The latest movie in theKingsmanfranchise,The King’s Manfailed to generate as much buzz as its predecessors and bombed at the box office. Falling well behind expectations, it made a staggeringly low $10 million in its five-day debut, and its underperformance has left audiences questioning if this is the start of the end for the action-drama series; has the movie jeopardized future sequels?
Directed by Matthew Vaughn but featuring an all-new cast,The King’s Manis the third installment in the franchise and acts as a prequel to the commercially successful first,Kingsman: The Secret Service. Focusing on how the spy agency came to be,it is an origin storytold against the backdrop of WWI. At the center of the movie is Orlando Oxford (also known as The Duke of Oxford), founder of the independent intelligence agency played by Ralph Fiennes. Once a pacifist, Oxford sought to create the spy network which fights against terrorism after witnessing his wife’s murder. With the help of trigger-happy Polly Wilkins (Gemma Arterton) and expert combatant Shola (Djimon Honsou), he establishes the Kingsman which outlives both him and his son Conrad Oxford (Harris Dickenson), a proto-Kingsman who meets his end inThe King’s Mancarrying out his father’s mission.
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Released in US theatres on 22 December,The King’s Manwas met with strong competition fromSpider-Man: No Way HomeandTheMatrix Resurrections—bothmajor motion pictures that target the same older male demographic asKingsman. Of these choices,Spider-Manwon the popular vote with audiences, earning a record-breaking $138.6 million in its five-day debut (over 10 times whatThe King’s Manmade). This, paired with the fact that older moviegoers tend to avoid theatres amidst the ongoing pandemic, is to say thatThe King’s Manwas doomed from the outset, if not dead on arrival.
Scheduled for release in November 2019, the movie wasdelayed many timesbefore hitting the big screen. For the audience that’s 25 months of hoping, waiting, and potentially forgetting about the movie entirely. If there was buzz to begin with, it had surely worn off by the timeThe King’s Man finally got its premiere. And whilst the producers couldn’t have foreseen a global pandemic getting in the way, they might’ve predicted some detachment from the audience given the all-new cast.
An oft-repeated criticism of the movie is that it isn’t anything like the others; this is due in part to there being no Eggsy (Taron Egerton) or Harry (Colin Firth) in the prequel. Though necessary to the plot —The King’s Manis set a century behind the others — it seems this was a fatal mistake, nonetheless.Kingsmansucceeded in making cheeky Eggsy and charming Harry fast fan-favourites, to the detriment of its recent movie: “if they won’t be in it, what’s the point?” was the general attitude towardsThe King’s Man.
Though some praised the new casts' performances, most agreed these characters were no match for their predecessors (or successors if going byKingsman’s timeline). Like the movie itself, they simply weren’t as funny or entertaining. Rather,The King’s Manis a tonal mess, and this is reflected in themovies' mixed reviews. Half comedy, half war movie, audiences were split. Whilst some enjoyedThe King’s Man’s delve into history and celebrated the more emotional moments it had to offer, others argued it wasn’t what they signed up for — that being, violent fun. As it stands, the movie has a score of 42% on Rotten Tomatoes; this is considerably lower than the firstKingsmanmovie (75%) and slightly below the second (Kingsman: The Golden Circle, 51%).
Given the franchise’s slow decline, the question on everyone’s mind is: has theKingsmanseries run its course? To audiences, yes, maybe, but to Marv studios/Matthew Vaughn, no.Kingsman 3isalready in developmentand set to begin production in September of next year. Little is known about the upcoming movie (reportedly titledKingsman: The Blue Blood)besides it being a sequel toGolden Circle. Because of this, Egerton and Firth will return as the main characters, withVaughn teasingthat the movie will delve deeper into their relationship; as he tellsCollider, “I saw how people loved the relationship of Eggsy and Harry. So we just came up with this thing, what could be the ultimate reason for them to either fall in love or to hate each other forever? So that’s what this movie is all about is will they or won’t they.”
It looks likeKingsman 3won’t be the last either. Back in 2020Deadlinereported Marv Studios and Vaughn are plottingseven moreKingsmanmovies, and a TV series to boot. Additionally, Marv Group CEO Zygi Kamasa teased several other franchises are being developed alongside theKingsmanuniverse. If these plans go ahead, audiences could be seeing a lot more of the spy organization,whether they want to or not.
