The first obvious gripe with the film is the whole bringing-Harry-back-to-life thing. I see why they did it. Colin Firth is a big star; he's really the face of the original Kingsman, so of course they wanted him back, even with all the American stars this film added to the series. But, as I think with most of us, bringing characters back from the dead in convoluted ways really annoys me. It feels like cheating; you're basically taking the emotional punch that you created earlier and then saying 'oh wait, it doesn't matter now!' which makes it lose some impact in hindsight. It also feels like an afterthought, like a panicked solution to a lack of ideas or marketing ploys. But mostly it ruins the emotional punches that are to come after- with the deaths of Roxy, JB and Merlin, there's a lot of emotion to be felt. The first instance, the massacre of Kingsman agents (and pets, not to mention Eggsy's friend Brandon) really hits hard because of how colossal and brutal it is. The second instance- Merlin's death- feels like it should hit a lot harder than it does, because it's undermined by Harry's resurrection. Cheating death makes it feel like within the story universe, death doesn't mean anything, and therefore we can't fully care about a character's death because they could just come back, right? It also makes it feel incredibly implausible that even though Harry can survive a gunshot to the head, the agents have no device to disarm mines.
In an interview with Den of Geek!, Jane Goldman (co-writer) explained the choice to bring Harry back, saying "We felt strongly like we owed it to the audience that his death had to have had some impact, because otherwise it would have felt like we had cheated people. So his death had to have impact on the story and have consequences and we wanted to explore that." (1) This is a point of view I can understand, and there certainly were consequences not just in the quest to bring Harry's memories back but in the additional issues it raised with his confusion and co-ordination issues. There was a clear effort to make an emotional storyline out of his resurrection, which I do feel worked, even though I still feel that bringing him back in the first place was a mistake. I did really like the storyline with Eggsy and Harry, and how you could see how much Eggsy had improved in skills and confidence since the first film. We got a lot of parallels, particularly the bar fight scene ("manners... maketh... man"), which I admit I was disappointed to see at first ('oh my God, I liked it but you've already used it twice!') but then liked the twist on. I feel like it would have been slightly better had that scene not already been used twice and it was solely Harry's thing, just because it felt a bit repetitive despite being a good use of the scene in the end. A storyline I would have preferred to see, without the need for bringing Harry back from the dead but still bringing Colin Firth back into the picture, would be the idea of Eggsy sort of accidentally mentoring a young Statesman agent, mirroring his relationship with Harry in the first film, and bringing in flashbacks of them together (similar to the one we did see! The idea was right there!) Other plot holes/complaints for this film (and my excuses for them):
Things I liked:
In a lot of ways, I think that if the first film was about Eggsy growing up and becoming a Kingsman, this film is about Eggsy accepting that that's who he is now- accepting all the different facets of the job, from dealing with the emotional cost of losing co-workers and people around him and getting the job done anyway, to doing things he doesn't want to do and struggles with morally. It was a little hard for me to find this root of the story, and I don't know how many people would agree with me, but I think it's there when you look for it. Overall, I admit that Kingsman: The Golden Circle has a lot of problems. But I enjoyed it, it took me on an emotional journey, and I thought it was great. Suspension of disbelief is necessary, of course, but if you let the film take you where it wants and try not to question it too much, it's a lot of fun. REFERENCES: (1) http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/movies/kingsman-the-golden-circle/52121/jane-goldman-interview-kingsman-the-golden-circle-stardust-and-more (2) http://uproxx.com/movies/matthew-vaughn-kingsman-the-golden-circle/2/
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