A Conversation Between Myself and the Internet Regarding Argylle and The King’s Man

The Internet: You are not allowed to like the film Argylle.

Me: Why not?

Internet: Because we, the Internet, have declared that it be so.

Me: That doesn’t really answer the question.

Internet: Because the Internet is smarter than you, peasant.

Me: So I’m not allowed to have my own opinion?

Internet: No. You are not.

Me: Look, I know the movie Argylle has a lot of flaws. Like, a lot. But overall, I still enjoyed it and thought it was a good bit of fun. I also liked Matthew Vaughn’s previous film, The King’s Man, although it was also far from perfect.

Internet: What? No no, you are not allowed to do that. Unless a film is an utterly flawless work of cinematic perfection, you are not allowed to like it. If a film has any flaws whatsoever, it is bad.

Me: So there’s no room for nuance anymore?

Internet: Nope. Absolutely not. If a movie gets mostly bad reviews, you are not allowed to like it because the Internet has declared that it is bad, and you are therefore wrong.

Me: But that’s stupid. Why can’t you take the good along with the bad? Sure, Argylle has loads of flaws. It’s at least 15-20 minutes too long, for one thing. 139 minutes is a long time. And some of the CGI effects aren’t great. There’s a fight scene late in the movie that is fun but the combatants are engulfed in multicolored smoke that looks way too computer-generated. And yes, the movie could have used two or three less plot twists. There’s a mid-credits scene that seems to be trying to connect Argylle to Vaughn’s Kingsman movies in a way that, frankly, does not make a lick of sense to me, although I suppose I could have misinterpreted it.

Internet: Aha! So you admit that Argylle is a bad film!

Me: No, I don’t. There’s still a lot of fun to be had with the movie, warts and all. It has a lot of very fun action scenes and some very funny moments, and it benefits from an excellent pair of leads in Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell. It also stars Henry Cavill, John Cena, Bryan Cranston, and Samuel L. Jackson. Admittedly some of them get very little to do, John Cena is in maybe two scenes and doesn’t even get to fight anyone, which feels like a missed opportunity for sure. But the movie has an irresistibly fun premise about an author of a successful series of spy novels who suddenly finds herself swept up in a spy adventure straight out of one of her novels when she discovers that what she has been writing in her books has been coming true in real life and now all kinds of shadowy spy agencies and assassins are after her.

Internet: Sure, that’s a great premise. But the movie goes totally overboard with it, far past any remote sense of plausibility.

Me: That’s true, but nobody ever said that the movie had to be plausible. It’s a fun spy romp that is completely preposterous, but its preposterousness is part of its charm. Gritty realism is perfect for some stories, but for others there’s nothing wrong with good old-fashioned escapism. And it’s great fun to watch Sam Rockwell as a badass superspy, which seems like the kind of role he doesn’t get to play very often.

Internet: But what about the plot twist where –

Me: Shut up! No spoilers, dude! People on the internet spoil stuff enough. This movie’s twists are too fun to spoil, and for once the movie’s advertising did a good job of not spoiling the big plot twists. To be fair, the trailers did give the impression that Henry Cavill and John Cena would have bigger roles in the movie than they actually did, but, if you think about it, that ties in well with the movie’s themes of deception and misdirection, which are common themes of the spy genre as a whole. And let’s talk about The King’s Man, Matthew Vaughn’s previous film, as well.

Internet: You’re not allowed to like that film either! It only has a 40% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes! Everyone knows that the holy Rotten Tomatoes score is the ultimate arbiter by which the quality of a film may be judged!

Me: I hate Rotten Tomatoes for more reasons than I can get into here. People put WAY too much stock in Rotten Tomatoes ratings. I don’t care what kind of reviews a movie gets, if it’s something I’m interested in I’ll see it regardless of what its stupid Rotten Tomatoes rating is.

Internet: NO! You are not allowed to disagree with Rotten Tomatoes!!!

Me: Rotten Tomatoes sucks. It robs all the nuance from film criticism and distills it down to a number with a stupid little tomato icon next to it, and everyone acts like it’s unassailable. There are loads of movies with bad RT ratings that I think are good fun, and there are plenty of movies that get rave reviews that I don’t like at all.

Internet: DOES. NOT. COMPUTE.

Me: Whatever. Let’s talk about The King’s Man some more. It came out in 2021 and didn’t do well at the box office, partly due to the ongoing COVID pandemic and also because it was released alongside the box-office juggernaut that was Spider-Man: No Way Home, which absolutely cleaned the clock of every other movie that was in theaters at the time. The King’s Man takes place during World War I, and it has fun playing fast and loose with real historical events. Many of the film’s characters were real people, and there were even some things the film portrayed that I had no idea were true, like the fact that King George of England, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, and Tsar Nicholas of Russia were cousins! Brilliantly, all three of them are played in the film by Tom Hollander. And we can’t forget the creepy-as-hell Grigori Rasputin, brought to brilliantly unhinged life by Rhys Ifans.

Internet: Oh yeah, Tom Hollander is great as Spider-Man!

Me: Dude, that’s Tom Holland, not Tom Hollander.

Internet: I knew that.

Me: Sure you did. Anyway, let’s talk about Ralph Fiennes. Fiennes is a tremendous actor, able to convey worlds of meaning and emotions through simple words, gestures, and expressions. He’s terrific in the movie and it’s also great fun to watch him kick ass, which he doesn’t get to do often. Matthew Vaughn has a knack for casting great actors who aren’t known for action films and letting them absolutely cut loose, much like he did with Sam Rockwell in Argylle and Colin Firth in the previous Kingsman movies. And the supporting characters played by Gemma Arterton and Djimon Hounsou are also fantastic. The movie is a bit slow at first and it takes a while to get to the good stuff, but once it does it delivers on the crazy action and plot twists. Ralph Fiennes is also great in The Menu, which is a movie that I need to write about soon.

Internet: The Menu has an 88% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. You are therefore allowed to like that film, but you are still not allowed –

Me: SHUT UP!!! You’re not even real! I’m not even talking to a real person right now! You’re like that one SpongeBob episode with all the little SpongeBobs running around in SpongeBob’s head, and one of them says that they’re not even real, they’re just a visual metaphor used to demonstrate the abstract concept of thought. You know the episode, it’s the one where Squidward tries to turn the Krusty Krab into a Fancy Restaurant?

Internet: Right, I remember that one. And then to turn SpongeBob into a waiter, Squidward tells SpongeBob to forget everything he knows except for fine dining and breathing, and then everything goes hilariously wrong when SpongeBob can’t remember his own name!

Me: Yes, that’s the one! I’m glad we can finally agree on something, Mr. Internet. Anyway, the point is that for all their flaws, I still like Argylle and The King’s Man, and there is nothing wrong with that. Like what you want to like, and don’t let Rotten Tomatoes tell you otherwise. Now, much like the film Argylle, this post is starting to run a bit long and I’m not sure how much of it works or if it’s all complete nonsense, so I’m going to end it here.

Internet: You’re still not allowed to –

Me: SHUT UP INTERNET!