Three Thumbs Up for The King’s Man
By Guy Shepherd
PlannedMan

The King’s Man shows shows that in the breast of every self-righteous-do-gooder is a tyrant clawing itself out and making messes. The rest is as they say is history.  A history in need of the King's Man.

Three Thumbs Up for The King’s Man

Highlights


Want to know why our past and present dances with madness?

It's because we've been missing The King's Man. Well, he's arrived.

Those who liked the Kingsman franchise will not be disappointed with The King’s Man.  Having trouble keeping up? “Kingsman” is the name of the do-right agency. The King’s Man is Ralph Fiennes, is the leader of that virtuous pack. He’s the star of The King’s Man, the film, the third in the series.

This prequel is not quite an equal but it sets the stage for some awesome historical engagements going forward.   It would have been better if Ralph Fiennes—the founding father of the secret, independent spy network was quicker in letting go of his pacifist ways, but the movie ends on solid Kingsman ground.   Killing the wicked few that end up getting the many killed is portrayed as an arduous moral struggle—as it should be. Particularly for Fiennes, who gave his deathbed word to his dying wife that he would protect their son from the violence of the world.

What I love about the Kingsman franchise is that it shows that in the breast of every self-righteous-do-gooder is a tyrant clawing itself out and making messes.

The first Kingsman supervillain, ably played by Samuel Jackson, understood that genuine progress—bending the arc and omelette of history—required billions of cracked eggs. A billionaire tech-wizard with the will and the wallet to take the consensus insight that mother earth cannot sustain itself on present population levels to it’s logical, ideological conclusion. Jackson’s character—both wise and rich—has a plan to get himself and few of the chosen entrenched on the right side of the environmental trend line. A cell phone swipe that would turn mankind against itself and inaugurated a mass culling of the species.

 

The next global threat came from Julian Moore—a drug dealer with an a Harvard MBA and a desire to put recreational, illicit  drug use on a global legal footing and a big Phrma business model. To this end, she posions the global supply chain of drugs and will give the antidote only if the world’s leaders bend the knee and legalize drugs.  A prodigal son hostage play at scale.

 

 

Unlike the glory days of the globalist assholes of the present Kingsman, The King’s Man is going to the ideological well of it all: the 20th  Century.   

It turns out, at the root of all humankind’s sorrows are assholes who hate the system and are hell-bent on making it worse.  Communism and Nazism, red and brown, left and right, are all just means to end that is the Will to Power.  The movie ends with a handshake between Lennin and Hilter.  The rest is as they say is history.  A history in need of the Kingsman.

After Team America: World Police Force, The King’s Man is the second-best explanation of our past and present dances with madness and the need to for a few to stand up to them for the sake of the many.   

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