Tag: The King's Man

There’s no denying The King’s Man is arguably the weakest installment of the franchise. It is never truly sure what it wants to be, and while there are fun moments, they are few and far between. While The King’s Man comes with plenty of extras, they’re not enough to make fans want to revisit the film.

The Blu-Ray for The King’s Man is packed full of extras including The King’s Man: The Great Game Begins. For fans of Rhys Ifans‘ over-the-top performance as Grigori Rasputin, there’s plenty to enjoy. “A Generation Lost” has director Matthew Vaughn explaining his decision to go back to the beginning with this latest installment. As he reveals, he initially envisioned the prequel as a television series rather than a movie. He ultimately wanted to make a war epic, though, and thus he decided to make it into a film instead. The segment spends most of its 11-minute timeframe reflecting on the franchise as a whole and the birth of the prequel. It’s not the most interesting bit on the extras.

“Oxfords and Rogues” features Vaughn and the cast talking about the film, with the director acknowledging the cast is what makes the film. At eighteen minutes in length, “Oxford and Rogues” doesn’t have too much to offer, but for those looking for the cast’s input, it’s a fun watch. “All the World’s a Stage” is one of the longer featurettes, clocking in at twenty-six minutes. It delves into how the crew went about crafting this vast world. Of the featurettes, “All the World’s a Stage” is one of the more interesting clips because you get to see how Vaughn and the others built this stunning world; from war zones, to the Kingsman storefront and a goat filled mountain, the stage work remains one of the better parts of the film.

“Instruments of War” breaks down the variety of weapons in the film. Oddly enough, the featurette on the weapons is more exciting than the use of the weapons on screen. The reasoning for this? The fight scenes were lacking in The King’s Man, so it makes it difficult to truly care to be familiarized with the weapons. “Fortune Favors the Bold” turns the focus to the film’s score as it takes viewers behind the scenes to see the orchestra at work. The final featurette is “Long Live the Kingsman.” The shortest of the featurettes, “Long Live the Kingsman” focuses on the future of the Kingsman series, as well as its impact. As far as features go, this is, unfortunately, the weakest of the bunch. It’s something that could’ve easily been used to advertise the Blu-Ray, rather than as a bonus feature.

The No Man’s Land featurette, “The Silent Knife Fight Sequence Breakdown” is one of the better featurettes. It showcases actual footage from stunt practice, as well as a look at the storyboards and actual footage from that time used as a guide. Although the film fails to have great fight scenes, the silent knife fight is admittedly one of the most fascinating scenes in the film — it’s powerful, thrilling and well-executed.

The final featurette “Remembrance and Finding Purpose” honors actual members of the military. While this doesn’t necessarily focus on the film, it’s a nice touch given that it’s set during WWI. It’s one of the best extras because it offers a real-world aspect to this otherwise fictitious world.

Overall, if you enjoyed The King’s Man, you’ll love the extras on the Blu-Ray. If you didn’t care for the movie, though? It’s sadly not worth the time.

You can read our review of The King’s Man here.

I remember the cold winter night I spent heading to my local theater in 2015, not sure of what to expect from Kingsman: The Secret Service. The trailers promised a second coming of the spy genre, with rising star Taron Egerton and established gentleman Colin Firth dubbed the finest leading men since James Bond. What I found on the screen felt almost exactly as I’d hoped. A confident, stylish, pulse-pounding two hours that knew exactly what they wanted the audience to feel. I left the theater elated, already hoping that a new film in the series would soon be on the way. Walking out of my screening for the franchise prequel The King’s Man, I did not feel the same way.

Perhaps their biggest draw, the Kingsman films feature a handful of distinctive trademarks to let you know what kind of movie you’re watching. The most important of these, undoubtedly the most talked about, are the zany, over-the-top action sequences laced throughout each entry. These wild kerfuffles typically involve brutal takedowns, carefully placed camera work and tight choreography. One opponent is always a well-dressed protagonist, while the other is usually the film’s second modus operandi — the totally corny villain. Whether it be the story’s big bad, or one of their overly skilled henchmen, the evildoers of Kingsmen are never down to Earth. This works because the movies never want you to believe the story is taking place in a world any less silly than their silliest character.

The major problem with The King’s Man is that it fails to commit to the bit in the same way as its exaggerated predecessors. It has all of the aforementioned traits without any of the devotion to a bigger, romp-filled world. The movie is admittedly charming when it wants to have fun with itself, but it never lingers in the amusement long enough for the camp to settle. On the other side of the coin, there’s an attempt at an uncharacteristic tear-jerker plot point that ultimately crumbles under the weight of tonal shifts. Parts of the film are very serious, and there are a handful of real-world problems the script seems it wants to tackle. It occasionally gets the point across, but its eventual need to dip back into visual sex jokes and goofball one-liners undercuts the pacing of any emotional impact. At a certain point, the back-and-forth between drama and genre can become exhausting.

As for the cast, there is no one having more fun than Rhys Ifans. The Welsh actor’s take on the iconic Russian mystic Gregori Rasputin is, without question, one of the most absurdly mesmerizing performances of the year. It almost feels strange that Ifans is the man behind all that false hair and makeup, considering most moviegoers are probably used to seeing him in more subdued roles. As the secondary villain, his theatrical efforts ensure that the film’s mysterious, heavily accented, cheeseball main antagonist is overshadowed by a country mile. The underrated Tom Hollander also has a seemingly good time portraying all three major European/North Asian world leaders involved in the First World War, as part of the production’s aforementioned camp. Newcomer Harris Dickinson and industry vet Ralph Fiennes do their jobs fine, though they fail to live up to the chemistry of previous stars Firth and Egerton. The rest of the supporting cast, like Djimon Hounsou and Gemma Arterton, get by on likability alone, but none of them are given too much to work with before the movie ends.

By the time the credits roll, The King’s Man provides fans with a serviceable prequel, a few more enjoyable moments of combat, and a handful of mostly satisfying answers about the origins of Kingsmen. The issue is that’s really all it has to offer. It’s missing that certain “je ne sais quoi” that helped push the other two Kingsmen up out of the pack. While room is left for director Matthew Vaughn, or a worthy replacement, to continue the prequel story, it feels like maybe 20th Century Studios ought to let this one lie and hope the long-gestating Kingsmen 3 has a better result.