COMIC-CON SPECIAL — KINGSMAN: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE
Colin Firth and friends explain why the sequel will make your brain explode. You won’t even feel it, promise.
MOST DIRECTORS, WHEN they’re talking about sequels, tend to go for the obvious platitudes: bigger, better, faster, stronger, explodier. Not Matthew Vaughn. When he was making Kingsman: The Golden Circle, the follow-up to 2014’s audacious, hilarious and button-pushing spy caper Kingsman: The Secret Service, he had a mantra in mind. “If you didn’t like the first movie, you’ll fucking hate this one,” he laughs. “I’ve made this for people who liked the first film.”
Which means they should love this one. And while Vaughn wasn’t physically present at Comic-con this year, there was plenty of evidence in the footage that his all-star, mostly Oscarwinning cast brought with them to suggest
Golden Circle isn’t playing it safe, from a gloriously inventive, breakneck car chase-cum-fight scene to evil henchmen being turned into burgers. “It has everything the first one does, but cranked up,” says Taron Egerton, who returns as Eggsy, the street kid-turned-gentleman spy. “Matthew loves to surprise. He really loves to piss people off as well. If everyone goes, ‘Matthew, you can’t do that,’ he goes, ‘Well, I definitely am.’ It’s really naughty.”
The movie sees Eggsy and Mark Strong’s Merlin go on the run after the Kingsman organisation is targeted by Moore’s mysterious villain. Their journeys take them to Kentucky, where they happen upon a larger, better-funded sister organisation, Statesman, and its chief agents, Tequila (Channing Tatum), Whiskey (Pedro Pascal), Ginger Ale (Halle Berry) and Champagne (Jeff Bridges). And, along the way, they happen upon Harry Hart (Colin Firth), Eggsy’s mentor, who seemingly died in the first movie. While Firth, whose presence in the movie was so under wraps
that he appeared on call sheets as ‘Ben Braddock’, still can’t talk about the circumstances of the now one-eyed Harry’s return, he can ruminate on how Vaughn approaches building a sequel that seems set to constantly surprise. “There’s a ramping up, but I think Matthew knows when to pull back and where the edge is,” he says. “You can blow it really easily. You just don’t do it bloodier, or louder, you do it by creating an expectation and subverting it.” So what of the people who didn’t like the first movie; who were baffled by exploding heads set to Elgar, shocked by its church massacre, and appalled by its closing anal sex joke? What’s going to grind their gears this time? “There are so many things we’re not supposed to talk about,” muses Bridges. “But there’s a wonderful fingering scene. I haven’t used that word, ‘fingering’, since high school. It’s wonderful to have that back.” Mayhem, human burgers and a spot of fingering? That oughta do it.
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