While I acknowledge and appreciate that it had many fans, and I’m very happy for them, I absolutely loathed the original “Kingsman: The Secret Service.” I love the spy actioner genre, loved the idea of Colin Firth in an action role, enjoy Taron Egerton very much as a performer, and yet every minute of “Kingsman” was a garish, plastic-action-sequenced, mean-spirited, fundamentally gross 90s men’s magazine come to life.
As such, wild horses would physically not have been able to drag me to the sequel, “Kingsman: The Golden Circle,” and from the mildly underwhelming box office this weekend, where the film barely outperformed its predecessor (though it’s going great guns internationally, admittedly), it sounds like I might not be alone. And if you were let down by the sequel’s apparent lack of bite, there could be a reason for that: despite having blown up President Obama’s head in the first film (see below), director Matthew Vaughn tells Entertainment Weekly that he ultimately decided to remove a couple of references to President* Donald Trump from the follow-up.
Originally, Vaughn tells the site, Jane Goldman’s script had included a line where Julianne Moore’s drug lord villain had talked about wanting to host “The Apprentice,” an obvious nod to the current commander-in-chief, who was best known for his role on that particular game show. But Vaughn ultimately took it out. “We actually took out the Apprentice line, because we felt it was too close to the bone. I think America’s going through a pretty interesting and rough ride at the moment and I wanted this movie to be escapism. And that means not suddenly have half the audience going ‘That’s not cool, that’s not funny!’ as the other half is cheering.”
Again, the first “Kingsman” blew up Obama’s head.
Furthermore, there was also a last-minute change in the sets, the director says. “We were building a White House Oval Office in the style of Trump Tower. We were making it in all gold and blinging it up. This was in May of 2016 and then I had an inkling. I remember saying to my American production designer, ‘Trump might win, you know? Would this be as funny if Trump won?’”… If you go too far — if movies get political when they’re meant to be fun — then it weighs everything down a bit too much.” It’s a shame, because I’m told the second “Kingsman” features a scene where the hero essentially sexually assaults a woman by placing a tracking device inside her vagina without her consent, so Trump would have felt right at home.
Now, again, I haven’t seen “Kingsman: The Golden Circle,” so I can’t comment, but it’s at least worth noting that Vaughn’s film is likely to be wildly outgrossed by “Get Out,” a fiercely political and extremely funny movie. Anyway, it’s in theaters now.