Kingsman II: The Golden Circle
Oct. 1st, 2017 03:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocolatepotSpoilers abound.
First reaction: tons of fun. I'm not a huge fan of movie violence, but since Kingsman generally sticks to grappling and punching rather than gross Watchmen closeups of blood'n'gore, it's good (and I actively enjoy a well-choreographed fight scene).
Second reaction: damn, this is a very testosterone-heavy cast. I don't know if I'm more sensitive to it because I emotionally connect more with this than other action movies or what, but it's very striking just how dudely everything is and how very little the female characters that are present get to do. Poppy, I think, was just about right, but Roxy DIED IMMEDIATELY WTF, Ginger never does anything to justify being either the spy-tech-guy or a field agent, and Tilde is ... Tilde is, frankly, pointless. (I actually felt more of a connection to Clara than Tilde, and she was pretty much just a sex object.) In the first movie, there was at least a bit of reason to have all the agents be male - with Jack Davenport as Lancelot, Michael Caine as Arthur, Mark Strong as Merlin, Colin Firth of course as Galahad, these are really recognizable British names, you're making the point that this is a BRITISH action movie. Jeff Bridges and frickin' Pedro Pascal are in no way big enough names to justify horning out female actors. (Channing Tatum as Tequila was perfectly justified.)
What occurred to me around the time of the cabin scene is that Marcia Gay Harden would have made a perfect Whiskey, and it kind of ruined the rest of the movie because all I could think about was "Marcia Gay Harden should be in this, she would elevate this film so hard, also I wouldn't be thinking 'who is this guy, I know I know him' every time the character's onscreen." (It's Oberyn Martell.) Imagine her being a rough Southerner, drinking her bourbon and winking at Harry - she and Harry would have had hella sexual tension, which would have added a lot to the cabin shooting and Whiskey's return. It also would have added to the bit where Ginger says that Whiskey always shoots her down when she applies to become an agent: I think at that point, Harry had already suggested that Whiskey was crooked, and since Ginger herself seems to have no idea why this could be (her manner does not suggest that she thinks "maybe he has a problem with women, black people, or WOC"), there's no real alternative for your brain to land on. Making Whiskey a tough woman in a man's world would, I think, automatically bring to mind the stereotypical older woman who brings the ladder up behind her because she had to do it all alone.
Back to Tilde and Roxy. At heart, this is a shipping complaint: from the moment Roxy and Eggsy met, I was like, okay, he was a boy, she was a girl, could this be any more obvious? She's posh, he's chavvy; she's precise and by-the-book, he's a loose cannon who doesn't play by the rules. I guess having them not end up together is technically a """subversion""", but it's also crap. And to be honest, the franchise is so dudely that I feel like it was less a question of subversion than a straightforward desire not to have any one female character take up too much emotional space. So, Tilde/Eggsy would have had to struggle a bit just to get past the "I thought we were going somewhere else" bump, but then the way their relationship progresses is just so stupid.
- She says, "Hey, random guy, if you save me I'll let you fuck me in the ass," because he asks for a kiss. (Okay, that's a subversion, normally you wouldn't see that in an action movie.)
- They actually have anal sex at the end of the movie. (Okay ... but wasn't he having UST with Roxy the whole time? This is probably a one-off and in the next movie she won't be there.)
- They are totally in love and living together. (Why? They have not been shown to have any chemistry or interest in each other. Also, Roxy.)
My friend Cait says you should never underestimate the ability of women to read against the text in order to find positive messages. I'm definitely one of those women, and I pretty much always ship the action hero with the girl he saves and love a female character who can't fight - so you have to make the hero/damsel ship extremely boring and the non-fighty-girl extremely bland to get me to be not on board. You have to say, "It's not enough to cater to the lads first, we have to actively be against any emotional development that is not between the hero and his mentor(s), the two mentors, and the hero and his rival. Crush it. Crush your desire to write it."
That being said, the emotions allowed according to the above order that I'm 75% sure actually was made were fantastic. Colin Firth is, of course, a treasure, and he plays the transition between amnesiac!Harry and Galahad perfectly, and that scene was very well played on Egerton's part, too. (Love that what gets to him is the trauma of the dog test - maybe Merlin didn't do the same sort of training as the agents, so he didn't realize that that would get way more to the emotional core of somebody than the drowning test?) Merlin singing "Take Me Home, Country Roads" very Scottishly was moving. Eggsy actually crying/tearing up when he thought about Harry's death - normally male action heroes don't get to show that much vulnerability.
Normally I'm kind of *eyeroll* about super-stereotypical American stuff, but since Kingsman is British stereotypes at high speed, obvs Statesman and Poppy Land should be as well, and they were. I might not love it, but "alcoholic rednecks with factories" is what people think of when they think of Americans in many countries, and we are all about the '50s nostalgia too. That being said, "Champagne" is therefore a shitty codename for the leader of Statesman because is there any drink less hardcore American than champagne? I would have gone with Founding Fathers/past presidents, because the closest thing to King Arthur in American culture is George Washington. (Tequila would be Jackson. Ginger Ale would be Franklin. Whiskey would be ... Lincoln?)
The plot! What did I think about the plot? Well, as satisfying as it was to see a fictional representation of the president (should have made him from Queens instead of another southerner, really missed a trick there) get arrested, these days having the president decide to pretend to save drug users but really let them die just feels ... weak. We have at least 49 senators who would state publicly that the drug users should die, plus John McCain who would say, "the drug users should die, but I don't approve of this procedure, we need to vote on it better (am I morally against this? You'll never know!)", and a president who would not be mentally competent to make this kind of plan. The filmmakers couldn't have predicted that, of course, but all the same it makes it hard to have any kind of emotional response. Real life is rarely way creepier than fiction, but when it is, it is.
First reaction: tons of fun. I'm not a huge fan of movie violence, but since Kingsman generally sticks to grappling and punching rather than gross Watchmen closeups of blood'n'gore, it's good (and I actively enjoy a well-choreographed fight scene).
Second reaction: damn, this is a very testosterone-heavy cast. I don't know if I'm more sensitive to it because I emotionally connect more with this than other action movies or what, but it's very striking just how dudely everything is and how very little the female characters that are present get to do. Poppy, I think, was just about right, but Roxy DIED IMMEDIATELY WTF, Ginger never does anything to justify being either the spy-tech-guy or a field agent, and Tilde is ... Tilde is, frankly, pointless. (I actually felt more of a connection to Clara than Tilde, and she was pretty much just a sex object.) In the first movie, there was at least a bit of reason to have all the agents be male - with Jack Davenport as Lancelot, Michael Caine as Arthur, Mark Strong as Merlin, Colin Firth of course as Galahad, these are really recognizable British names, you're making the point that this is a BRITISH action movie. Jeff Bridges and frickin' Pedro Pascal are in no way big enough names to justify horning out female actors. (Channing Tatum as Tequila was perfectly justified.)
What occurred to me around the time of the cabin scene is that Marcia Gay Harden would have made a perfect Whiskey, and it kind of ruined the rest of the movie because all I could think about was "Marcia Gay Harden should be in this, she would elevate this film so hard, also I wouldn't be thinking 'who is this guy, I know I know him' every time the character's onscreen." (It's Oberyn Martell.) Imagine her being a rough Southerner, drinking her bourbon and winking at Harry - she and Harry would have had hella sexual tension, which would have added a lot to the cabin shooting and Whiskey's return. It also would have added to the bit where Ginger says that Whiskey always shoots her down when she applies to become an agent: I think at that point, Harry had already suggested that Whiskey was crooked, and since Ginger herself seems to have no idea why this could be (her manner does not suggest that she thinks "maybe he has a problem with women, black people, or WOC"), there's no real alternative for your brain to land on. Making Whiskey a tough woman in a man's world would, I think, automatically bring to mind the stereotypical older woman who brings the ladder up behind her because she had to do it all alone.
Back to Tilde and Roxy. At heart, this is a shipping complaint: from the moment Roxy and Eggsy met, I was like, okay, he was a boy, she was a girl, could this be any more obvious? She's posh, he's chavvy; she's precise and by-the-book, he's a loose cannon who doesn't play by the rules. I guess having them not end up together is technically a """subversion""", but it's also crap. And to be honest, the franchise is so dudely that I feel like it was less a question of subversion than a straightforward desire not to have any one female character take up too much emotional space. So, Tilde/Eggsy would have had to struggle a bit just to get past the "I thought we were going somewhere else" bump, but then the way their relationship progresses is just so stupid.
- She says, "Hey, random guy, if you save me I'll let you fuck me in the ass," because he asks for a kiss. (Okay, that's a subversion, normally you wouldn't see that in an action movie.)
- They actually have anal sex at the end of the movie. (Okay ... but wasn't he having UST with Roxy the whole time? This is probably a one-off and in the next movie she won't be there.)
- They are totally in love and living together. (Why? They have not been shown to have any chemistry or interest in each other. Also, Roxy.)
My friend Cait says you should never underestimate the ability of women to read against the text in order to find positive messages. I'm definitely one of those women, and I pretty much always ship the action hero with the girl he saves and love a female character who can't fight - so you have to make the hero/damsel ship extremely boring and the non-fighty-girl extremely bland to get me to be not on board. You have to say, "It's not enough to cater to the lads first, we have to actively be against any emotional development that is not between the hero and his mentor(s), the two mentors, and the hero and his rival. Crush it. Crush your desire to write it."
That being said, the emotions allowed according to the above order that I'm 75% sure actually was made were fantastic. Colin Firth is, of course, a treasure, and he plays the transition between amnesiac!Harry and Galahad perfectly, and that scene was very well played on Egerton's part, too. (Love that what gets to him is the trauma of the dog test - maybe Merlin didn't do the same sort of training as the agents, so he didn't realize that that would get way more to the emotional core of somebody than the drowning test?) Merlin singing "Take Me Home, Country Roads" very Scottishly was moving. Eggsy actually crying/tearing up when he thought about Harry's death - normally male action heroes don't get to show that much vulnerability.
Normally I'm kind of *eyeroll* about super-stereotypical American stuff, but since Kingsman is British stereotypes at high speed, obvs Statesman and Poppy Land should be as well, and they were. I might not love it, but "alcoholic rednecks with factories" is what people think of when they think of Americans in many countries, and we are all about the '50s nostalgia too. That being said, "Champagne" is therefore a shitty codename for the leader of Statesman because is there any drink less hardcore American than champagne? I would have gone with Founding Fathers/past presidents, because the closest thing to King Arthur in American culture is George Washington. (Tequila would be Jackson. Ginger Ale would be Franklin. Whiskey would be ... Lincoln?)
The plot! What did I think about the plot? Well, as satisfying as it was to see a fictional representation of the president (should have made him from Queens instead of another southerner, really missed a trick there) get arrested, these days having the president decide to pretend to save drug users but really let them die just feels ... weak. We have at least 49 senators who would state publicly that the drug users should die, plus John McCain who would say, "the drug users should die, but I don't approve of this procedure, we need to vote on it better (am I morally against this? You'll never know!)", and a president who would not be mentally competent to make this kind of plan. The filmmakers couldn't have predicted that, of course, but all the same it makes it hard to have any kind of emotional response. Real life is rarely way creepier than fiction, but when it is, it is.
