back into the story and there were three Kingsman left. There's no way he was gonna be that whacked out, obviously he was going to be right because Merlin was destined to die and there's no way Eggsy was going to be able to run Kingsman by himself, so why not just have Eggsy and Merlin believe him? Why bother with trying to cast doubt and try to make it some kind of big reveal at the end? Again, amnesia should've been nixed so when this happened there'd be no reason for Eggsy and Merlin not to believe him but the Statesman would still be weary if they got wind of it (they had him locked up, after all, so in their minds there's probably a good reason for him to try to pit the two organizations against each other).

I might have more to say later, but for now I think that's everything.

 

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On 9/26/2017 at 7:43 PM, terminoob said:

I think I enjoyed this more than you did, but yeah, basically agreed on all accounts. My girlfriend and I were both super hyped for this and we went to see it last night and then on the walk back to her apartment we just kept talking about how many problems there were with the writing.

The action was super tight - Pedro Pascal in particular got some of the best material in that regard - and I thought basically all the jokes landed. Everything else was just... off. Still fine, honestly, but definitely off.

  Hide contents

I couldn't comprehend why they killed off Roxy and Eggsy's friend (and dog). I get wanting to "raise the stakes" as it were, but, like, come on now. With the way they shot Roxy's death I thought they were gonna bring her back towards the end of the second act or something, but then that rolled around and there was nothing and I had to accept that she was actually dead. I don't even get why Poppy wanted to get Kingsman in the first place. Were they posing a threat to her somehow? They didn't even know she existed until Roxy found traces of The Golden Circle about two minutes before her death, and her plan was pretty much working independently from Kingsman and would've gone off without a hitch if she didn't try to kill them. She was operating from the shadows for a good long while, and someone may have wanted to search into Elton John's disappearance but it's not like they would know where to look. Her whole plan hinged on the President agreeing to her terms, so why not go after the Statesman? Or why not go after, I don't know, the President? Wiping out Kingsman (and, by extension, Roxy's death) just felt like hollow motivation for Eggsy and Merlin.

Going off of that, Merlin's death also really pissed me off. First, he has a talk with Ginger Ale about how he loves the grunt work because without that then the field agents would be totally lost. He has zero desire to go into the field, whereas Ginger Ale really wants to go in and kick ass. Then he just goes into the field anyway? And they even bring along a minesweeper specifically because Poppy has landmines, and Eggsy still steps on a landmine that they should've detected. Merlin freezes it, pushes him off, and steps on it so it'll activate when he moves. Yeah, sure, he takes out a handful of guards too, and he gets that really good musical number (that I may have shed a tear during), but, are you kidding? He has to die because Eggsy is an idiot? He didn't want to be out in the field to begin with, and then he's there for five minutes and blows up? That rubbed me the wrong way. I get that he probably wouldn't have been amazing out there, and I think a sacrificial death was the right way to go for him, but at least... I don't know, maybe have him get killed by Whiskey? Something better than trying to clean up Eggsy's mess.

Harry had a weird plotline that I didn't quite understand. I liked that he came back but I wish his character worked better. He was good at being used to show off how badass Whiskey was, but aside from that he didn't get a whole lot to do until the action stuff at the end. He had that odd butterfly thing going on in his eyes that felt like should've been a bigger deal than it ended up being. It worked as a way to show that he was out of practice, but then they just kind of brushed it aside at the end anyway so I'm not sure what it was doing in the film - and, likewise, I didn't think the amnesia thing worked either. I thought they were gonna do something where Harry wanted an out from Kingsman to go back to a life before all the craziness so he faked having amnesia, but then he actually had it and there wasn't much to do with that plot because this is a movie and not a TV show and that type of thing doesn't really work out too well as a side-plot in a movie. If it were a show then I could see them being able to work with it longer and then have it cured in the mid-season finale, but because movies don't have the luxury of that it just ended up feeling pointless and rushed. They just as easily could've nixed it from the plot but just explain that his body is still recovering so he's not up to snuff yet.

Statesman were a neat idea but they didn't get nearly enough time. I thought Tequila had a killer introduction and I would've loved to see Champagne in action (so we could find out why people call him Champ other than that just being a joke/cool thing to say). Ginger Ale was pretty good too, but she got basically nothing to do. Whiskey, obviously, was a show-stopper for most of the movie, and then they had to turn him evil and that was just weird and stupid. Up until the scene in the cabin where he wants to see the antidote there's practically zero foreshadowing or set-up or any real reason to suspect that he could be evil, and then they had that shot that lingered too long on Eggsy holding the bottle in front of the fire and Whiskey wanting to check it out and from there it was incredibly obvious that he was working against them (to me, anyway - my girlfriend didn't pick up on it). This is another reason why the amnesia/butterfly thing was weird - Harry was right, but no one believed him because they thought he was crazy. When you introduce that plot line, there's one of two ways it goes: either he's right and he's not crazy, or he's wrong and he is crazy. Did anyone watching the movie actually think Harry was gonna be wrong? They had just re-introduced him back into the story and there were three Kingsman left. There's no way he was gonna be that whacked out, obviously he was going to be right because Merlin was destined to die and there's no way Eggsy was going to be able to run Kingsman by himself, so why not just have Eggsy and Merlin believe him? Why bother with trying to cast doubt and try to make it some kind of big reveal at the end? Again, amnesia should've been nixed so when this happened there'd be no reason for Eggsy and Merlin not to believe him but the Statesman would still be weary if they got wind of it (they had him locked up, after all, so in their minds there's probably a good reason for him to try to pit the two organizations against each other).

I might have more to say later, but for now I think that's everything.

 

Can't use the spoiler tags on mobile and I'm not going to spoil anything in this post for those who have still yet to see it like I assume WhoBob atm.

But yes.  Completely agree with everything you stated.  Especially with Poppy's motives.  As I stated earlier, I didn't have a problem with Julianne Moore's performance.  I thought she did good with what she was given but what she was given was just messy writing.  Like her reason for getting rid of Kingsman (not a spoiler since it's all over the trailers) pretty much felt forced in because she had to be the bad guy despite the fact that her plan could have worked without the Kingsman being involved in any sort of way.

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Finally got to see this today. I think seeing the mixed critical and online reaction might've helped lower my expectations enough or something, but I honestly loved it. It definitely wasn't nearly as good as the first one, which is probably one of my favorite movies. But I still had a blast and in the end that's probably what I care most about. There were definitely some frustrating story elements (and the tracker bit was a little much for me) but overall I really enjoyed it. Elton John was unexpectedly hilarious, but I'm disappointed we didn't get to see more of Channing Tatum. Looks like that me be fixed in the third movie.

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15 hours ago, 70s said:

Finally got to see this today. I think seeing the mixed critical and online reaction might've helped lower my expectations enough or something, but I honestly loved it. It definitely wasn't nearly as good as the first one, which is probably one of my favorite movies. But I still had a blast and in the end that's probably what I care most about. There were definitely some frustrating story elements (and the tracker bit was a little much for me) but overall I really enjoyed it. Elton John was unexpectedly hilarious, but I'm disappointed we didn't get to see more of Channing Tatum. Looks like that me be fixed in the third movie.

Channing isn't in the movie that much? I'm disappointed by this. I was very excited for his character's dynamic with Eggsy. :/

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