The first trailer for Matthew Vaughn’s The King’s Man was an impressive, if wildly inaccurate, depiction of the First World War, and a veritable rogues gallery combining some of the most legendary criminals and heroes of the era into one high-stakes, epic adventure. It looked fun, a little ridiculous, and charmingly British. So how does the second trailer hold up?
Pretty well. It doesn’t do much to add to what we’ve already seen, and unfortunately there’s no big reveal – no new historical figure waiting to be turned into a ninja super-spy, that is. Even the stinger is just a mildly amusing joke about parachutes. But we do get some tantalizing glimpses of the characters we already know will be in the film.
Rasputin, obviously, is the big bad: he’s seen bewitching or poisoning Alexei Romanov, the Tsarevich of Russia, and battling British agents in the gilded halls of Moscow or Saint Petersburg. As I noted in my review of the first trailer, there’s no mention made of the famed princess Anastasia, but at the rate things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised if she turns out to also be a gifted martial-artist, code-breaker or military strategist. Vaughn is not wrong to choose Rasputin as a villain for his movie – Rasputin was a mysterious and frightening force in Russian politics, and his genius, whether mystic or mundane in origin, won him a place in the history books as a master manipulator, and a charismatic religious leader – but he should be cautious when playing so lightly with the very real, very tragic story of the Romanov Dynasty.
We get quick looks at our main characters fighting these historical figures in a variety of different locales – from the snowy streets and balconies of Russia to the streets of Sarajevo, the trenches of the Western Front, the Oval Office, and the manors of merry old England, retrieving ancient, magical artifacts and using high-tech gadgets. Kingsman is a franchise that has always wanted to be Indiana Jones or James Bond for a new generation – and The King’s Man could be the closest they ever get to achieving that. I know I’m excited to see this movie, even if it’s just so I can nitpick and shake my head at the willful distortion of historical events.
So the second trailer might not do much to increase my anticipation, but it doesn’t do anything to change my opinion on the film either, and that’s a good thing at least. Feel free to share your own thoughts in the comments below!
No offense to director Matthew Vaughn, but now was probably the worst possible time to release this trailer. At least for me – probably only for me.
You see, I have only recently finished watching The Last Czars on Netflix: a semi-dramatized documentary about the final days of the Russian Czar Nicholas and his entire family, who were brutally murdered in 1918 during the Bolshevik Revolution. Their story was very closely linked with that of the highly mysterious monk and spiritual healer Grigori Rasputin. Now, I went into this six-episode series knowing full well what happened to each and every one of these people, and how they died horrific deaths: what I did not know was how the series would choose to depict each and every one in the most awful ways imaginable – from Rasputin’s terrifying ability to defy death several times even while he was poisoned and brutally injured, to the slow and agonizing deaths of the Czar’s four daughters, who were probably the last of the family to perish since they were wearing diamonds sewn into their clothes, granting them a temporary immunity to their murderers’ bullets. I was expecting the deaths to happen off-screen, preferably with a minimum amount of anguished screaming. I watched it at night (could it get any worse?), and I couldn’t sleep for hours afterward. The next morning I tried as hard as I could to forget what I had just witnessed.
And who shows up in today’s first trailer for the upcoming spy thriller The King’s Man? That’s right – the bearded monk Rasputin, looking rather more fictionalized, and showing an impressive skill at wielding…glass ornaments? Teapots? I’m not entirely sure what he’s holding at the 1:18 mark, but it’s also very difficult to focus on anything other than those wide eyes, eyes which supposedly hypnotized and enchanted the Czarina of Russia, to the point where she was unable to break free of his spell. I suspect we even see the Czarina in the trailer: one of the two women clinging to Rasputin’s arm as he strides through an elegant ballroom. Then again, the characters in this film are clearly only loosed based on their historical counterparts, since the IMDb page reveals that the fabled spy Mata Hari will also be in this movie, played by Gemma Arterton (who’s been getting her fair share of spy thrillers recently, coming off the unexpected success of Murder Mystery on Netflix), alongside characters like Field Marshall Haig; U.S. President Woodrow Wilson; the Kaiser Wilhelm II, Czar Nicholas II, and King George V of England, all played by Tom Hollander, which makes me suggest that somehow all three warring heads of state are going to be revealed to be the same man; and…and Rasputin’s real-life killer, the Russian prince Felix Yusupov (played by Daniel Brühl, Marvel’s “Baron Zemo”).
And this is what has me slightly upset. Not the fact that Rasputin is actually as terrifying as all get-out, and his portrayal in this film by Rhys Ifans looks even freakier (well, okay, that too), but the knowledge that this film is going to necessarily fictionalize a whole bunch of this part of history. Now, don’t get me wrong: I like historical fiction. Usually, seeing Mata Hari cross paths with Rasputin wouldn’t be a problem for me – but coming at this time, just after I’ve watched the most grim, grisly, realistic depiction of this very intense period of human history…well, it’s just coming at a bad time. Especially because this has so much potential: it could do so many things – it could, for instance, seek to capitalize on the very popular myths of the “escape” of Russian princess Anastasia Romanov. Let me stress that those are myths: trust me, I’ve just watched the documentary – the bodies of all seven Romanovs have been found as of this writing, and Anastasia is among them. She did not escape, no matter how much we may want to believe that she did. I’m going to make myself cry just writing this, because I loved imagining all the creative ways in which she could have made her daring escape from the House of Special Purpose. But, sadly, none of it’s true.
Anyway…that’s all I’m trying to say. At this moment, watching this trailer, my emotions on the subject are very raw, and I’m not currently relishing the idea of watching our British protagonists smuggle the princess out of Russia before the Bolsheviks (or Mata Hari?) can catch her. I don’t even know if that’s one of the film’s plot points – but if it is, I’d rather not know about it for a little while.
Moving on. The rest of the trailer looks really good, though I do have one other complaint. Namely, that this film already looks like it’s trying to copy certain aspects of my all-time favorite World War 1 film, Wonder Woman. Like, literally, right down to some of the shots in the trailer, such as when Ralph Fiennes (I think it’s him, at any rate) gets thrown through a wall by an explosion, while holding what looks to be a Germanic shield of some sort: it’s basically this shot:
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But with a lot less dimension: seriously, if you’re going to throw a guy through a wall, have him…I don’t know, fall from a height or something? Instead the man in question just falls onto a really barren patch of gray dirt. Not very visually interesting, if you ask me.
Aside from probably coincidental similarities (such as the scene of British soldiers going up over the trenches), we also have the peculiar appearance of a very familiar name in the cast: that of General Ludendorff, whom Wonder Woman fans will remember for his large role in that film, where he was…a glowing superhuman possessed by the Greek god Ares. I know, I was just complaining about fictionalization.
But leaving all that aside, I’m still a sucker for anything set during the Great War; I like Ralph Fiennes as an actor; and I think this film definitely has potential. It’s got elegance, wit, and a good dose of classic British daring-do. Let’s see how it is – and whether it’s got Mata Hari smuggling Anastasia out of a Russian empire controlled by King George – before we make any assumptions.
