The first trailer for Kingsman 2: The Golden Circle dropped this week, if you can even call it that, given it’s blistering pace, with all of the footage being showed in about 10 seconds. It’s a bonkers trailer for an even more bonkers franchise. A franchise whose first movie that I thought was relatively excellent.
I’m not a big action movie guy. I cannot stand the Fast franchise (or is it the Furious franchise? And I hear they’re going to space soon?). I’m a HUGE comic book guy, and even the Marvel movies are a little too bright and poppy for me. So whenever a new attempted action franchise springs up, my expectations are low, and my desire to see it is even lower.
Then there was Kingsman: The Secret Service. I saw the trailer with the English Tom Hanks (Collin Firth), Samuel L. Jackson, and some British kid, and thought, ‘Eh, another average action movie that I’ll roast a bowl to when it’s out on HBO.’ You know what I mean? Kind of like John Wick — when trailers for that dropped, people were all like ‘f*ck Keanu Reeves’, and now here we are a couple years later, and the John Wick franchise is one of the most enjoyable in Hollywood.
But then reviews started rolling out, one thing lead to the next, and me and my fraternity brothers at Rutgers went down to the school’s theater to see what all the hype was about. Spoiler alert: it was great.
It was perfectly paced, genre-norm eschewing, consistently funny, ironic, unorthodox, action-packed, and most surprisingly, it had characters worth investing in. I know you were bummed when Harry Hart got clipped, and I know you were pumped when you heard he was coming back for the sequel (because he was that great of a character that the franchise couldn’t afford to keep him dead).
Plus, it had this scene, which pound-for-pound, can go toe-to-toe with any action scene from the past decade, whether that be a preposterous chase scene in a Fast movie, or the fantastically brutal reality of The Raid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25683IE5v9g
Naturally, it goes without saying that I have massive expectations for the sequel, given the pedigree of the director, the world established in the first film, and for the frankly 1927 Yankees-esque cast: Colin Firth, Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges, Halle Berry, Julianne Moore, Pedro Pascal (Oberyn Martell from Game Of Thrones), Mark Strong, and of course, Eggsy himself, Taron Egerton. If you’re counting at home, that’s FOUR Academy Award wins for Best Actor/Actress among the leads (Firth, Bridges, Berry, Moore), and probably dozens of other various nominations between the cast as a whole. Actors like that don’t join some half-ass action franchise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rppkmAgEP5U
And if the screenshots I (painstakingly) took from the trailer are any indication, the sequel is going to be even more delightfully eccentric and kick ass than the first, and that, makes it Hollywood’s best action franchise.
But still, the real question remains: is my co-worker an idiot for not liking the original Kingsman movie and not being hyped for the sequel? I think yes, and if you disagree, you’re probably just one of them mouth-breathing Fast and Furious fans.
Sorry not sorry. Shout out Mr. Garrison.
[polldaddy poll=9726989]
