Alright let's get to it..
There's no laptop and my phone is acting up but I have to do what needs to be done. So let's go. Dear Diary or as you guys know it, my hive blog. I'm so sorry it's been so long, about a month actually of not writing either due to laziness or just being genuinely mentally stressed I cannot
really say but one thing I do know is that I'm back to writing again and this time I'm going to be doing it differently. This time I've decided that each day for the whole month of April I'll try to write about three hundred and fifty words per day and no it's not because I'm trying to better myself but rather because I'm broke and I want to make a certain amount on hive by the end of this month. So yeah. Also it's not like I have absolute control over how I make on this platform it's rather that I have some level of control and even though it's not that great more so the control being reduced due to @ocd newest policy. That being said the truth is that I do have some level of control like I said and if I work well and I trust God well I should succeed at this so yeah.. I'm going to try at least and let's see how the coming days go and by the end of the month we'll know whether I succeed or fail. By the way this day, the first of April marks my one year anniversary on hive and I'm grateful for the progress and I'm looking forward to much more success on the platform. Now with that out of the way let me talk about the movie that made me come here and the topic of discussion for the first week in the month of march, I'm looking at you The King's man, let's dissect your flaws and call out some of your errors.
Let's look at why you shouldn't "game of thrones" your protagonist and other valuable lessons we learnt from this film.
These guys even made us believe we would get Rasputin as a main villain gaddamn
The Introduction
The King's man is the third installation of Matthew Vaugh's Kingsman franchise, well I don't know if it's even appropriate to call it a franchise but I mean at this time I would say it had become something of that nature so yeah. Where was I?? Yeah so this film is the third installment of the Kingsman franchise which in my opinion is basically what James Bond should have looked like if the the filmakers and directors made the Daniel Craig James Bond films for the audience who grew up watching and idolizing the old sleeky comical 007 films of the 1980s to the early 2000s. In essence the first instalment of this franchise was such a breath of fresh air and it appealed to so many that it felt like people like me finally got the cool British spy film we all wanted and Vaughn had just unlocked the most successful espionage franchise since Mission Impossible. But alas after seeing the sequel to the first film all our hopes were dashed and our dreams disappeared simply because of the lack of direction the subsequent film accompanied by the dumbest decision ever to scrap out everything we had just set the first film setting up in order to establish new sets of characters and dynamics that really just felt like the writer's cheesy way of scraping out almost everything we loved probably in order not to get sued by the studios who run the James Bond franchise. I have nothing to prove this but I truly susoect that this is reason for this decision.
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Which is why when I saw the trailer for this film I was highly excited to see it and boy did my excitement increase ten fold when I further heard that this was going to be a prequel, an origin story of sort on how the organization was formed. Alas I saw the film after it had been delayex by the pandemic and even though it wasn't really as outstanding as advertised it did keep my attention on it until I got to the third act of the film and then I completely lost it. Before we get to my issues with the film let me quickly brush us all on the premise of the story. If you haven't seen the film you can skip past the next one and a half paragraphs if you don't want the film spoiled for you, well you should just skip this entire post if you don't want the film spoiled for you cause to be honest I'm going to be talking about major plot points that happened in the story which are basically the bone of my contention.
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The story follows the Duke of Oxford and his son who find themselves at logger heads with each other because of the events of WWI. The son seeks to go fight in the war because of his desire to seek adventure, glory and escape the control of his over protective father while his father on the other hand uses all his political connections to stop and discourage his son from going simply because he made a vow to his dying wife that he would never let his son know war. By the side lies this secret organization which works in the shadows to orchestrate the events in the war which comprises of some notable figures in history who directly or indirectly influenced the events of the first world war. These group of people headed by a man cloacked in the shadows simply known as the shepherd are the ones who basically serve as influencer of the war and are indirectly the reason for the strife that exists between the Duke and his Son. Eventually the war escalates to a point were the Duke can no longer just watch but instead he chooses to do something about it and with his eager son at his side he introduces him to his secret club of undercover agents, the first private espionage agency, the Kingsman. Now let's get on to why I think this story falls on its head
1.The problem of two conflicting lead protagonist.
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Remember I've said earlier that I really did anticipate this film and one reason for this was because of the similarity in character dynamics between the main and the primary supporting character and by that I mean the character dynamics between Eggsy and Harry. In this one we see how Harry trains Eggsy to become a whole fledged Kingsman and one of the primary motivators for Eggsy becoming said Kingsman is when he witnesses Harry his mentor/father-figure murdered right in front of him. Going into this film it looked like we were going to have a similar set up but mid way into it, the producers and screen writers must have thought to themselves that a repeat of the dynamics of the first film would strip this new film of it's own uniqueness and originality. So what do they do, well instead of optinig for re-editing the script, Spoilers ahead! they decide to let the son instead die in place of the father.
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Now some people saw this and thought nothing about it but here's the reason why I think that singular decision was the downfall of this film. I admit I do not currently have the right name that encapsulates this error but I will attempt to describe this nameless flaw as best as possible. The reason why this decision jeopardizes this film when it could have easily saved it and made it a memorable one is simply because they decided to kill the wrong character. The primary role of a protagonist ib any story is to have him as the person whom the audience attach the most interest on that is to say the protagonist is the character upon whom the audience is most emotionally invested in and to do this, you tether the plot progression to the protagonist's character arc and his/her choices.
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This is no new secret as there are countless examples of this we can give from various successful movies. Now if you however choose to kill off your protagonist midway into the story for whatever reason you are left with the huge challenge of re-creating and re-establishing another lead character who has just as many likable traits as your main character just like the producers of Game of thrones had to do only for them to kill off the other main characters before finally deciding to be wise and sticking with the Jon Snow finally, after killing him the first time.
What am I saying in essence don't kill your protagonist before you the conflict is resolved because doing this puts you in a really tight spot in the form of having a story arc that isn't driven by a inspiring protagonist. That's the mistake this film made and they did so initially believing that they could just switch the position of the main character to the lead supporting character while masquerading the lead supporting character as the main character in the trailers. Listen you cannot have two lead protagonists in a story and this is because every story is basically an individual account of events, note the key word there being "Individual".
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You can have several main characters but only one lead protagonist the other most act as a lead supporting character. This film made the error of having us emotionally invested in the character arc of Connor Oxford, fully pitching him against his father Duke Oxford only for them to have him killed at the end of the second act and then have his father the Duke finish up the story. In many ways it defeated the purpose of the conflict he and his father had as well as heavily undermining whatsoever potential the antagonist had for being a memorable one. Which leads me to the second reason why this film failed
2.When given the opportunity, make the conflict personal rather than a passive/indifferent.
One that's quite obvious in this film is in all the ways it is similar to the first film, from the student tutor dynamic to the death of a main character to a generic shallow one dimensional villian who's primary motivation for his actions is simply for the sake of world domination. Well yes maybe that last point isn't accurate to the Tee but we all know for certain that there is some truth in it especially the part about the villian being shallow. One area however were this film differs from the first film is in its approach on the nature of conflict especially the conflict existing between the protagonist and the antagonist. Unlike the first film which chose to have the conflict as a personal one which by every means was a clever one this film on the other hand chose to have the conflict between the "primary protagonist" and the antagonist be generic one. Aka bad guy wants to destroy England through world war II because it rules over Scotland.
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The reason why it doesn't become anything memorable is simply because the writers decided to kill off the only person who could have made the conflict a personal one not only that he was killed in such a way that was so miserable and we all know that misery doesn't mix well with some genres. In the first film where the death of Harry Hart in the hand of Valentine sets up the perfect personal conflict between Eggsy and Valentine, Eggsy motivation for stopping valentine goes beyond just trying to stop an eco-terrorist from wiping out the human population but also avenging the death of the one person in his life who served as some sort of father figure for him. I've said it times without number people navigate towards personal conflicts and they remember villains who serve as the dicothomy of the heros just like we see in the most successful action flicks.
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In this film however the fact that they decided to kill Conrad against killing his father and even more so deciding to kill him in the war instead by the hands of the villain of the film ruined any chance of having a personal conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist. Instead what we had as the primary motivation for Oxford going again the villain was the generic reason for stopping a war that really didn't affect him. I believe there were several ways they could have taken this. They could have had Conrad and his father complete the mission together to stop the shady organisation who were secretly running the war. They could have made Oxford allow his son get fully involved in taking the bad guys down instead of just starting off with him then tossing him aside because the story needed him to die at the war and cement Oxford's place as the main character. My point here is that his death completely sabotaged the story and served no really purpose other than to convincely satisfy the plot and without any regard of how it would affect the story. In order words it was a fun decision and if you need any further proof that it was a dumb decision look no further than how much the film made as its total gross earnings.
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Thank you guys so much for going through this and I hope you enjoyed it. There's other things I would have loved to talk about but I don't have time for that and this post is already long enough. Do remember that you can leave a comment down below telling me what you thought about this film and also remember to give this post an upvote and so until I see you again,
Ciao.
I had a hard time feeling sympathy for the main character, I just couldn't get hooked. However, this version of Rasputin was very funny and I thought it was the best part of the movie. Although I don't like some of the characters, I watched the whole movie, it has its good moments but there are others that I found tiresome.
Honestly that's the awful truth...
There are different versions of Rasputin? 😲
Yes, he is a Rasputin who fights, punches, kicks and has a lot of strength to kill. Very funny
Yay! 🤗
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