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This week, on Entertaining Froth:
Manners maketh Greg and Joe, one can hope. It’s bizarre it took over two years for this show to cover Kingsman, but that just shows how many love letters the world of Great Bad Movies deserves. So pop the cork on a $250,000 bottle of Dalmore 62, and celebrate an emotionally mature new action start named Colin Firth as he beats up an entire bar.
This movie is almost entirely incredible…. Verdict: Great Bad Movie, no notes — well, several notes, but that’s why this show exists. BYO Dalmore (or, budget permitting, a $19 Jameson). Let’s get to KINGSMAN!!!
Note: This transcript has been auto-generated, so… You know… It’s not our fault.
Joe: All right, Greg. And the movie we just watched, one of the characters goes on a dangerous, arduous and long job interview process to get a job he doesn’t even know he wants. What’s your favorite or longest or worst job interview experience you’ve ever had?
Greg: The longest one I’ve ever had was I was applying for a job that I didn’t want. I wanted to start applying for other design positions out there, and a friend said, you should just start applying for jobs that you don’t want to be. Can get the interview practice. That’s a great idea. But then I had like 3 or 4 interviews at this place.
Greg: It was a great experience. I did not want the job at all, but I learned so much. And in fact, the guy who was hiring for this job, he said some things that I still quote many, many years later of how you know, you should work with a brand and how designers should work in an organization. I got so much out of this, and they got nothing other than me wasting their time, essentially.
Greg: But what’s hilarious is after I had applied for it, I was talking to a friend of mine who I grew up with in Bellingham. The most creative person I know on the planet, and she was saying she had just applied for a job at this place as well, and it turned out it was the exact same job. And then she got the job.
Greg: Awesome. And so then there was like an awkward moment between us because she was like, did you want this job? I was like, I don’t know how to say this, but I kind of was just practicing. I’m so glad you got it. And then I knew that she had the job. They called me a couple of weeks later to let me know I hadn’t gotten the position, but I already knew that I hadn’t gotten the position.
Greg: And so it was a very awkward conversation where I said, hey, I should let you know that I know the person who got the job and you totally hired the right person, and they were relieved to hear that. But oh my gosh, if anybody is listening to this, watch the Kingsmen. First of all, that step one in this process and then start applying for jobs that you don’t want.
Greg: So you can have practice at this. I got so much out of doing this. So anyways, how about you Joe?
Joe: I did apply for a job and I ended up walking out of the interview real quick.
Greg: Too dangerous.
Joe: It was weird. You know, they asked me to do some really unsafe things and I was like, no, it was a I had applied and I didn’t realize it was I was unemployed at the time and I was just applying for anything in the nonprofit sector.
Greg: I was sure.
Joe: And it was a job was like one of the ones that you stand on the corner asking people for money. And as soon as I heard that, I was like, that is not for me at all.
Greg: This is like the person with the red vest.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: That stands in front of Trader Joe’s and says, hey, do you like animals being harmed? And you’re yeah, you’re supposed to walk by that, but like a monster?
Joe: Yes, exactly. Yeah. Do you have a second to talk about the Sierra Club? Those sorts of things? Yeah. And basically in the interview, they said what it was. I was like, oh, I’m not interested in that. And I literally they’re like, okay. And then I got up and left and that was it.
Greg: So this feels like since you didn’t want this job and you didn’t like this organization, you could have stood up and like, slapped them in the face.
Joe: Yeah, I should have missed opportunity for sure. Yeah.
Greg: I feel like this is the kind of thing where you go for, like, the regular slap, and then you let the moment just sit there for a second, then you come back backhanded and do it the other way. And then you walked out. You could have done a deuce.
Joe: Yeah. And then like, I picked up their water bottle and just, like, pour their water out in front of them and then leave. Yeah. Next time, next time I will.
Greg: Okay. Next time, next time.
Joe: All right.
Greg: All right, let’s get to the show.
Joe: Let’s do it.
Joe: Huge IQ.
Clip: Great performance at school. But you gave up drugs, petty crime and never had a job. Set you on a certain path. But you needn’t stay on it.
Clip: One baby.
Clip: We are an independent international intelligence agency operating at the highest level of discretion. The Kingsman agents are the new knights.
Clip: You are about to embark on the most dangerous job interview in the world.
Clip: Felt sorry for the boy, did you? He will find this humiliating. He’s as much Kingsman material as any of them.
Clip: We’re here to enhance your skills. First you to limit the need to solve problems under pressure. Like what to do when one of your group has no parachute.
Clip: Interested?
Clip: What about him? What makes him so special?
Clip: Put it back.
Greg: The year is 2015. This is a January release, Joe in 2015. And Matthew Vaughn steps up to the plate after kind of conceiving of this movie with Mark Millar and then co-writing it with Jane Goldman. They make a movie called Kingsman, Colin The Secret Service. We are talking about Colin Firth, Taron Egerton, Samuel L Jackson, Mark strong, Jack Davenport’s, we are talking about Mark Hamill shows up in this movie.
Greg: Samantha Womack, Sofia Boutella, Michael Caine is in this movie. That might be all we need to mention right now. I have never meant this question more in my life. Joe. This is a January movie and that is basically what I live for. Also August movies. I’m just going to point you straight back to a movie called plane, which came out in January.
Greg: It’s a movie about a plane. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s about a plane. Joe Sky Tucker. What makes Kingsman a great bad movie?
Joe: It’s everything that we love about movies.
Greg: Yep. Yeah.
Joe: Low expectations and it delivers over and over again. Every time I watch this movie. I just cannot believe that all the pieces work. Yeah, this is a movie, and I and I say this in the real back of the box. We’ve seen a version of this movie a million different times, and there’s something, you know, kind of the fish out of water.
Greg: The origin story.
Joe: Yeah. Origin story. You know, the new kid coming in, who’s, you know, a little rough around the edges.
Greg: Into a whole world.
Joe: Yeah. And then the world he’s coming into has got to make some concessions to him. It’s all in there. You know, Harry Potter follows this trope. The Karate Kid follows this trope.
Greg: But those are the two. That’s the only two.
Joe: And Tokyo Drift.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: Okay.
Greg: That’s a classic third three.
Joe: Yeah. And so you have all of this stuff kind of working against it, but it’s also funny, got interesting characters, some interesting takes. And honestly, if it didn’t have Samuel L Jackson in this movie.
Greg:
Joe: To me, he is the secret sauce of a bad guy who you can understand his point of view. So he’s kind of got a little bit of the. Oh yeah. Yeah, I get where he’s coming from. He’s a tech billionaire person. Plays it for laughs. So you don’t see him kind of play this kind of character. He’s squeamish.
Joe: Can’t Stand the Sight of blood is pretty funny in it.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: And still ominous. And the bad guy. And you got some really fun action sequences in it. Yeah, that kind of shouldn’t work. It’s a funny, kind of surprising. Kind of feels like they knew they were getting away with something, so they just threw everything into this.
Greg: Movie, and.
Joe: Then they’re like, okay, you’re releasing us in January. We’re going to give you the kitchen sink of everything we want to. There are things that don’t land sometimes that I feel a little over the top, but I forgive all of its flaws every time I watch it, and I just enjoy it. What about you? Greg? What makes this a great bad movie or a great movie for you?
Greg: Well, you mentioned that you totally understand where Samuel Jackson’s coming from. I feel like you might have just admitted on our podcast that you kind of want to murder most of the people on the planet.
Joe: Yeah. No, I think that that’s a fair statement. I, I would agree with that, actually.
Greg: It makes sense. It’s time for culling is what you’re saying.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Yeah. Okay.
Joe: I mean, it’s kind of like Thanos and in the Avengers movies, you know, you kind of understand where they’re coming from. I’m not saying that in the manner that he wants to do it, but I do feel like a culling is needed.
Greg: So you don’t really love the Thanos Avengers movies, though. Is this movie better than the Thanos Avengers movies for you?
Joe: I’m going to get hate mail for this, but I think it’s better. Than than the last two Thanos movies, which to me are just bloated.
Greg: Navel gazing movies. You could make 100 Kingsman movies with all the energy they put into that thing.
Joe: Absolutely. And I would I would be more happy to watch the Kingsman movies than a bloated superhero movie. I know that that I’m treading on sacred ground. I apologize to all the Marvel heads out there.
Greg: Luckily, they’ll they’ll make up for it with their follow up coming out this summer. Oh, right.
Joe: That’s right. Thank God.
Greg: Yeah. Which, you know, might be out by the time this episode comes out.
Joe: So probably. Yeah.
Greg: I think the planet is going to want an apology that you are never going to give them. Yeah, exactly. Should have been gray. Man two is what is your review of the new.
Joe: Exactly.
Greg: Russo Brothers movie? Man, I really loved considering this movie for the last week. Kind of preparing for this episode. First of all, we need to go back to our end of the year meeting. A couple years ago, you and I were talking about the podcast and kind of planning some things out, looking at our list, kind of figuring out how things were going to go in.
Greg: This movie occurred to us for some reason while we were talking about that, and I immediately went on the Apple store and bought it. I was like, I don’t know why I wouldn’t buy that movie in this very. I bought one movie in that meeting, and it was this movie because it was like it was such a no brainer.
Greg: Yeah. You know, we often joke, of course we’re going to get to a movie. And I don’t think we’re joking. Actually, I think we are really going to get to all these movies. We’re really.
Joe: Going to get to them.
Greg: But it was such a grand slam like, of course we’re going to get to Kingsman. I’m going to buy it right now. Yeah, yeah. So I’ve been looking forward to it ever since. I don’t know, that was like two and a half years ago. I think that we that we did that this week has been so much fun watching it.
Greg: And I have to say, I saw this in the theater. I haven’t seen it since. And when I watched it this week, the first time, I enjoyed it. But I had the same kind of hesitation, I think, that I had in the theater like, this is really great, but I but not a slam dunk for me. And then I watched it again this week and I was like, what am I talking about?
Greg: I love this movie. It’s not a perfect film. It is so great though. We have a we have one standard on this podcast and that is the movie has to be great in this movie is great for so many more reasons than we need it to be, to be an episode of this podcast. Yeah. And so I have loved thinking about this movie.
Greg: I watched it twice this week. I skipped through it before we started recording tonight. I love this movie. It is so much fun. Not a perfect film, but Matthew Vaughn, you did a great job. Everybody involved. You did a fantastic job. The cast of this thing is absolute bangers all over. It’s just, I mean, Colin Firth doing his first kind of action movie, it’s like Bruce Willis in Die Hard.
Greg: It seems like it would never work. And yet here we are. It’s like Keanu Reeves in speed. This doesn’t seem like it should work. He’s, you know, from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Nope. He’s perfect. It’s amazing. Colin Firth in this movie is is kind of counter intuitive. And he has some moments that he kind of cells, you know.
Greg: Yeah, I like him more than Samuel Jackson in this movie. I mean, this is one of the good Samuel L Jackson movies. Having said that, he probably made eight movies this year. He’s unbelievable. He’s so prolific. And yeah, you know, he says he’s very choosy. He doesn’t seem that choosy to me when it comes to parts. But, I mean, Matthew Vaughn is so good.
Greg: He had made Layer Cake, basically the movie that got Daniel Craig James Bond. Okay, I have never seen Stardust, the movie he made after that. Have you seen Stardust?
Joe: No, I haven’t.
Greg: Yeah, but then he made Kick-Ass. You’ve seen Kick-Ass? I’ve never seen Kick-Ass.
Joe: I have not seen that.
Greg: Oh, okay. He kind of saved the X-Men series with X-Men First Class, and that movie did so well, and Fox was so ecstatic that they said you should make another one. He said, absolutely, I’m going to make another one. That’s amazing. In that time, though, or sometime between Layer Cake and the making of this movie, he sits down with his friend for a pint of Guinness, which is a situation that happens only inside my heart.
Joe: Yes.
Greg: That is just the greatest idea. And they were lamenting that the new James Bond movie had been a little bit too serious. They were a little bit bummed by how bond movies or spy movies weren’t as fun as they used to be. And so, hey, last week on our bonus episode, you said there’s no real tie in between the movie we did in our last episode in this one, The Bourne Identity.
Greg: But this is the ultimate tie in right here. The reason this movie exists is because The Bourne Identity ruined everything else. Everything got super serious. There was the Dark Knight, there was, you know, Batman Begins, there was Casino Royale. Suddenly everything was super serious. And Matthew Vaughn, God bless him, said, what if we didn’t go that way? What if we went a sillier way?
Greg: And he made an incredible, fun action movie that’s also really silly sometimes. Yeah. And I love it, I love it. It’s total counterprogramming to what I thought I wanted in that time, and I loved it.
Joe: And it’s self-referential in that it’s based on they created a comic book or graphic novel, I can’t remember what they call it around the Kingsman as well. So there are pieces of this that feel farcical and like they come from the pages of a graphic novel. And I. Yeah, I didn’t realize that when I first watched it, but I probably seen this movie now 5 or 6 times, and I have watched it.
Joe: I mean, I watched it two days ago for this, but I had watched it about a month ago just because it was there. It was time, wanted to see it. It was time. And each time I watch it, I appreciate it. There’s an amazing action sequence in a church which is shot as a single shot almost, which is so fun and just unexpectedly joyful.
Joe: Killing is the best way to put.
Greg: It.
Joe: And it again proves the point of why you have great actors in these movies selling lines that are so beyond ridiculous. Oh yeah, you know, if you don’t have Samuel L Jackson to me, selling a tech billionaire mogul who’s squeamish at the sight of blood the way that he does. Yeah. Just play totally for laughs. It doesn’t land like there’s just something immediately perfect about Samuel L Jackson.
Joe: Yeah. Mr. pulp fiction, every action movie that we have seen with the fourth movie we’ve done with him, at least at least, and he is playing against type in it perfectly for laughs. And also it makes the movie and it doesn’t. It’s a movie that does not take itself too seriously and yet still takes the action and the story really seriously, which is a really it’s tough to stick the landing on all of those, and I feel like this movie does it.
Joe: There are moments that are imperfect, but they’re easily forgiven for me in terms of everything else that just works about it. Yeah. Get Mark strong showing up who’s one of my favorite. Like those guys. You just.
Greg: Like one of.
Joe: The he’s in everything.
Greg: Yeah.,
Joe: Yeah. And Michael Caine who was probably on set for what, three days. Two days. You know, just bringing gravitas to his scenes that you just don’t need. It’s great. This was the first time I saw Taron Egerton.
Greg: And I think this was his kind of big premiere. His name wasn’t even on the poster when it first came out, because no one knew who he was.
Joe: Yeah, and all I remember about the marketing of this movie was there’s that famous scene where Colin Firth is in the the bar with him, and his manners maketh the man scene. Yeah. And I remember seeing, like, a clip of that action scene. I was like, what is this? Yeah, whatever this is, I want more of this and that.
Joe: I didn’t see it in the theaters, but I saw it shortly after it came out. And again, was one of those movies where it was on in the background and suddenly I wasn’t working anymore. I was just watching the movie, and it was perfect in every way.
Greg: Let’s hear the introduction to Sam Jackson.
Clip: No stomach for violence. I mean, literally, I see one drop of blood that is me done. I’m like, yeah, projectile. Listen, I’m so sorry you had to witness all this unpleasantness due to our uninvited guest. But I promise you, by the time I found out who he worked for, you and I will be the best of friends.
Greg: He’s talking to Mark Hamill in that scene. Who is the person that they’re, I guess, kind of saving.
Joe: The plot of this movie.
Greg: It does hang together perfectly, but I did not quite recognize that until I watched it twice in the same week. Yeah, it’s a little dense.
Joe: Honestly, I don’t remember what Mark Hamill and Mark Hamill is in it for a split second.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Yep. He is working on technology to like, unleash the inhibition that people have that they need to get people to, like, basically go crazy. Yeah. And so that’s what they need him for. Then Colin Firth comes to interview him and Mark Hamill said explodes. Spoiler alert. But if you want to watch, people’s headaches flowed in creative and unique ways with cool graphics.
Joe: This is the movie for you. It’s what I’m saying.
Greg: They don’t show it when this happens to him, but it is like halfway through the movie. We see what it actually looks like later in the movie. But Sam Jackson has a lisp in this movie. His call, he decided that’s what he wanted to do. He always has a New York Yankees hat on throughout the film in different colors, and he is in this movie for a couple of reasons, he said.
Greg: One is because he had always wanted to be a bond villain, and he was never going to be invited to be a bond villain. He thought. So he accepted this role to kind of scratch that itch. But the other thing he said was, usually when you’re reading scripts for movies like this pretty early on, you know what’s going to happen in the next couple pages.
Greg: And as you’re reading it, you just totally know what’s going to happen the whole time. And he said, reading a Matthew Vaughn script, you have no idea what’s going to happen from page to page. And he really loved that. I mean, that must have been what got Michael Caine in there. Colin Firth, they all kind of talked about how the script was really fun to read.
Greg: It’s just an interesting British project. You know, this is a purely British movie in so many ways, and that is partially what brings so much joy to the film for me is it’s just this. This is what it can be like if you let the British be British.
Joe: Yeah. It’s like, what if Monty Python made a James Bond movie.
Greg: Is.
Joe: Kind of. Yeah, you know, like the story arcs. If you said, okay, fish out of water. So Eggsy is Taron Edgerton character. Sure has, you know, a lot of talent, but isn’t realizing it and goes to prestigious boarding schools like we’ve seen that movie a million times. Totally. But each of the beats within that are a little different.
Joe: They twist them a little bit, and they don’t shy away from talking about that and kind of showing you that they know what they’re doing. And so the same with the villain. You know, you expect a big tech billionaire villain. Okay. Sure. You know, sure of the time. Yeah. But kind of what he’s trying to do, how he’s doing it, it’s unique and interesting in the fact that he can’t stand the sight of blood and has a lisp and does wear a different hat, and every single scene is, you know, is great.
Joe: Like, spoiler alert for one of my drinking games, every time he’s wearing a different hat, take a drink because it’s every scene he’s in is a different hat. It’s awesome. It’s just, you know, those little nods to and then they even have a couple different conversations is a great scene with Samuel L Jackson and Colin Firth talking about they don’t make movies like this basically.
Joe: Yeah, you know, anymore. And they wish they did. And it’s a beautifully executed scene that you don’t get. That takes its time in the middle of a movie. That’s a ridiculous action movie. It’s. And yeah, it’s perfect. I love it when people are trying something different.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that too. I don’t love when they talk about the movie in a meta way, in this movie, when they’re like, this isn’t that kind of movie. I really dislike that. I thought that was very cool in like 1995, in 2015. I think this movie would have been better if they hadn’t done that.
Joe: Interesting. I liked it, I was.
Greg: I did. I was like, okay, okay.
Joe: Yeah, I didn’t mind, just like a little bit of the like acknowledging that we’re making a movie for that’s going against type the casting and the plot of this movie and everything is against type like, yeah, you’ve never seen Colin Firth as the action star. You haven’t seen Samuel Jackson as the bat, you know, as the bond villain.
Greg: Michael Caine is like in charge of a big evil thing.
Joe: Sort of evil.
Greg: Sort of evil.
Joe: It’s a little confusing. He kind of. He kind of drinks the Kool-Aid, as it were, of Samuel L Jackson at the end of what he’s trying to do.
Greg: And yeah.
Joe: Is basically turns against the Kingsmen, which is designed as a secret society above the fray of politics, and they have a whole line about it. Do you have a do you have that clip?
Greg: I mean, this is potentially the best plot points in action movie history. Like this is an exposition dump. They’re going down a long elevator. Taron Egerton makes a joke, you know, while they’re going down. I don’t think I have it in the clip, but he’s like, how long is this thing at? At Colin Firth is like long enough.
Greg: And I think he’s long enough so that I can explain the whole history of what you’re going to. But this came from Matthew Vaughn was getting a suit at the super famous tailor in London, I think it was called Huntsman. And like David Bowie’s got in suits there like, and royalty like all of the biggest, you know, players in London have gotten a suit from this place.
Greg: And as he was there and he was looking in the mirror, he was thinking about this has such history that I wonder there could be like a spy aspect to this. And he wanted to put his hand against the mirror in that building and have it suddenly take him to a different world. And so they filmed inside that place.
Joe: Awesome.
Greg: That’s the actual location. And it’s not Huntsman, it’s Kingsman. But as Colin Firth puts his hand against the Taylor’s mirror and it, like, reads his palm and they start going down to the underground layer. Here’s what he says.
Clip: Since 1849, Kingsman tailors have clothed the world’s most powerful individuals are 1919. A great number of them had lost their heirs to World War One. That meant a lot of money going on inherited, and a lot of powerful men with a desire to preserve peace and protect life. Our founders realized that they could channel that wealth and influence for the greater good.
Clip: And so began a rather venture an independent international intelligence agency operating at the highest level of discretion about the politics and bureaucracy that undermined the integrity of government run spy organizations. The suit is a modern gentleman’s armor. The Kingsman agents are the new knights.
Greg: It’s pretty solid.
Joe: It’s perfect in every way.
Greg: I mean, they’re like real ideas behind this movie that are kind of like, they go down with a little bit of sugar, you know? Yeah, but that’s like a pretty legit backstory for what we’re doing here. Yeah, it’s kind of amazing. Absolutely. Yeah.
Joe: As they’re, as they’re saying and I’m like, I’m in, I’m in. Where do I sign up?
Greg: Totally. There’s like heart, there’s history. It’s incredible. So this movie is based on the graphic novel or whatever it was, but that graphic novel was devised from brainstorming that happened over pints of Guinness between the director of this film and the writer of the comic book. And so, I don’t know, I feel like this is a pretty good idea for any movie to start as a comic book or as a graphic novel.
Greg: Absolutely. Someone who’s had a chance to kind of think through things and they’re not rushing script pages, the new Tom cruise movie or whatever. There’s a thoughtfulness this, that you just don’t get in every movie that we watch.
Joe: Yeah. And apparently some of his other movies are connected in the same universe in the graphic novel. So, like some of the stuff from Kick-Ass carries over some of the characters. And so I think, I think your point is really well taken in that they got to play around and kind of edit it in a different world, and so that they could take what really worked for the film and bring it forward.
Joe: Yeah. You know, instead of kind of on the fly, they already had the arc of the stories and the and a whole universe already built. And so they’re, they’re not creating it. We don’t we didn’t need those exposition dumps like Christopher McQuarrie where it’s like, okay, get get the characters in the room again, let’s restate this movie and now go forward from there type of thing, you know, and it is kind of two different movies to me mashed together.
Joe: You have Taron Egerton, Ark, which is the new recruit story, and then you have kind of the James Bond Colin Firth story that they kind of they definitely weave together. But it could have been two movies or we’ve seen that movie of them kind of working, and it would have just been a little bit more of the recruitment.
Joe: And, you know, the hazing that happens at just the spy movie side of it. But you get both of them together, which I appreciated because I feel like, yeah, together there, it’s enough fertile ground to get everything down, whereas I feel like they would have there would have been moments where I would have been bored if it was just a spy movie with Colin Firth as the lead character, or just the terrain Edgerton character of like, okay, when do we get to the point where he’s made it through the training and is, you know, ready to go?
Joe: Yeah. But because they kind of link them together to me, it works better for me.
Greg: 100%. This is a bunch of different movies in one, like when he gets to the training to see who’s going to be the next. Was it Lancelot? And he is very much like a James Bond character. Here’s our introduction to Lancelot in the opening scene.
Clip: I suppose asking to borrow a cup of sugar is a step too far.
Greg: And just out of nowhere we’re like up in the Alps. And James Bond basically shows up, asked for a cup of sugar, and then just starts shooting everybody. And it’s our first, I think, our first big action scene in the movie.
Joe: Yeah, yeah.
Greg: And it’s pretty awesome. It’s pretty good.
Joe: Very awesome.
Greg: Yeah. Like it’s very reassuring that we’re in good hands. That is exactly.
Joe: What I thought was like, oh okay. This is our appetizer. And I’m I’m intrigued is basically what I thought.
Greg: Yeah. Well actually no, the very first shot of this movie, Joe is a helicopter out of nowhere. Two guys are just sitting there. Suddenly there’s a helicopter that they did not see for the 20 miles beforehand. Two guys are dangling from the helicopter for seemingly no reason except to tell us that two guys and it’s it’s I guess we’re to assume that it’s Colin Firth and Taron Egerton, dad who were hanging dangling.
Greg: Right. And they’re just like shooting guys and blowing stuff up in the rubble of things that they’re shooting turns into the credits for the movie, which is fun. It’s just it’s just every piece of the stew in one long extended shot. And then by the time we get to the building that the helicopter was flying into, they are in the building and we see Taron Edgerton dad sacrifice himself for the rest of the crew.
Greg: And then we get to Colin Firth, explaining that his coworker has passed away, and he’s saying that to Taron Egerton, mom and young Edgerton. He’s like, what, like three for.
Joe: Something like that?
Greg: Yeah. And Colin Firth gets to be dramatic and heartfelt and touching and it’s just like, I don’t know what we’re doing here, but it’s all working. It is all working. Yeah.
Joe: As I remember the first time I watched it, I didn’t quite know what was happening. Seeing the scene, which is one of my favorite experiences watching movies, because, you know, we’ve seen so many movies where you just, you know, the whole plot based on the opening shot, almost of like you can like beat by beat, right? And this movie beat by beat you, you’ve seen again, we’ve seen versions of this movie, but what’s going to happen, scene to scene is, was a total mystery to me, because I’m always playing along when I’m watching a movie.
Joe: Yeah. With like what’s going to happen next? And when I’m confused or I don’t know, that is one of my favorite places because it’s like, oh, I’m in. I’m in a good hands with a good director.
Greg: 100.
Joe: Percent going to take me where I need to go. And this movie from the opening is just like, sit back and relax. I got you. But don’t. If you’re trying to play along, you’re probably going to guess wrong. Especially, I think the first 30 minutes of this movie are perfect in that way.
Greg: This is how I feel during Ryan Johnson movies, and this is specifically how I felt during episode eight, The Last Jedi of Star Wars. People really dislike that movie for whatever reason. Not everybody. But I remember thinking like, where on earth is this going? And I love this man for writing and directing it. So that’s how I felt watching this movie as well.
Greg: Like, I don’t I don’t remember where this is going, but I feel like I’m in really good hands right now. Yeah, let’s sell the good guy just a little bit. This is Colin Firth explaining that his coworker has passed away.
Clip: I very much regret that your husband’s bravery can’t be publicly celebrated. I hope you understand.
Clip: How can I understand? You won’t tell me anything. I didn’t even know he wasn’t with his squad.
Clip: I’m so sorry. I can’t say more, but I would like to present you with this Medal of Valor. And if you look closely on the back, there’s a number. And there’s a more concrete gesture of our gratitude we’d like to offer you.
Clip: Let’s call it a favor. The nature of it is your choice. Just tell the operator Oxfords, not brogues, and then I’ll know it’s you.
Clip: I don’t want your help. I want my husband back now.
Greg: In a horrible movie. She would have been interested by this plot point. Like, oh, that’s interesting. Yeah, but this is a good enough movie that she can be like, that’s stupid. I don’t know what you’re getting at right now. I want my husband back. I love that about this scene.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah, I did too. And again, Colin Firth, an incredible actor. I mean, that he’s every time I see that, I’m like, I’m there. Yeah. Here. Maybe in the corner of my eye. Oh, yeah. You know I’m in. You got me. Have you, Colin Firth.
Greg: I’m going to put him at the Stanley Tucci level of my first phone call. If I ever make a movie. What is Colin Firth doing? What is Stanley Tucci doing? Yeah.
Joe: And to me, it’s a it’s a shame that he didn’t do more action movies because he’s brilliant in this. Like, he’s showing us that he could have been James Bond. I don’t know, I wonder if when they were casting Daniel Craig, if he was in the running at all or what that casting process was.
Greg: But yeah, that would have been he would have been 43. Daniel Craig was like 35. I think at that time. I think I think Colin Firth is 53 when they filmed this movie. Okay. And he is John working it up. I mean he is just absolutely nailing beautiful. It’s incredible. Yeah. Joe, at the beginning of this movie, there’s a glass of 62 Dalmore that they’re talking about is a scotch, by the way, Matthew Vaughn movies.
Greg: There’s so much alcohol drinking. There’s so much like scotch and different drinks, but it seems like they probably just googled what was the most expensive scotch, and they got a 62, but it wasn’t 1962. It’s a 62 year old vintage of Dalmore that was bottled in 2002, and in 2011 it was sold for roughly $250,000. American. So, Joe, everyone in this movie is pretty excited about this class of 62 Dalmore.
Greg: More that Samuel Jackson eventually takes a sip of. What kind of scotch do you like?
Joe: I do love Glenfiddich.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: Glenlivet. Okay, like I have done a blind taste test between kind of their two, like, single malts, like the 12 year single malt. I can definitely tell the difference. Glenfiddich is my favorite. I love Oban Glen is amazing as well. I think that’s maybe the most expensive one I’ve had. And then there’s a Japanese one, my friend who’s from Japan and he loves Scotch.
Joe: Yeah, I think it’s the Yama I can’t remember. I’m going to butcher the name, so I’m not even going to try. Yeah, yeah, but I’ve had that and I think he had a really expensive bottle of it and it was delicious. All of them. When you kind of get to that 12 plus 18 year mark to me are really delicious.
Joe: But it’s also to me like a treat. But what about you? You’re you also are. We have had scotch together at your house before. So what is your what’s your favorite scotch? Or what’s the most expensive scotch you’ve ever had, if you could remember?
Greg: All right, well, I will start by saying Scotch is not my favorite kind of whiskey. But I do love scotch. But I don’t love, like, PD. Punch you in the face. Scotch. I prefer the kind of smoother style of scotch that you can get from, like, Oban opens my favorite scotch, for sure. But David Hallgren introduced me to McAllen 12.
Greg: He gave it to me the week my my first son was born, and it is the most emotionally connected Scotch I will I mean, it is the scotch. If I could only choose one for the rest of my life. I’m not going to drink it very much. I got scotch. It’s. We’re recording this in June. I got some scotch for Christmas.
Greg: I haven’t opened it yet. Yeah. So I’m not the biggest Scotch drinker. Or at least I try not to be a big Scotch drinker. Because who needs a headache? Why would you want that many headaches in your life? But McAllen 12 would be my first. You know, if I can only have one, it would be that because David Hallgren, you know.
Joe: David.
Greg: Hallgren, the divisive David Hallgren, who stunned you with how recently he had watched The Bourne Identity last week.
Joe: I know, I know, like, basically he’d watch it yesterday.
Greg: Listener. If you’re not aware, we’re doing bonus episodes where we where we track. When was the last time David Hogan watched a movie that we’ve just covered? And Joe bet seven years, and did you take me over? You took the over.
Joe: I took the over.
Greg: And it was so good reason. Yeah. You had watched it Thursday. Yeah.
Joe: It was ridiculous. Maybe it was McAllen. Now that I think about it, I think that that was my favorite Scotch. It was for a friend’s, I think bachelorette or bachelor party. We went to this really fancy restaurant in Seattle, and I had, I think it was an 18 year old Scotch. I think it was a McAllen. It was one of the best drinks I’ve ever had in my life.
Joe: They had, like the ridiculously large ice cube in the glass.
Greg: These ice cube people need to get over themselves. Seriously.
Joe: I thought it was ridiculous. Two and then I had a sip and I was like, nope. All right, I’m in. Come back in. Yeah, but I think it was an 18 year old McAllen. And it was one of it was the best Scotch I’ve ever had. So if there are other whiskeys like that, I challenge you.
Greg: I think, Jameson, I think I think if you have $19 in a dream, we can make this happen. Okay, okay.
Greg: But in this movie, they’re constantly drinking.
Joe: They are constantly drinking.
Greg: They’re trying to get back to kind of like the 60s James Bond. Yeah, I love that about this movie.
Joe: Yeah they are. They’re always talking about the drinks. You know they talk about Guinness. They’re talking about Scotch. Yeah. There are a few others. I have it as one of my drinking games. Anytime they’re mentioning a drink in any of the because they, they do take a moment to make sure that you understand that this is a fancy drink.
Joe: Like they want you to know, sure, that they’ve thought about it. And I appreciate that.
Greg: And the two creators of this movie, they were drinking again, this when they came up with this idea, and I was filling them with nostalgia of like, the camp and fun and gadgetry of the old school James Bond movies. And that’s what they were going for in this. And I really like that. I like that they were drinking a Guinness, because why would you drink anything else?
Greg: And I like that they were going for can’t be fun spy movies.
Joe: Yeah. There’s a scene right at the end where Taron Edgerton is like, right before the kind of final battle he snuck into the the lair and he orders a martini, and it’s the most fun way to order it. He’s like a gin martini, and I want to stirred and like something about the vermouth, like, I, I can’t remember.
Joe: Do we have that clip?
Clip: And remember, try to blend in. Would, sir, care for a drink?
Clip: Martini.
Clip: Gin. Not vodka. Obviously. Stirred for 10s while glancing at an opened bottle of vermouth. Thank you.
Greg: The greatest.
Joe: Perfect, greatest.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: It was one of those, like, five stars. No notes. Like, exactly. Nailed it.
Greg: Exactly.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: Oh, my gosh, I am ready to watch this movie again.
Joe: I know, seriously. And I need some scotch. Right. This like you do.
Greg: Need some scotch. Yeah. There is a moral core to this movie, and I’d like to play a little bit of what the King’s Men are up to. This is Colin Firth about to beat up everybody in a bar? In a bar for the first time? Let’s let’s listen to this.
Clip: Manners maketh.
Clip: Man.
Clip: Do you know what that means?
Clip: Let me teach you a lesson.
Greg: He uses his umbrella to send mostly drunken like Stein had a bad guy. Yeah.
Clip: Are we going to stand around here all day, or are we going to fight?
Greg: I like that he has an umbrella. I like that the King’s men have umbrellas that are also, like, bulletproof and can, you know, turn into all different kinds of guns. It’s ridiculous. But, Joe, what do you think of manners? Maketh man that. What do you think of the moral core of this movie?
Joe: It is perfect in every way. One that is my one of my favorite scenes. I remember actually showing Milo that scene because we were talking about manners or something like that. And I was like, just for that moment, because the setup for it is like they’re drinking in this bar. And then kind of people that Taron Edgerton is family knows kind of come over and they’re like, yeah.
Joe: And to this point we are seeing Colin Firth as just this like high brow. Yeah. English person we’ve seen in every movie doesn’t know how to hold himself in a fight at all. And you think he’s going to leave? Like they’re like kind of saying, we’re going to beat you up if you don’t leave. And he’s like, okay.
Joe: And he goes over and as he’s saying, manners make it the man. He’s locking the door so that they’re locked inside, which is so awesome. And then you have one of the best action scenes that you’re just the unexpectedness of Colin Firth kicking everybody’s ass.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: Is so perfect. Then he, like, sits down and finishes his drink and goes, I needed that. I was feeling a bit emotional. It’s like again, no notes. Perfect. Like stuck the landing on it. It was amazing.
Greg: Yeah. He connects what he’s just done to how he was feeling about his colleague Lancelot being killed. There’s actually, like an emotional maturity to. Yeah, you’re just not going to find that in most great bad movies.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah. You’re not going to get emotional maturity and a kick ass action sequence all at the same time unless you come to this podcast is what we’re saying.
Greg: Yeah, yeah. But also like just things that are clearly for like 13 year olds. Yeah. Which is just amazing that they’re able to squeeze all that into one movie.
Joe: We haven’t mentioned what’s her name with Roxy Rock? Yeah, with the legs of.
Greg: Oh, sure. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about her. Well, first of all, we should say that in the graphic novel she is a man, and they actually almost cast a man in this role. And then they decided not to. And they went with her because of her dance moves. She was just an agile kind of action star in, in the making.
Greg: She was just a natural born. So she’s in Tiger Rage, she’s in Star Trek Beyond, Justin Lin’s Star Trek movie. She’s in Atomic Blond, The Mummy, she was in Argyle, but most importantly, Joe. She was the star of Rebel Moon, wasn’t she? Part one in part two.
Joe: Yes she is.
Greg: I need to get you on the record right now. Are we going to get to Rebel Moon? I don’t want to. And I think you do. So what are we going to do here?
Joe: I don’t know that I can commit to it. I’ve seen.
Greg: The first two.
Joe: Rebel moons. I have started the director’s cut of both of the first one.
Greg: The Snyder.
Joe: Cut, and I couldn’t get through it.
Greg: Oh, no. Okay.
Joe: I will say, for his use of slow mo alone, it is probably worth doing a Zack Snyder movie. I don’t know if the Rebel Moon ones are worth it. It was. It’s famously his take on kind of the Star Wars. Yeah, yeah, averse. I think there was some conversations at a different point where he was going to make like a standalone movies that lived in that world where I wanted it to go and where it went are two different places.
Greg: Okay, okay.
Joe: Like classic Zack Snyder movies, they are beautiful to look at. The CGI that he gets is top notch, and what he brings to each scene is amazing. Okay, the story is just awful. And so one note I tried again to watch the director’s cut and it’s even worse. Like it’s somehow worse. I think there are other Zack Snyder movies that we could probably do that would be better.
Greg: If there was one Zack Snyder movie. What’s the first movie that comes to mind that we should watch on great bad movies in the Snyder verse?
Joe: That what was his first movie? I have seen some movies that are not terrible. Zack Snyder.
Greg: Movie, is it 300 with Gerard Butler? I think it’s I.
Joe: Think it is 300.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: And it’s probably only saved because it’s got Gerard Butler in it.
Greg: Yeah. I think we get to has fallen before we get to 300.
Joe: I agree.
Greg: Okay.
Joe: There’s just something about. I don’t dislike Zack Snyder as much as you do, but I can’t say that I like him or like his films either. There’s something about them that feels a little soulless to me in his. Kind of got a little bit of a Michael Bay quality to me.
Greg: 100.
Joe: Percent of like, just because you can do all of this stuff doesn’t mean you should. And the story arcs just kind of fall flat. And once you’ve seen one Zack Snyder film, they all kind of have the same tone to them. There’s no humor there. They are so melodramatic and they take themselves so seriously, which is really hilarious on one side.
Joe: But it’s not a universe that I really want to spend time in either. It’s pretty brutal and misogynistic. And so I would say if we did one, it would be 300 only because of of our friend Gerard Butler.
Greg: Give me Justin Lin every day of the week over here. Yeah, but I appreciate that. He cast Sofia Botella, who was a dancer, and a bunch of music videos before she was in this movie, and then she was in just a bunch of really awesome action movies. I think she might be one of those people where even if the movie, like The Mummy wasn’t a good movie, but I think she was probably good in it.
Greg: Yeah, I think she’s a pretty solid presence in movies, even if they aren’t great. Yeah, I.
Joe: Would agree.
Greg: With that. And in this movie she plays a solid henge person. Yeah, she has these blades for feet. I guess she was like an amputee at some point, and she uses it to her fighting advantage.
Joe: And any excuse they have for her to cut a person or a thing in to use it to great effect. And it is awesome and ridiculous. And I am, because of how this movie is done, where it rides. That line of this is ridiculous, right? This is really ridiculous that. Yeah. And you’re like, yes, it’s ridiculous that she’s got prosthetic feet that are also swords that are the sharpest things in the world, but somehow it works.
Joe: And, you know, she doesn’t have a lot to do in the movie. But what she does, she does well. And so, you know, to me it’s, it’s in the, the offing with, you know, the famous James Bond villains of, you know, jaws and Odd Job and those sorts of characters where.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: You know, that the, the good guy and the bad guy and are going to have to have a fight to the death at the end and she’s that she’s the bad guy or the bad girl in this and it’s awesome.
Greg: She’s in basically every scene that Samuel Jackson’s in. She’s kind of like it for him. She’s like delivering the laptops and stuff as well.
Joe: Yeah, like his personal assistant slash bodyguard. Slash it. Slash whatever.
Greg: Sophia’s got a lot of jobs in this in this role here. But I like that. You know, she’s holding her own in scenes with Samuel L Jackson and their their rapport between the two of them. The between the two characters. Pretty good.
Joe: I agree. Yeah. Not bad at all.
Greg: And I like that she was a dude in the graphic novel and they and they gave it to her for the movie. Another big difference in between the graphic novel and the movie, by the way, is in the graphic novel, we first see their test of the SIM card tech, making everyone kind of become the bassist version of themselves at a wedding.
Greg: In the graphic novel and in this movie, it’s a it’s like a hate church in Kentucky. And that is one of the moments in the movie where for me personally, it’s like, this is just so over the line, and I bet if I was British, this would be the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. But because I’m an American, I’m like, there are just words being used in this church that I just are a little rough for me to hear in a film.
Greg: Yeah. Did you feel this way in 2015? I felt like, oh, okay, they’re really trying to push it. But in 2026, I was like, wow, this is this is really rough.
Joe: I felt like it was a little too much, even when I’m the first time I saw it. Yeah, I know what they’re doing for like kind of revivalist church, but they’re just spouting they have the preacher saying the most offensive things. Yeah. And it’s hard to watch. And like that scene, that moment in the movie. I have to just like, okay, I know what they’re trying to do.
Joe: They’re just pushing it to the edge. Yeah, but they didn’t need to do that. It feels like it feels like risqué, and yeah, a little it feels over the line.
Greg: So what happens is there’s this basically hate church saying the worst things about people. And then Samuel L Jackson tests out his tech and they all start trying to kill each other, and they all start trying. They try to kill Colin Firth. And Colin Firth has also been taken over. And so he’s just killing everybody there. And so inside a church, everybody’s dying.
Greg: And it is this awesome 3.5 minute pre John Wick John Wick scene basically. Wait was it when did John Wick come out.
Joe: It’s right around the same time.
Greg: Okay okay.
Joe: But it’s it’s a it’s a pre extraction single shot right. Yeah. It’s a single shot action sequence. That is the most violent ridiculous thing you’ve ever seen. And it’s amazing. It’s an amazing feat of just action cinematography.
Greg: Right.
Joe: Right. On top of the just like over the top, we’re going to say every offensive word we can say to let you know that these are really bad people so that you can feel good when they’re being killed, basically, right.
Greg: Each time I’ve watched this, I thought, I don’t love how this makes me feel. Yeah, I don’t like that we had to paint these people with such an evil brush, but now I’m okay with all of them dying. There’s something about that hard swing that I was not excited about each time that I’ve watched this movie. And maybe it’s because Colin Firth and Taron Egerton are just so good at being heartfelt.
Greg: And but there’s also kind of this question mark of why is Colin Firth suddenly just okay with killing everybody? That’s a little weird. Yeah. This movie came out like three months after John Wick, by the way. So we had seen this at this point, but then we found out that Colin Firth was not in control of his body.
Greg: He was also susceptible to the tech. But it’s 3.5 minutes. Freebird, the song is playing while they’re doing it. It’s happening in a church. I mean, it’s not not awesome. Yeah, yeah. Here’s what you need to know, Joe. This scene was seven minutes long and they cut out half of it to make it palatable.
Joe: Wow. That’s crazy. I want to see this. Full seven minutes is what I want to see.
Greg: Eddie Hamilton, who edited I think, the last three mission of possible movies, edited this movie. And that might be why he got the Mission Impossible movies, but they had a seven minute long entirely over the line could not be released in any country on the planet, and even even so, when they cut it down to three and a half and really took out the worst things, and I think they were, they realized this is just too much like we’ve we’ve overdone it.
Greg: We need to bring it back, which I think was what their plan, let’s overdo it and then we’ll bring it back. But this scene was actually cut out of a few different territories altogether. Wow. Like I don’t think the scene was was in Germany, you know, there were different places that were just like, we’re not going to release this in our country.
Joe: I mean, I get it because the three minutes that are in there are rough. Yeah. I mean, it’s.
Greg: It’s.
Joe: Pretty rough. Some of the most brutal action scenes you’ve seen. Yeah. I’m trying to think of I think I had seen this before, I saw John Wick and it’s I mean, what’s left in there is pretty intense. Yeah. So what did they cut? The four minutes that they cut. Must have been. Yeah. Crazy. It reminds me of the fact that there’s somewhere around from Mission Impossible seven.
Joe: I’m exaggerating, but not on purpose. But like the train sequence, there’s like a two hour train sequence or an hour train sequence. They cut down to 20 minutes at the end.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: Like I want to see that cut. I want to see the seven minutes that they cut just because I’m curious, but what is in the movie is pretty crazy as well.
Greg: Pretty crazy. Yeah. It took him nine days to shoot it. It’s like 30 shots stitched together so that it seems like one. And it’s a lot like when they were filming the extraction movies, where they are really trying to stitch together perfectly, you know, as they shoot it. Yeah. And so the shots were very precise. They would film about 15 seconds at a time.
Greg: I guess. That’s crazy. It’s Colin Firth doing about 80% of the stunts. He trained like three hours a day, seven days a week for six months.
Joe: That’s wild. I mean, I love a single shot. So as soon as it started and I didn’t notice it the first time, obviously the subsequent watching and, you know, my love of extraction, which I have watched within the last month.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: And I love that scene in extraction. And this scene, you can see the cuts like once you kind of get the rhythm of it, you can see where they cut it. Yeah, sure. But even just the amount of work it takes to put a scene together like that to make it feel like there aren’t cuts is crazy.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: And to think that they did something longer than that, and just to the explicitness of the violence in that scene cannot be understated in any means. I mean, it literally ends with someone being impaled and his head slowly sliding down. What he has been impaled on.
Greg: It was the pastor.
Joe: Yeah. The pastor. It’s like you don’t put a scene like that in a movie for no reason, or because you think it’s going to, you know, it’s a hard r moment for me. And it was I appreciate it. It was like a tip of the cap to like how far they took it. And also the first time I watched I was like, oh, woof, that was a little rough to watch.
Joe: Even for me.
Greg: It was the calling card of this movie. All kinds of different ideas are coming together to make this movie, but I think that scene is the one where people were like, you got to see it.
Joe: What I have come to appreciate about action scenes is how much choreography and how much work goes into making something like that come off.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: And so I have a deep appreciation for just the skill it takes to put a scene like that together.
Greg: Yeah. Yep. All of the blood in that scene is digital, okay. Like everybody that gets shot or whatever. There’s kind of like some digital blood splatter. But then at the end, when they show kind of the whole place, there’s almost no blood around.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: On purpose, I mean, totally on purpose. They were toning it all down so that it would seem sillier. I guess this was like the last thing I wanted to talk about with this movie is he was trying to make this campy thing, and there’s a there’s a scene at the end where it turns out implants that have happened in all these bad people that are supposed to survive.
Greg: I guess the crazy culling that’s going to happen across the planet. And then Samuel Jackson has chosen the people that are going to survive. And there’s like a, there’s like a being good to the planet plot thread. Yeah, that turned sinister. But all of those people, at some point their head explodes.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: But not in a gross way.
Joe: Nope.
Greg: In a totally like, 60s movie dance number way.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And when I saw this in the theater with my buddy Pete Greenberg, we were laughing and, like, applauding as this was happening. It was like, because there was so much joy to this. It’s almost like fireworks are happening. It’s not. The people’s heads are exploding like it’s so clearly just can’t be in fun that it’s just pure joy.
Greg: But Matthew Vaughn fought really hard on this. He just kept doing iteration after iteration. Everybody kept doing like, photorealistic, like heads blowing up. And he was like, that’s not what we’re doing here. This is supposed to seem like almost like fireworks, you know? And so I think it was like a third or fourth pass where you found somebody who was willing to do something just ridiculous.
Greg: And they got it.
Joe: Again, it takes a really skilled hand to walk that line between extreme violence that they are portraying. And also the tone of the movie is kind of irreverent. And we’re playing this scene for laugh. Like, if you put all that together on a whiteboard and said, okay, do.
Greg: That.
Joe: You’d be like, that’s a really tough challenge that you’ve given someone. And I think that Matthew Vaughn nails it every time in this movie.
Greg: Here’s what it sounds like during that scene.
Clip: No.
Clip: It’s just unbelievable.
Greg: It’s perfect.
Clip: Yeah.
Greg: I am not culturally aware enough to know who Busby Berkeley actually is, but I think he’s going for Busby Berkeley here.
Joe: I’m not either, so.
Greg: It’s just incredible. So thank you, Matthew Vaughn, for the work you did on this. And a lot of risks going on here. Not all of them paid off, but oh my gosh, what a great movie.
Joe: Like I think he sticks the landing 80% of the time, if not 90%.
Greg: I go 85.
Joe: Yeah. And we forgive him for the 15% that he misses on this, because the rest of it is so perfect in every way.
Greg: The whole point of the show is.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: It doesn’t have to be 100%. There is so much greatness in this movie. Yeah. And for me, it’s 85%.
Joe: Okay, I’ll go with that.
Greg: And so. Oh my gosh, there’s five times more greatness in this movie than I would have needed for it to be a movie where I was like, you know what? That movie’s pretty great.
Joe: Yeah, exactly.
Greg: Well, Joe, I’m a little bit worried that we’ve talked about this movie, and there are people out there who have no idea what the movie Kingsman The Secret Service is all about. And so can we pretend for just a moment that we’re walking down the aisles of a of an old school like Blockbuster Video? We are looking around for what movie we’re going to rent with our friends that night.
Greg: We’re picking up these boxes off the shelf. We’re reading the back to see what the synopsis says. Could we do that for this movie?
Joe: Oh, I think so for sure.
Greg: All right. Well, then it seems to me it’s time for the back of the box.
Joe: Let’s do it.
Clip: It’s the back of the packs.
Joe: The fate of the world is in the hands of a secret organization, the Kingsmen. They live in the shadows. Part James Bond, part Sam Spade. Now faced with their hardest mission yet one which has invaded their very own ranks, can their brash new recruit Eggsy bring them into the future, or is it too late? The countdown is on, and there isn’t a second despair before the world is remade in a tech billionaire’s image.
Joe: Dot, dot dot.
Greg: That’s really just always going to work in the time that we’re in right now. This movie came out 11 years ago, and really, it’s just still like, I wonder how tech billionaires are going to ruin our lives.
Joe: Yeah. Pretty much.
Greg: All right. Well, Joe, that is a perfect marketing back in the box. But that’s not the show that we have. We want to hear where Joe Scott Tucker is really coming from. And so can we get the real honest Joe Sky Tucker back in the box?
Joe: Absolutely. All right. This is a movie we have seen before. The fish out of water, the new recruit who must learn to conform, and the conservative organization that must evolve with the times. We have the tyrannical bad guy hellbent on making his plans come true. It is based on a graphic novel and rides the line between fast and action movie trope in the best of ways.
Joe: On paper, it is a formulaic bish Bosch, and yet in its delivery and approach, we have something much, much more. It all starts with Samuel L Jackson as the bad guy with a lisp and a revulsion for blood. It’s funny in ways that it shouldn’t be, and action scenes that are somehow brutal, silly, and a joy to watch all at the same time.
Joe: The Kingsman reminds us that well-made attention to detail will always be better than poorly made originality. It is the perfect popcorn movie, so sit back, relax and enjoy.
Greg: Wow, wow. Even if you don’t love every aspect of this movie, yeah, might be a good time.
Joe: Absolutely. There are. There are parts of this movie that I think should have been cut. Yep. And the fact that they aren’t I can live with because the rest of it is so perfect.
Greg: When you’re trying to like, ride the line, are you just going to cross it every once in a while?
Joe: I think.
Greg: So, yeah.
Joe: You know, as as someone said to me and I don’t remember who, but if you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much room. And so to me, it’s the same thing of like, they’re trying to ride that line and they cross it a few different times.
Greg: Yep.
Joe: And to me, we forgive them for those moments because the rest of it, because they are trying to push the envelope in different ways. Is worth the outcome, is worth it. But because of that, you do have to have a little bit of forgiveness and grace when they cross the line and it doesn’t quite stick the landing.
Greg: Yep. Totally. All right, Joe, should we get to the box office in critical response to this movie?
Joe: Oh, I cannot wait.
Greg: I started to tell the story that Matthew Vaughn agreed to make another X-Men movie, but then he had heard that there were a few different spy movies that were kind of in the works at different studios, and so he decided to drop the X-Men movie and go to this one. There was a downside to that for him, though.
Greg: He basically cut his budget in half. The X-Men movie was going to be like a $200 million movie, and he had to make this one for probably around $80 million. Sometimes it gets up to like 90 something, but he basically had to make a bond movie for less than half of what. Bond movies are made for. And so, you know, you get a car chase where it’s interesting because one of the cars is going backwards.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And we call that an action scene in this movie. Yeah. But anyways, the budget of this movie is somewhere between 81 million and 94 million, and it made in America 128 million, and it made overseas 286 million. So this is a $414 million global movie for the box office.
Joe: So investors are happy they made their money and then some on this movie.
Greg: For sure 100%. Yeah. So let’s get to what the critics said. We always start with our hometown paper, The Seattle Times. Soren Anderson wrote in the Seattle Times in 2015, a cleverly constructed homage to the bond pictures, particularly the early ones starring Sean Connery. Before everything got so deadly serious in the Daniel Craig era. Three out of four stars.
Joe: Yeah, I think that’s fair. I think it’s a little low, but, you know.
Greg: A little low. But also really gets to why they made this movie. The Daniel Craig movies were a little bit too serious. Emily Saint James in Vox said it’s basically Harry Potter with spies three and a half out of five stars, which is what you said earlier.
Joe: Yeah, yeah.
Greg: Awesome. Wesley Morris, who you might think would love this movie, said any sense of triumph is purely at the level of stunt craft. The rest feels less than the sum of the moving parts.
Joe: Interesting. Yeah. I feel like he missed the point on this movie.
Greg: He missed it. I don’t disagree with him.
Joe: Agreed.
Greg: Yeah, I feel like I could. I could have walked away. But also, I’m surprised he felt that way about this movie. Christopher Orr in the Atlantic said frequently reactionary, bordering on reprobates. But it’s also a tremendous amount of fun.
Joe: Also ring the Bell, because that’s probably a good title for this podcast.
Greg: Steve Tiley of the Toronto Sun set. It’s not necessarily trying to reinvent bond so much as reminding us that there are other games in town, and they can be as enjoyable to play four out of five stars.
Joe: Yeah, agree with that.
Greg: Nell Minow from Movie Mom in 2015 now writes for Roger Ebert, said a film that began with a confident sense of sophistication, wit and edge knows what it is not, but not what it is.
Joe: I don’t know that I agree 100%, but I also know where they’re coming from on that.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Manohla Dargis from The New York Times says, the problem is that Mr. Vaughn has no interest in, or perhaps understanding of violence as a cinematic tool. He doesn’t use violence. He squanders it.
Joe: I disagree. I would just say that.
Greg: Okay, well, something happened when I read that and I thought, I completely agree with that. And so I went and read the opening paragraph of her review of this movie, and it’s kind of amazing. So let me read it to you. Okay. Okay. If you don’t mind, the church full of parishioners who are slaughtered in the sound to the sounds of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird”, or the Arab terrorists who are blown to smithereens, or the guns that are pointed at pet dogs, or the human heads that explode like firebombed melons.
Greg: As Pomp and Circumstance plays, it may be possible to enjoy Kingsman The Secret Service. That said, as this bludgeoning movie grinds to a halt, its gears clogged by viscera and narrative overkill. Even those who enjoy go go gore may end up yearning for the soft touch and subtleties of Guy Ritchie.
Joe: Wow. That’s amazing. That’s an amazing paragraph on this movie. I wish I could disagree with anything that they said, and yet I kind of disagree with what they said.
Greg: I feel like.
Joe: It’s one of those like, I get where they’re coming from. And yet I enjoyed every bit of what they’re want us to be kind of pearl clutching about.
Greg: Yep, yep. Interestingly, Matthew Vaughn produced a bunch of Guy Ritchie movies.
Joe: Yeah, I saw that. I looked at his. I was like, that tracks as basically what what I came to.
Greg: So anyways, yeah, I’m all over the place with this movie. I don’t disagree with that, but I also degree with The Australian who said it’s hugely enjoyable, three and a half out of five stars.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely.
Greg: Betsy Sharkey from the Los Angeles Times says if you can forgive the failings for at least some of the two plus hour running time, Kingsman serves up its share of entertaining froth.
Joe: Entertaining froth could be a name for the show.
Greg: So okay, okay. We’re finding all kinds of names in the show.
Joe: I know this is awesome.
Greg: All right. Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair says Kingsman has a spastic verve. You got to get verve in every review they can. Seriously, Kingsman has a spastic verve that turns what could otherwise be gratuitous and rude into an act of spunky bravado, like it’s making good on a dare. Im surprised they got away with some of it.
Joe: Agreed. That is the best review. I am surprised they got away with a lot of the things that are in this movie.
Greg: And when I watch this movie, I think, how on earth did Colin Firth read this and still decide to be in it? Yeah, seriously. Washington Post says, like the rookie, who knows that you have to make a few mistakes while following the master. The movie shrugs off its missteps with a wink and a smile and makes them easy to forgive.
Greg: Three out of four stars.
Joe: I agree with that.
Greg: Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle, we read, makes Mick LaSalle quite a bit. He says the mix of comedy and corpses in Kingsman becomes callous and clueless. In addition to seeming about 50 years behind the times.
Joe: So fan is what you’re saying? Oh man.
Greg: But so interesting that they were really trying to harken back to the 60s, and this movie came out in 2015. He kind of nailed it.
Joe: Yeah, exactly.
Greg: What they were seeing as a positive. He saw as a negative. It’s interesting.
Joe: Callous and clueless also could be a name for this podcast. So.
Greg: All right, I have one more that I want to read. It’s James Rocchi from The Wrap. He says a startlingly enjoyable and well-made action film leavened by humor and slicked along by style, made by, for and about people who’ve seen far too many bond films.
Joe: I could not agree more with that. I’m in that review and I’m mad about it. Basically.
Greg: Four out of five stars is when he gives it on that one. All right, Joe, is it time for us to get to drinking games for the Kingsman?
Joe: Oh my God, I am so excited to hear what your drinking games are. I have a sneaking suspicion that we have a lot of overlap, but we’ll start with our stock drinking games. So again, you don’t have to be drinking alcohol. Could be water. Milk if you’re in enemy of the state and going to bed.
Greg: Just voids. Voids of milk.
Joe: Yeah. Voids the milk. Could be a smoothie. Could be whatever. Coffee. I famously really only drink wine. Water and coffee are the three drinks of choice for me, so, you know, there you are. But sometimes during the day, it could be water. So these are our drinking games. Silent helicopter, you mentioned this opens with a silent helicopter opens.
Joe: Yeah. Strong start. We also have and I kind of have in the silent helicopter genre, just random planes like landing. So they have like a scene where they land the plane into a mountain. To me, like any aircraft doing stuff like that is, you know, you’re drinking. So we have a push in and enhance. We have a slow motion moment when people share a slow motion look in the middle of chaos.
Joe: Explosion, silent suffering, ringing in the ears are a fair amount of explosions in this. And hand grenades that are lighters that make massive explosions that probably are far bigger than they should be. Yeah, this one might be a little divisive. The opening credits scene locks into place with the sound, so we have them doing some animation of the opening title sequence, but not the title of the movie necessarily.
Joe: So that’s kind of a right drink if you want to.
Greg: And the reason that is, is because we’ve just been through the sadness of X’s dad dying. Yeah, basically the opening of Guardians of the Galaxy. Six months later. Yeah.
Joe: So yeah. So there is the score does kind of rise up a little bit. You might hear a little silent low wishing of the credit, but it’s on the edge. So it’s kind of a coin flip there. Does not flash back to dialog. There is some rough CGI, especially that plane landing in a mountain is not the easiest scene to watch.
Joe: Great bad shots are everywhere. Any time there’s a shot of a street at night, they are inexplicably wet. It is glorious.
Greg: 100%. Yeah.
Joe: No. Give us the room. And no Interpol. Unfortunately. So those are our stock drinking games. I toss it to you. Greg’s fine art. What is your first drinking game that you found? Stand alone to this movie.
Greg: Anytime they say the the words oxfords, not brogues. Oh, take a drink.
Joe: I love that, that’s awesome. I’m going to combine a couple. But anytime they mention alcohol, the age of alcohol or an old alcohol. So you have the 62 Dalmore, the Guinness, and there’s a few different moments within it that they have fancy drinks in this. So take a drink when.
Greg: They’re so mine. Mine is less anytime they mention it. My next one is anytime someone sips a brown liquor drink. Take a drink.
Joe: Oh my God, that is perfect. That is perfect in every way. I have take a drink every time. Mark Strong is on screen with a clipboard.
Greg: So.
Greg: I love it I love it, that’s incredible. My next one is anytime they show SIM cards, anytime they mention SIM cards. So these are two different drinking games. Anytime they show a SIM card, anytime they say SIM card.
Joe: Awesome, I.
Greg: Love that.
Joe: Anytime someone is cut in half with a leg. Swords take.
Greg: A drink. Yeah, that makes sense. My next one is anytime they say the words manners maketh man.
Joe: Oh, I have that one as well. That is awesome. I have anytime they say bespoke also.
Greg: What? How many times do they say bespoke in this movie?
Joe: At least twice. Maybe three times. When they talk about a bespoke suit and the need for, like why that’s important in the world.
Greg: So were there bulletproof suits in James, in John Wick in the first one.
Joe: Not in the first one. And all the rest of them, they’re.
Greg: In this one. There’s bulletproof suits. And so John Wick stole that from this. We can safely.
Joe: Say that. I think we can.
Greg: Say that. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Anytime they say the word King’s men or kings, man.
Joe: That’s awesome. Anytime. Samuel L Jackson is wearing a different hat.
Greg: Take a drink. Anytime they show the scar on someone’s neck. Kind of like by their ear. Which was the implant that Sam Jackson did. Take a drink.
Joe: I have that one as well. Anytime someone is shot by someone doing a cartwheel, take a drink.
Greg: And what’s your estimate for how often that happens? How many times does that happen?
Joe: At least three times in this one. Wow, someone is flipping over. While shooting.
Greg: Yeah, totally. Just solid, simple action filmmaking there. Yeah. Pretty awesome. Yeah. And and I would just say for like for people playing along, like there are some drinking games like Manners Maketh the man, which are just so like of this movie that you got to have a drink for that, like finish your drink. Yeah, sure. To me it’s.
Greg: Does it happen? Two to like four times within a movie to really make it a drinking game. Like it’s got to happen like in the first act, the second act and the third act. So like the scar on the neck, we see that multiple times throughout the movie. When I’m looking for drinking games in a movie, it’s got to happen a few different times.
Greg: Not just like quickly in a row. And the cartwheels happen multiple times. And it was awesome. Yeah, they also make reference to Eggsy being a Olympic level gymnast, so that when he is doing a cartwheel at the end of the movie shooting someone, you’re like, I don’t question it. Yeah, exactly. You’re like, oh, that’s good screenwriting right there.
Greg: That’s amazing. All right. My next one is every time there’s hacking. Take a drink. Can we just say that, like anytime they’re doing something with a computer. Yeah okay. Okay. Because there is stuff where it’s like, there’s, like, code everywhere on the screen and whatnot. I think we should just limit it to that because, yeah, it does happen quite a bit.
Greg: And my, my perfect drinking game is like 3 to 5 times I think. Yeah. So anytime there’s hacking. Take a drink. Yeah absolutely I have. Anytime Samuel L Jackson is either talking about or is demonstrating how squeamish he is around blood. Take a drink. Sure. Which is a solid bad guy move. Yeah, yeah. I’m out. Do you have any more?
Greg: Let me see. I have any time. Something is sliced perfectly with the leg. Swords that aren’t a body part. Take a drink. Okay. And my last one is anytime someone is aiming a gun at a dog, take a drink. Wow. I also have heads exploding, but that’s kind of finish a drink. That happens twice, but you only really get the full effect at the end.
Greg: So interesting scene in this movie when Taron Egerton dog is named JB and they say is that named after James Bond? And is it named after Jason born? He says no, it’s named after Jack Bauer, Kiefer Sutherland from 24, which really ages poorly. I want to say yes. Yes it does. Like of the time. Spot on 2014 2015.
Greg: It’s great. Now not so much. We don’t really think about that show. What was that show on? It was what it was like. I want to say like 2005 to like 2012 or something like that in that range. So it would have been of the time. But yeah, you’re totally right. It does not age well at all. Yeah.
Greg: All right. Joe, well, there are things in this movie that make it add up to a great bad movie, but it’s hard to actually say what those are without you explaining it to us. That’s right. It’s time for Joe’s trope Lightning Round, aka signs. You might be watching a great bad movie. Awesome. So I have two new tropes.
Greg: We have the fish out of water main character trope. So we have Taron Edgerton coming in, getting trained fish out of water, and we have a new trope which I can’t believe we haven’t had before. So we have guns in phone cases. We have duffel bags full of guns, but we don’t have a weapons room. What? How did we miss that?
Greg: John Wick has it. I feel like 20 of movies we have watched have had a room full of weapons. So a weapons room. Hello? What were we thinking? Missed opportunity. Amazing. Okay. Sound effects on things that don’t make sound effects. Anytime. There’s hacking, for example, and they’re showing it on the screen, it’s got to make a noise. The name of a movie being said by a character of the Kingsmen.
Greg: Although they don’t say the Kingsman Secret Service. Technically, we have a ragtag crew. We have the trope of the hero being knocked down and must work hard to become the master and get stronger again, especially because he doesn’t make it at the end and then must prove himself to be the true hero at the end. You have kind of an odd couple of him, of Colin Firth and Taron Edgerton together, downloading a file under pressure, checking if a gun is loaded and a call trace timer as well in this movie.
Greg: And that is our trope lightning round. I toss it to you. Greg’s fine art for the very most important questions we could answer. Oh my gosh, it is time for us to get to important questions. Joe. First important question right out of the gate here. Did this movie hold up then in 2015? Yeah, I think it held up then.
Greg: Absolutely. Yeah. I’m going to say it with a little bit of those voice. Yeah. Little like, you know sort of. Yeah, yeah I think I know that. Does it hold up now. It does. It holds up to me in a way in some way is better now as we’ve seen for me, it’s in some ways a precursor of what action movies were were going towards.
Greg: So it’s slightly ahead of its time. It doesn’t get as much credit as John Wick does. And that’s. Yep. That is unfortunate because I think that some of what this movie is doing deserves to be celebrated the same way we celebrate John Wick. Agreed? Agreed. How hard do they sell the good guy in this movie? Not as hard as you would think.
Greg: You know, it’s a little bit of like, who is the good guy as a negative. Yeah. Is it Colin Firth? They do a little bit of like Samuel L Jackson is trying to figure out who the secret society is. Yeah, but we don’t have like the classic moment in this. So we sort of do. But it’s the classiest selling of the good guy I think we’ve ever had in in a great bad movie.
Greg: Let’s listen to it.
Clip: Your father was a brave man, a good man. And having read your files, I think it’d be bitterly disappointed in the choices you’ve made.
Clip: You can’t talk to me like that.
Clip: Huge IQ, great performance at primary school, and it all went tits up. Drugs, petty crime. Never had a job.
Clip: Oh, you think there’s a lot of jobs going around here?
Clip: There doesn’t explain why you gave up your hobbies. First prize. Regional under tens. Gymnastics. Two years in a row, your coach had you pegged as Olympic team material.
Clip: Yeah, well, when you grow up around someone like my stepdad, you pick up new hobbies pretty quickly.
Clip: Of course. Always someone else’s fault. Who’s to blame for you quitting the Marines? You’re halfway through training, doing brilliantly. But you gave.
Clip: Up because my mum went mental banging on about losing me as well as my dad didn’t want me being cannon fodder for snobs like you. Judging people like me from your ivory towers with no thought about why we do what we do. We ain’t got much choice. You get me. And if we was born with the same silver spoon up our asses, we’d do just as well as you, if not better.
Greg: I mean, that’s Olympic level selling of the good guy and getting, like, character and life story in there. Yeah, not just a reading of a dossier. I forgot about that scene. And it’s the scene in the bar right before the fight scene. Yep, yep. And it is so perfect. So forgive me. Selling of a good guy is the is perfect.
Greg: It’s really incredible. Yeah. Like real people worked on this movie which is nice to see. But Joe, how hard do they sell the bad guy in this movie? I feel like I’m nervous to answer this, because I know that they have a kind of a selling of the bad guy, where the good guys are talking about Samuel L Jackson and what he’s trying to do, but we don’t have a scene that I can remember that is like selling of a good guy.
Greg: But so it’s mid I guess what I would I think you’re right. I think it’s peppered throughout but not, it’s not as bad as like a Steven Seagal movie. Let’s just put it that way. It’s not like it. It’s. Yeah. It’s better. Yeah. All right. Next important question. Joe, why is there romance in this movie? It’s glorious. There’s barely any romance in this movie.
Greg: Is there romance in this movie? Not really. I won’t spoil it for anyone. There’s some unforgiveness that happens towards the end of this movie that could have been cut at the end, but there is not real romance being a parody of a the end of a bond movie. Trying to like one up it. Yeah, but yeah, there’s no there’s no real romance in this movie.
Greg: Let me read you a review that I skipped over that kind of speaks to this. The this is New York daily News, Elizabeth Weitzman the violence flies repellent over the top, and the finale features an extended joke so insanely sexist it sends us out on a seriously sour note. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah. All right, Joe, are we bad people.
Joe: For loving this movie?
Greg: Probably.
Joe: We probably are. Right. I think we are.
Greg: Probably okay. It’s not like some of our movies are like, for sure. Like, probably like there’s a chance. But yeah, probably. Does it deserve a sequel? There’s something about this movie. And I have seen the sequels that have come from this movie, and so I feel like it deserved better. Yeah. So I would say yes, but it it didn’t get the sequels.
Greg: It should have agreed. I think I turned off the sequel, to be honest. Does it deserve a prequel? I can’t believe I’m saying this. Yes, I think it does. I would watch Kingsman, Colin Firth, James Bond kicking ass movies all day, every day. So I think it does. The prequel that it got was Ralph Fiennes in the World War One era.
Greg: Yeah, the King’s Mantle, the original, the origin story of the Kingsman. I didn’t finish that one, I finished I’ve only watched the sequel of this movie once, and I couldn’t get through the the second, the prequel. So can you tell us what that prequel was like? It’s a movie that I have almost watched again and again to like.
Greg: I feel like I started it, it didn’t kind of grab me, and I got about halfway through and I was like, yeah, I’ll finish it later and never did. Okay, okay. It wasn’t terrible, but I feel like the sequel and the prequel were missing some of the irreverent heart, which is a weird thing to say about this movie.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, that this one had. Yeah. Agreed. But I would try them again. I don’t feel like the door is completely shut on the sequel or the. I don’t think it is. I think there’s actually like two movies that are out there that have stalled and not been made. There are two Kingsman ideas out there, and I think one of them is to kind of like put a bow on these characters.
Greg: So maybe we’ll get that someday through some streamer. Awesome. Speaking of streamers, by the way, did you see the movie Argyle on Apple TV? I have not seen Argyle, but I have. I have almost watched Argyle. I think you watched it and said not to watch it. And so I was like, okay, I’m out. It kind of annoyed me.
Greg: Okay, I didn’t love it. I like everyone involved, but I will just spoil the like end. Credit scene of Argyle. It takes place in the Kingsman averse oh wow, okay, which was not welcome in my mind. I was like, who cares? What are you doing? Yeah, you have to get out of this world, Matthew Vaughn and make other movies.
Greg: But if there’s something else out there, I will watch it. Yeah. Watching this this week definitely kind of reignited my love of the King’s metaverse. All right, Joe, next important question. And I’m so glad we’re getting this one. Finally, the world gets an answer to this question. Should it have been nominated for Best picture at the Oscars? I mean, before I answer that, what was nominated against it, but also probably probably yes.
Greg: Let’s see, we got the Big Short. Okay. Based on the Michael Lewis book directed by Adam McKay, Bridge of Spies, a movie I could watch 100 times in a row. Steven Spielberg. It’s a tired dad movie with makes doing the right thing. I’ve not seen it, but oh, it’s great, it’s great. It’s a really good movie. Brooklyn. I don’t know that one.
Greg: Yeah, I don’t know it either. And I mean, it’s only like 11 years ago. Who are we? Yeah, yeah. Mad Max Fury Road, a movie we will for sure got to on this show. I can’t believe that was nominated for Best Picture, by the way. Not that I have anything against it, but it’s surprising. And it’s a great movie.
Greg: The Martian okay. Haven’t seen it. I’ve been told to watch it by like 10 million people, I feel like. So I will watch it at some point. I mean, if you enjoy like, friendship and fun, I think you might like that movie. Yeah, right. I’m out. Yeah. Okay. You’re right. The revenant. Okay. And room. Room. Okay. And the winner, spotlight.
Greg: I feel like there’s ample room for the Kingsman in there, so let’s. Yeah, it’s. I don’t think it wins. No, no, it’s like an honor to be nominated. Yeah. And it’s, you know, they’re just happy to be there. And they’re having the, you know, the shrimp cocktail and they’re drinking their Dalmore 62 whatever. But you know very specific.
Greg: Yeah. But yeah. Throw it in there. Sure. Okay. Great. Okay. That is good to hear. Okay. Brooklyn in 2015 is a romantic period drama directed by John Crowley, written by Nick Hornby. Oh, geez. And it stars Suazo, Roman, Ronan. I’m totally pronouncing her name wrong. Domino. Gleason, Emory. Cohen, Julie Walters, Jim. Broadbent. Wow, that sounds really good, man.
Greg: Got a great cast and great people behind it. I’ll assume it’s amazing and I’ll never watch it. Sorry. Is it in sir or sir? Yeah, but it’s in there. It’s one of those Irish names where the letters mean nothing. And you’re just like a hope and a prayer. Basically, I bet I watched that movie and think it’s the best movie I’ve ever seen.
Greg: Probably. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I apologize to Brooklyn for being ignorant to what you were before. All right, so you’re nominated. It’s in. Yeah. Congratulations. I want to congratulate everyone involved with Kingsman the Secret Service. Yeah, obviously. Go grab a tux, hop in a limo. Make your dreams come true. All right, Joe, how can this movie be fixed? AKA who should be in the remake?
Greg: I am going to be totally honest with you. I don’t have an answer for this. I love this movie as is. I’m sure there’s a way to make it better. There are some pieces at the end, as that critic mentioned, that could be just cut from this. So maybe they need a slightly better editor or, you know, take some of the sophomore humor out of it.
Greg: But what do you have for this as an answer? There’s the princess tonal shift at the end that’s supposed to take kind of bond. And this is the thing that really, like, caused a critical backlash to a movie. But Matthew Vaughn totally said it was. It needed to be in there. They were making fun of bond movies, but I don’t it was not for me.
Greg: And it really kind of negated a bunch of stuff that had happened before it in the movie, so I feel like that should be cut out. I agree he could still do like a man, you know, manners make it man. He could have like, I guess sort of just a bond ending. Maybe there’s something they could do that’s a little bit less all up in your face.
Greg: I also feel like they kind of did Roxy dirty in this movie. I don’t really understand Roxy’s adventure, where she has to, like, go up in the into the atmosphere. That plot point felt a little, I don’t know, stitched on. I’m not sure. I feel like we could have had more with Roxy. I agree. And so I think when I think something that could have happened is she’s up there and when everybody goes evil on the planet, maybe there’s like birds up there, that attacker, maybe the birds are evil.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: It does feel a little bit like a throwaway. And I agree, there’s there’s a way I feel like you could have threaded the needle on the bond ending send up and not been so on the nose, or like they doubled down on the joke at the end. I honestly have to like when I think about this movie, pretend that that doesn’t happen in the movie Jubilee.
Greg: Enjoy it.
Joe: Yeah. Being honest, yeah, it took me out of it. Like the first time I watched it, I was like, wait, what did they really? And I was left instead of like sitting there going, wow, that was a great movie. Going, wait, what did they do at the end there? So yeah, I’m with the critics on this one.
Greg: We didn’t talk about this. Aaron Taylor-Johnson was offered the role of eggs and passed.
Joe: Oh, interesting.
Greg: For the role of Richmond Valentine, Samuel Jackson’s character. There were rumors that Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom cruise were in talks to play that person for the Roxy character. Emma Watson was considered, but they went for Sophie Cookson. So yeah, I really liked the cast that came up with this one.
Joe: I do too.
Greg: So really just a couple things around the edges in your perfect film in every way is what I hear you say exactly right Joe. Next important question what album is this movie?
Joe: I came up with an album and it’s actually a double album because I feel like this is two movies in one, and it is how I want all bands to do double albums where they release them. Not at the same time, because what has happened for me when bands release double albums is like, I listen to one and then not the other.
Joe: And so this is the foals album. Everything Not Saved will be lost part one and part two. Wow. And they’re very different albums. They were at least about nine months, 6 to 9 months apart. And so I really got into the first one. When it first came out, it was great. And then when the second one came out, it was amazing.
Joe: And I didn’t like every double album that I’ve had before that when they come out together, there’s usually one that I like more than another or listen to more, and this allowed me to listen to them like in order. And they’re very different albums. One is more melodic and softer, and one is more just like, we’re going to create, we’re going to do a rock album.
Greg: Yeah.
Joe: They’re both amazing albums in and of themselves, and there’s some crossover of melodies and harmonies that happen across both albums, but it’s how I want all bands to do double albums, kind of how Radiohead did today and, you know, separated by some time, because I feel like one album kind of gets pushed aside for the favorite or the better one, and this allowed me to listen to both of them.
Joe: And so this, this movie is two different movies in one. And so that’s where I came up with what album is this for you? That’s a very pretentious answer that I gave.
Greg: It’s really good though. Were those two albums recorded at the same time? Interesting. I didn’t know that. I think this movie has like a glossy, kind of like tailored suit exterior, but a little bit of like a dirty underbelly.
Joe: Yeah. For sure.
Greg: And so this is Arctic Monkeys am. Oh, I love that. It’s just an incredible album and there is a bit of a duality to it. I feel like the band itself has gone from like at the beginning of this movie, what is wearing is wearing like a tracksuit, and by the end he’s got like the the bulletproof double breasted suit on.
Greg: I feel like that’s what the Arctic Monkeys accomplished with this album. Like, oh, this is a different I think I take this band more seriously now. They went out in the desert, recorded it with the guy from Queens of the Stone age, and there’s a lot of Arctic Monkeys happening in my house right now, and I’m really enjoying it.
Greg: Yeah. Nice. So so I think it’s am by Arctic Monkeys. Perfect. That’s awesome. All right, Joe, it’s come down to this. It’s time for us to rate this movie. We have a scale on this show. Great bad movie. Good bad movie. Okay. Bad movie, bad bad movie. And in case of emergencies, break glass. Awful bad movie. How do you rate this movie?
Joe: I could make a case that it’s a good, bad movie. I’m not going to do that. It’s a great bad movie in my mind, through and through.
Greg: It is.
Joe: Yep. Everything that we love about movies, there are a few moments where we’re like, there’s a little bit of like, why do they do that? Which is exactly why it’s a bad movie. But this is a great, bad movie through and through. To me, it is fun. For me, the biggest like determination of like if you said, do you want to watch this movie right now?
Joe: And my answer isn’t immediately yes. It’s not a great bad movie. And if you said you want to drive to Edmond right now and watch this movie, I’d be like, yes, 100% every single day of the week. So that’s how I read it. What about you? How do you write this movie?
Greg: Yeah, I’m right there with you. Great bad movie. Yeah. I didn’t even think about it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s not at the top of the great bad movie list.
Joe: Yeah, exactly.
Greg: But it’s not a good, bad movie. It’s better than a good, bad movie, for sure. Well, Joe, we did it.
Joe: Yeah, we had the conversation that needed to be had about the Kingsman the Secret Service, or I should say the Kingsman Colon Secret service. The Secret Service. No one else really should have a conversation about this, you know? And if you enjoyed this conversation, find us on Great Bad Movie Show on Instagram or send us an email at great Bob Movie Show at gmail.com or great movie show.
Joe: We want to hear from you, our dear listeners, on what we should be talking about with these movies.
Greg: Just great bad movies.
Joe: Yeah, and like us, tell a hundred of your friends to listen to us and rate us. That’s the only way that really the algorithms will pay attention is the more eyeballs or ears that are on us, the better. So, you know, we need your help to is what we’re saying.
Greg: If you would take a minute and give us some sort of rating on whatever platform you’re listening to this on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, Amazon, wherever you’re listening to it, that would be one of the best ways you can help out our show. And the other way is invite some friends to listen to the show, or come over to your house and watch one of these movies.
Greg: And yeah, let us know how the party goes.
Joe: It can’t help but be an amazing night if you’re watching one of these movies. That’s just what I have found.
Greg: So yeah. Yeah, 100%.
Joe: You’re welcome. For a great evening, is what.
Greg: We say.
Joe: Got some down, down more 62 or 62 year old Dalmore and have at it is what we’re saying.
Greg: And I mean as always we should say spoilers for Kingsmen The Secret Service. Yeah.
Joe: Yeah, we basically ruined this movie for you if you haven’t seen it. So Whalers ahead and before this really mainly.
Greg: Yeah yeah.
Joe: Also big shout out to Sam Cunningham, our amazing and incomparable editor. If you want to work with him and you have your own podcast get your own Sam. Quite frankly, he’s ours. But also if he’s looking for work will pass his information along. But he makes us so much better than we actually are and takes our seven hour recordings and trims them down to basically an hour and a half and makes us sound amazing.
Joe: So thank you Sam, for everything you do for us. You’re the best. And we couldn’t do this without you.
Greg: So big. Thank you so much appreciation.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: And I just want to take a minute and say that, you know, when you think about Sam Cunningham and you and you wonder, oh my gosh, hold up. Joe, I’m so sorry. I just noticed the time. Oh yeah. This has been great. Don’t get me wrong. This has been amazing. But if Samuel Jackson is going to give me a free cell phone, I’m going to go take a free cell phone.
Greg: So I need to go switch cell phone carriers real quick, and. Oh, yeah. Yeah. For that.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, yeah. As much as I’d love to talk about Sam Cunningham all night and I would, I have this 62 year old bottle of scotch. I think it says Dalmore on it. So I’m going to drink that before I get sliced in half, so, you know. Okay. Just. Okay.
Greg: Yeah, that makes sense. I’m starting to question if the SIM card in my new phone is going to make my head explode.
Joe: Yeah.
Greg: So I think I’m going to go switch carriers again I gotta go.
Joe: Yeah, that’s a valid, valid concern. I just got this invite to some church in the middle America. So I’m going to go check it out and see what happens. You know, what’s the worst? What’s the worst thing that could happen to me?
Greg: That reminds me, I just lost a coworker of mine, and I need to go talk to their wife and son and I guess give them a favor with the code word, so I better go.
Joe: Yeah. Wow. That’s a lot more serious than what I’m going to do. I’m going to get I’m going to go get a bespoke suit and a tailor. So, you know, but same same. Right. You know.
Greg: That is so funny. And maybe I’ll see you there. It depends on where you’re going, because I have just realized that none of my suits are bulletproof. And that has been a really big problem in my life. So, yeah, it’s time for me to go take care of my suits.
Joe: Yeah. That tracks. I’m. I’ve got to run to. I’ve got to go give a lecture in a bar about manners.
Greg: So you know. Yeah, yeah.
Joe: You know how it goes.
Greg: Really intense locking scenario on the door is. Yeah, yeah.
Joe: You’re locked in until you get the lecture. If not, it’s it’s over for you. So.
Greg: Okay. Well, that that works for me because I’ve just realized that I am so embarrassed that my umbrellas only stop rain.
Joe: Oh, yeah.
Greg: Yeah. And I didn’t realize there was, like, this whole other world of things that umbrellas could do. So I’m going to go get one of those. I got to go by.
Joe: Okay. Sounds good. I’ve got to go teach a class on what to do if your room suddenly fills with water. So I’ll be right back. I’ll be right back.
Greg: That works for me because I basically need to film a side quest in this movie that is Dead Poets Society.
Greg: Where there’s, like, rich snobs.
Joe: Yeah. And you’re standing on the table saying manner. Manners maketh the man.
Greg: Yeah, yeah, totally. So I better go like.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That that tracks I’ve got to go to, I’ve got to land a plane in a mountain somehow. So you know, we’ll figure that out when we get there.
Greg: All right. Well, Joe, that works for me. Thanks for watching the Kingsmen with me this week, and I will see you soon.
Joe: Awesome. I’ll see you soon.