Kingsman: The Golden Circle

This may be the wackiest comic book movie yet, and that’s both a really good thing, and a pretty “meh” thing.

A sequel to one of my personal favorite comic book films, Kingsman: The Golden Circle eschews the source material it’s based on for an all new original story set one year after the events of the first film. With his mentor Harry (Colin Firth) gone, Eggsy (Taron Egerton) has become an integral cog in the Kingsman machine, taking Harry’s old title of Galahad and carving out a future for himself within the organization. But when a new enemy in Poppy Adams (Julianne Moore) decides it’s time to get her evil on, Eggsy is forced to travel to America to enlist the help of Kingsman’s sister organization, the Statesman, a group of ‘Murica loving, whiskey drinking, shotgun firing badasses who shoot first and ask questions later. With fresh new faces in tow and a bevy of westernized weapons at their disposal, it’s up to the remaining Kingsman to stop Poppy’s world altering plans before it’s too late, or risk the Statesman, Kingsman and the world, being wiped out of existence forever.

Before I get into the aspects of this film that frustrated me, I have to say that director Matthew Vaughn knows how to make a kick ass comic book film. He’s probably the only director out there that knows how to make an adaptation feel exactly like the comic in all of its glory while still making his own creative choices that work. He did it with Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class (another one of my favorite comic book films), and obviously the original Kingsman, but something seems a bit off with this sequel. Something that annoys me more than anything else because Vaughn, time and time again, has proven that he has a knack for this genre, so after walking out of the theater after this one, I couldn’t help but be a bit bummed out.

The main problems with The Golden Circle seem to stem less from Vaughn and his direction and more so from the script itself. Say what you will about the sheer insanity of what you see onscreen, but it looks pretty and gets the blood pumping, so clearly that isn’t the issue here considering that’s literally the entire point of these films. No, it’s the long run time (as usual), choppy pacing and questionable storytelling decisions that drag this sequel down more than anything, a problem that the first film rectified by having some sort of blueprint to follow via the original comic. Having some kind of semblance as to where the story was heading allowed the filmmakers to change and tweak things in order for it all to work in the context of the film, but also limited them as to how far away from the source material they could go, grounding that film in the loosest sense of the word. And now, without anything to go on for this sequel, it seems like the filmmakers’ eyes were bigger than their stomachs in more ways than one, leading to a film that has a lot of lost potential.

That being said, the biggest travesty with how this film turned out is in regards to the return of a character that has no business being around. It’s been a big marketing point in the pre-release buzz of this film, and while I’m not going to spoil anything in case you haven’t seen the trailers, I really feel like this choice was a misstep in the grand scheme of this film, even if it might help out later sequels. The reveal takes away a lot from Eggsy as a character and even though it eventually seems to work and pay off in delightful ways, I’m still not on board with how it all happened. Throw in a runtime that makes the plot’s various uninteresting story beats stick out like a sore thumb as well as a few scenes that are completely unnecessary (you’ll know which one I’m talking about in particular when you see it), and I can’t help but think that shaving a good twenty minutes off the length of this film might have helped out a lot.

When it comes to the acting, everyone is just as spot on as before with most of the Statesman including Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges, Halle Berry and Pedro Pascal able to slip into this universe with ease. Everyone pretty much gets their chance to shine, the script being the only thing in their way from being used more efficiently and effectively. The action, following in the same style that Vaughn originated during the first film, is truly something to behold, and for a comic nerd like me, this is the closest thing I think we’ll ever get to having comic panels literally jump from the page to the screen with all of its glory still intact. Where the story stumbles and falls, the action is inventive and new, the various gadgets and fight choreography doing wonders to make up for the rest of the film’s short comings, my only gripe with any of this being that I wanted more of it. Say what you will about the film as a whole, but the fun of these sequences coupled with Vaughn’s direction make me want to see it again, maybe with a fast forward button for everything else.

While not as interesting or innovative as the first, Kingsman: The Golden Circle is still a hell of a lot of fun, especially when the script gets out of its own way and let’s the action do the talking. The performances are solid and the wackiness is cranked up to 11, but not everything sticks the landing like the filmmakers clearly intended, and that’s where a lot of the disappointment stems from with this sequel. I’m still all for this series becoming a continuing franchise in the vein of James Bond (albeit an insane, ADD fueled version of it), but better scripts and more of a focus on what makes these past two films great needs to be front and center should a third film be released.