Kingsman

[osprey_archer]

I finally saw Kingsman: The Secret Service, which I've meant to see ever since fandom went mad about when it first came out, and I enjoyed it while I was watching it for all the snazzy ridiculous spy stuff - weaponized umbrellas! Exploding lighters! - and Samuel L. Jackson as the bizarrely perky megalomaniac. Really all the actors were excellent

Comments

[roseneko]

One of the reviewers I follow mentioned the human-vermin scene as well, and honestly that kind of turned me off of seeing it. Which I was sad about, because I thought it looked rather delightfully goofy. But yeah, mass violence really turns me off, especially when treated in a lighthearted way. I'm too much of a humanist; I stubbornly continue to believe that even people who've made awful decisions, who live in the most reactive and fear-based parts of their minds, are still capable of choosing to do better. Maybe that's reflective of my privileged upbringing, I don't know.

[osprey_archer]

Yes. I think the scene would have bothered me less if the filmmakers had taken less pains to present the churchgoers as acceptable targets and left more room for the viewer to see the scene as horrific - but, of course, that's not compatible with the light-hearted tone they were going for. It doesn't seem to have occurred to them that light-hearted mass murder might just not be a thing.

[evelyn_b]

The trailer for that movie put me off so much that I've never had the slightest interest - I don't remember why.

I love plenty of morally bankrupt goofy shit, like Agents of SHIELD, and goofy shit that has only the most tenuous and fanciful ties to human life at all, like Furious 7 (saw the trailer for the new one! am pumped to go watch cars blow up!) but there's a fine line for me between "acceptably batshit" and "whoops, it went too far and now I'm appalled for real" and I'm not really sure where it is.

[osprey_archer]

Agents of SHIELD has its problems, but at least no one ever orders Skye to shoot a darling puppy to prove her loyalty to SHIELD. That's some straight up Gestapo shit right there! Why are the Kingsmen doing it?

[evelyn_b]

Because they're the true villains? That's exactly the kind of thing you do when you want an audience NOT to root for you! (and you're not that great at subtlety). No one made Skye shoot a puppy, but Ward's evilness mentor DID make him shoot his dog. :(

[osprey_archer]

I HAD FORGOTTEN ABOUT WARD & THE DOG. That was the climax of his evilness training! Even Agents of SHIELD realizes that people who shoot force their students to shoot dogs are the bad guys. HOW DID KINGSMEN NOT UNDERSTAND THAT.

[wordsofastory]

Yeah, I agree. It's a silly movie with some real unpleasant undertones. I was put off right from the opening scene, which gives the location as "Middle East, 1997". Like, really? No specific country? Just generic evil "Middle East"?

Also (spoiler?) Colin Firth is in the upcoming sequel, so I suspect he's going to turn out to have magically not died, one way or another.

[osprey_archer]

Either that, or he is now a Jedi ghost. Or perhaps left behind a hologram. But I think "magically not died" is probably the most likely outcome.

[morbane]

I hear you about the nastiness. And it really wanted to have its cake and eat it too about saving the world + death and destruction. In odd contrast, I liked what they did with Valentine in terms of his horrible plan + unwillingness to confront the idea of personal killing.

But then again, I am one of the people who was dazzled by the movie, mostly because of the mentor and student relationships, and I realised it was not universally amazing, and then once the dazzle wore off a little I stopped recommending it.

I posted one of the first fics on AO3 and it did include "not canon compliant", but I think it only took a couple of weeks for the whole fandom to run with the idea that of course Harry can't be dead. Fics in which Harry are actually dead seem like a particular, angsty sub-genre.

[osprey_archer]

I enjoyed it most of the time I was watching it, till that Swedish princess scene, but when I started writing my review I just saw more and more dodgy stuff the longer I wrote. Oh Kingsman.

Valentine's squeamishness was hilarious, though. Of course he's hiding himself in a bunker so he doesn't need to witness the mass destruction he's wreaking. Indeed, no wonder his failsafe is designed to blow people's heads up as bloodlessly as possible. He's willing to commit genocide, but he doesn't want it to get messy.

[egelantier]

i've seen it on the plane and i was so viscerally repulsed by it - the swedish princess thing, the cheerful killing that wanted to be nasty, the snobbery, the godawful dog test, everything, it was just so - pointlessly, 4channish yucky. and it wasn't about the gore level, too - deadpool had them beat in that department and still managed to be a kind, uplifting, hopeful movie (as weird as it is). the tone, though; argh.

[osprey_archer]

The dog test is literally something that the Nazis did with Gestapo officers (here's your puppy! bond with it for weeks! Now shoot it to demonstrate your coldness) and I was 99% sure that with the Kingsmen was going to turn out to be one of those tests where the correct answer is to refuse to shoot the puppy, thereby showing independent judgment and basic human decency etc etc.

Then it turned out to be a straightforward obedience test & I still can't quite wrap my head around that.

[evelyn_b]

UGH

[egelantier]

yes!!! and then colin fert scolds him about it based on the fact that dog is left alive but you don't know that when you pull the trigger! so you're supposed to be a dog-killer for the sake of organization that lets you dress richly because REASONS.

that was my point of no-return, yup. just remembering this scene makes me feel mad and greasy all over again.