The movie came out in December (I’m way behind the times). It appears most of the audience had a rollicking good time at a spy movie where the evil villain “Valentine” had the ultimate genocidal carbon reduction plan. It was murder-to-save-the-planet.
Perhaps the leading edge of Hollywood has finally arrived? This can’t be good for the forces of freeloading. Someone shot the sacred cow, and though they did it quietly with no bragging or boasting, the crowd rewarded them.
From Mark Steyn’s review a few weeks ago:
Valentine is tired of giving money to politicians for action on climate change and nothing happening. He loves the planet and man is destroying it. So he’s concluded that the only solution is to eliminate the vast majority of mankind, leaving only those pre-selected individuals he’s invited to his mountain lair to re-emerge when the dust settles to live on a now Edenic earth cleansed of what he calls its “virus” – man.
This actually makes way more sense than the average Bond villain’s plan. Indeed, it makes so much sense that the pajama boy at Vox isn’t too sure who to root for. I mean, why would Colin Firth and the good guys even bother saving the world “only so it can be destroyed decades later” (by global warming)?
Steyn had a lot of fun with the confusion of the critics who laughed at the villain but knew they weren’t supposed too. He compared the boundary pushing Kingsman with the predictability of “The Day After Tomorrow”.
That’s how a Hollywood blockbuster is meant to address climate change – by telling you what to think every step of the way.
Because Kingsman isn’t that kind of earnest yawneroo, nervous critics find themselves pausing in mid-laugh to wonder whether the premise of the jest is entirely sound.
And just as The Interview took the Road formula and put Kim Jong-Un in it, Kingsman takes the old-time Bond formula and puts a climate-change megalomaniac in it. That’s not just a funny idea, but a great service to mainstream pop culture…
Read more on Mark Steyn
I saw John Stewart interview Colin Firth last month; I didn’t realize the movie had a plot.
Thanks to Marc Morano, Judith Curry.