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kindkitKingsman just came out on DVD here in the US, so I finally got a chance to watch it.
I watched it one and a half times, and then I read a ton of fanfic, and I still don't know quite what I think. Or, rather, I think the movie is sufficiently incoherent that it's hard to have a coherent opinion.
Colin Firth is marvelous as Harry, of course, and steals every scene he's in. He brings tremendous nuance to a character who isn't, when looked at coolly, very well written; a big part of what makes me love Harry is his vulnerability, which comes entirely from Firth's performance and especially his body language, the way he holds himself kind of off-center when he's not in his emotional armor as a Kingsman.
I was unspoiled and so I was genuinely shocked when Harry was shot, though I think there are lot of reasons not to believe he's really dead (Valentine turned away as he shot, Harry was wearing his Kingsman glasses, plus Gazelle never takes a good look at the body and we don't get a good look either). Unfortunately the rest of the movie was a lot less interesting without him in it, although I love Mark Strong as Merlin and I like Roxy a lot. Eggsy . . . confuses me? He strikes me as a nice boy pretending to be a dickhead, but at the end of the movie with the whole princess thing his dickhead side is definitely uppermost, and that didn't strike me as something to celebrate.
Structurally the movie was kind of a mess, with the tone veering all over the place and some jokes/scenes so crass that they seemed to have been beamed in from a teen gross-out comedy. The fact that there are three of these in the final half-hour came close to ruining the ending (already damaged by Lack of Harry Hart) for me.
Also, having a movie where all the heroes are white and the only two characters of color with significant roles are the villain and his henchwoman? Maybe not a great idea.
Basically I have lots of rational criticisms, but there are still aspects of the movie that grab me by the id and won't let go. The suits. Harry Hart in all his odd lonely middle-aged badassery. The suits. All the stuff about what it means to be a gentleman, a concept about which, again, I have many rational reservations but which has dug its tentacles into my emotions at least since I first saw Brideshead Revisited as a young teenager. And did I mention the suits?
I've been reading fanfic, which, as I ought to have expected, is mostly terrible. Harry and Eggsy have a lot of subtext in canon, so there are a million OTP fics about their true love forever, most of which grind down the sharp, interesting edges of both characters. Intersecting, Venn diagram fashion, with these are the stories with Eggsy's accent phonetically spelled out, and the ones that badly needed a Britpick and didn't get it.
There've also been some amusing howlers, luckily. One writer has odd ideas about the British political system, apparently believing not only that the UK is an absolute monarchy but that if most of the royal family happens to be wiped out (leaving only the Queen and baby George), then the seventeenth in line to the throne (Harry, natch) could become king, announcing his plan to abdicate when baby George is grown up. Succession: it does not work that way.
ETA: Another story features the villainous Sir Duncan Whitehall, who not only has the same surname as a famous (and metonymous) building, but is also referred to throughout the text as "Sir Whitehall."
And given how much of the movie is suit porn, some very peculiar outfits crop up in the fic. One story has Harry (Harry of the discreet pinstripes and conservative ties) wearing a midnight-blue dinner jacket (referred to as a "tuxedo" in the text, of course) with a knit tie. In another, Eggsy owns a "formal suit" described as being deep maroon, double-breasted with velvet lapels, worn with a "wine-red" tie and ruby cufflinks.* Now, mind you, I could just about see Eggsy buying such a thing if not under Harry's supervision, but Harry would probably burn it, not specifically ask Eggsy to wear it to look sexy for him.
(*Such a suit, if well-cut, not double-breasted, and worn with a different tie, might look fabulously louche on, say, Alan Cumming. On Eggsy the effect of the outfit as described would be "1980s game show host." It is in any case not a gentlemanly suit, and Harry Hart would not approve.)
Why yes, I have been mentally stocking up these faux pas to share them with you.
As usual, I'm longing for the fic that doesn't seem to exist: not only in-character, emotionally plausible Harry/Eggsy, but Harry backstory fic, Harry-Merlin friendship fic (or slash), and especially anything that takes a hard look at the Kingsman organization and whether it's really a wonderful idea to have a lot of self-appointed, unaccountable, dog-shooting James Bonds running around intervening in world politics as they please.
Your thoughts on the movie, on fics (recommendations, anti-recs, pointing and mocking), and so on are extremely welcome.
I watched it one and a half times, and then I read a ton of fanfic, and I still don't know quite what I think. Or, rather, I think the movie is sufficiently incoherent that it's hard to have a coherent opinion.
Colin Firth is marvelous as Harry, of course, and steals every scene he's in. He brings tremendous nuance to a character who isn't, when looked at coolly, very well written; a big part of what makes me love Harry is his vulnerability, which comes entirely from Firth's performance and especially his body language, the way he holds himself kind of off-center when he's not in his emotional armor as a Kingsman.
I was unspoiled and so I was genuinely shocked when Harry was shot, though I think there are lot of reasons not to believe he's really dead (Valentine turned away as he shot, Harry was wearing his Kingsman glasses, plus Gazelle never takes a good look at the body and we don't get a good look either). Unfortunately the rest of the movie was a lot less interesting without him in it, although I love Mark Strong as Merlin and I like Roxy a lot. Eggsy . . . confuses me? He strikes me as a nice boy pretending to be a dickhead, but at the end of the movie with the whole princess thing his dickhead side is definitely uppermost, and that didn't strike me as something to celebrate.
Structurally the movie was kind of a mess, with the tone veering all over the place and some jokes/scenes so crass that they seemed to have been beamed in from a teen gross-out comedy. The fact that there are three of these in the final half-hour came close to ruining the ending (already damaged by Lack of Harry Hart) for me.
Also, having a movie where all the heroes are white and the only two characters of color with significant roles are the villain and his henchwoman? Maybe not a great idea.
Basically I have lots of rational criticisms, but there are still aspects of the movie that grab me by the id and won't let go. The suits. Harry Hart in all his odd lonely middle-aged badassery. The suits. All the stuff about what it means to be a gentleman, a concept about which, again, I have many rational reservations but which has dug its tentacles into my emotions at least since I first saw Brideshead Revisited as a young teenager. And did I mention the suits?
I've been reading fanfic, which, as I ought to have expected, is mostly terrible. Harry and Eggsy have a lot of subtext in canon, so there are a million OTP fics about their true love forever, most of which grind down the sharp, interesting edges of both characters. Intersecting, Venn diagram fashion, with these are the stories with Eggsy's accent phonetically spelled out, and the ones that badly needed a Britpick and didn't get it.
There've also been some amusing howlers, luckily. One writer has odd ideas about the British political system, apparently believing not only that the UK is an absolute monarchy but that if most of the royal family happens to be wiped out (leaving only the Queen and baby George), then the seventeenth in line to the throne (Harry, natch) could become king, announcing his plan to abdicate when baby George is grown up. Succession: it does not work that way.
ETA: Another story features the villainous Sir Duncan Whitehall, who not only has the same surname as a famous (and metonymous) building, but is also referred to throughout the text as "Sir Whitehall."
And given how much of the movie is suit porn, some very peculiar outfits crop up in the fic. One story has Harry (Harry of the discreet pinstripes and conservative ties) wearing a midnight-blue dinner jacket (referred to as a "tuxedo" in the text, of course) with a knit tie. In another, Eggsy owns a "formal suit" described as being deep maroon, double-breasted with velvet lapels, worn with a "wine-red" tie and ruby cufflinks.* Now, mind you, I could just about see Eggsy buying such a thing if not under Harry's supervision, but Harry would probably burn it, not specifically ask Eggsy to wear it to look sexy for him.
(*Such a suit, if well-cut, not double-breasted, and worn with a different tie, might look fabulously louche on, say, Alan Cumming. On Eggsy the effect of the outfit as described would be "1980s game show host." It is in any case not a gentlemanly suit, and Harry Hart would not approve.)
Why yes, I have been mentally stocking up these faux pas to share them with you.
As usual, I'm longing for the fic that doesn't seem to exist: not only in-character, emotionally plausible Harry/Eggsy, but Harry backstory fic, Harry-Merlin friendship fic (or slash), and especially anything that takes a hard look at the Kingsman organization and whether it's really a wonderful idea to have a lot of self-appointed, unaccountable, dog-shooting James Bonds running around intervening in world politics as they please.
Your thoughts on the movie, on fics (recommendations, anti-recs, pointing and mocking), and so on are extremely welcome.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-13 07:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-13 12:22 pm (UTC)I don't know how much you're bothered by movie violence, but I feel I should warn you that Kingsman is extremely violent, although most of it is stylized and literally bloodless.