Spider-Man Turns SPYder-Man in New Trailer Featuring Nick Fury

Sony has released the first trailer for their latest Spider-Man movie, the second one set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and a direct sequel to 2017's Spider-Man: Homecoming. Thanks to the agreement between Sony and Disney-owned Marvel Studios that also allows Spider-man to appear in Disney's Avengers films, the Sony-released, Marvel-produced Spider-man movies can use other characters from the MCU. Spider-Man: Far From Home (opening this summer) takes full advantage of this scenario by finally bringing erstwhile S.H.I.E.L.D. ramrod Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) into poor Peter Parker's life. In fact, it looks like the pitch for this movie might have been something along the lines of, "let's do If Looks Could Kill with Spider-Man." Which, as an unapologetic fan of the 1991 Richard Grieco  teen spy movie, fills me with delight... even if I still have trouble believing Marvel went for it!

Far From Home finds teenage Peter Parker and all his classmates from Homecoming going on a school trip to Europe, where Nick Fury hijacks Peter's European vacation to recruit him as some sort of spy, complete with a fancy new stealth Spider suit. Jackson's Fury is accompanied once again by his regular MCU sidekick, Cobie Smulders' former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill. (Never mind that the last time we saw the two of them, in Avengers: Infinity War, both were disintegrating into dust. Perhaps the events of Avengers: Endgame, which will open between now and Far From Home, will somehow undo that fate, or perhaps Far From Home takes place prior to Infinity War.Jackson will next be seen as a pre-eye patch Fury in the 1990s-set Captain Marvel.) This trailer marks the first time we've ever seen Jackson's Fury wield a gun that resembles the one Jim Steranko drew for him on his seminal 1960s run on Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (even if this one's a dart gun). Personally, I'm 100% sold on the spy stuff... but iffy on the giant elemental creatures angle. Check it out for yourselves:


Read my Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. primer here.

Trailer: KIM POSSIBLE Live-Action Movie

Today, Disney Channel dropped the slightly underwhelming first full trailer for their upcoming live action Kim Possible movie, and announced a premiere date. It will premiere Friday, Feb. 15 at 8 ET/PT on Disney Channel and DisneyNOW. And, thanks to Deadline, we finally know a little bit more about the plot. This won't be a continuation of the cult animated show, nor will it take place within the series' continuity. Rather, it will be a full reboot, and an origin story for Kim. (It was never explained on the show how she came to be a teenage superspy beyond having inherited good genes from her brain surgeon mom and rocket scientist dad.)

While the series concluded with Kim's high school graduation, the live-action Kim Possible will pick up just as Kim and sidekick Ron Stoppable are first starting Middleton High School, and (in a page out of the Buffy playbook), the ultra-capable young woman finds navigating the classrooms and social hierarchy of high school much more difficult than saving the world. Kim will compete with her rival and frenemy Bonnie Rockwaller not for a spot on the cheerleading squad, as she did on the TV show, but the school's soccer team. And Ron will acquire his pet naked mole rat, Rufus, over the course of the telefilm. The pair will be joined on their mission by a new friend, Athena, who quickly surpasses Kim as the trio, along with gadget maker and tech expert Wade, take on the villainous Dr. Drakken and his henchwoman Shego. (Do you think the hitherto unknown Athena will turn out to be a double agent?)

I really wish this were being done as a big budget, theatrical film. The actors look fine in this trailer, but without the spacious, Ken Adam-inspired sets, and lit like a 90s TV pilot with way too much blue, it just doesn't look like Kim Possible. Here's hoping they prove me wrong! It is, after all, co-written by series creators Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle (along with The Duff's Josh Cagan).

Sadie Stanley stars as Kim Possible; Sean Giambrone (The Goldbergs) plays Ron. Todd Stashwick (12 Monkeys) and Taylor Ortega (Succession) co-star as Dr. Drakken and Shego; Ciara Wilson (OMG!) as newcomer Athena; Alyson Hannigan (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) as Kim’s mom; Issac Ryan Brown (Raven’s Home) as Wade; and Erika Tham (Make It Pop) as Bonnie. Patton Oswalt reprises his voice role from the animated series as villain Professor Dementor, and original Kim Possible voice Christy Carlson Romano has a cameo.

Tradecraft: Sony Brings Teenage Superspy Alex Rider to Television

Teenage superspy Alex Rider is plotting a return to the screen. But it will be the small screen this time. Deadline reports that Sony has boarded Eleventh Hour Films' 8-episode miniseries adaptation of Anthony Horowitz's second Alex Rider novel, Point Blanc. (In America it was published as Point Blank, effectively crushing Horowitz's titular pun... probably on the same insulting assumption that Americans can't pronounce French words that led to Casino Royale initially being published in paperback here as You Asked For It.) The first Rider novel, Stormbreaker, was adapted into the 2006 feature film Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker (review here), starring Alex Pettyfer, which fizzled at the U.S. box office after being terminally mishandled by The Weinstein Company. Eleventh Hour (Foyle's War) is Horowitz's wife's production company, and they've been trying to jumpstart new screen adventures for the hero of Horowitz's immensely popular YA spy series for a while now. Last year, ITV (home of wildly successful Horowitz-created dramas like Foyle's War and Midsummer Murders) had been in talks to produce an Alex Rider TV series, but they are no longer involved. According to the trade,  Eleventh Hour developed the new project on spec, and Sony will fully fund and look for broadcast or platform partners. Guy Burt (The Bletchley Circle) will pen the adaptation. Horowitz, who adapted Stormbreaker himself for the 2006 film, will executive produce.

Anthony Horowitz is one of Britain's most prolific and successful writers, straddling multiple mediums and somehow always hitting a home run. He created the excellent wartime mystery drama Foyle's War (starring GoldenEye's Michael Kitchen), which frequently featured espionage plots before morphing into a full-fledged spy drama as WWII ended in its timeline and the Cold War dawned. In a stroke of genius, Horowitz had the bright idea to combine James Bond with Harry Potter to create a YA sensation in the Alex Rider series, often turning to Ian Fleming for inspiration. Stormbreaker was largely modeled on Fleming's Moonraker plot (a wise idea, since kids were unlikely to be familiar with that since the movie was so different), and Point Blanc was a loose reworking of On Her Majesty's Secret Service (another safe bet since it's the film kids would be least likely to have seen). This approach evidently caught the eye of Ian Fleming Publications, who not only sought to create their own YA series with Charlie Higson's Young Bond books, but also eventually hired Horowitz to pen two official, adult James Bond continuation novels, Trigger Mortis and Forever And a Day. (I hope there will be more!) Horowitz has also produced bestselling Sherlock Holmes continuation novels as well as original adult mystery novels like Magpie Murders and The Word is Murder.

I really hope this new television take on Alex Rider proves successful and leads to adaptations of all the books!

Teaser: Disney's New KIM POSSIBLE Live Action Remake

© Disney Channel

Disney Channel has released a first teaser trailer for their upcoming live action reimagining of the groundbreaking early 21st Century animated spy send-up Kim Possible.

Original series creators Mark McCorkle and Bob Schooley penned the script for the remake, along with Josh Cagan. Newcomer Sadie Stanley has the unenviable task of bringing a beloved animated character to life as Kim Possible while Sean Giambrone takes on the role of loyal sidekick Ron Stoppable. Alyson Hannigan, Todd Stashwick, Taylor Ortega, Ciara Wilson, Erika Tham, Issac Ryan Brown, and Connie Ray also star. Last week it was announced that two voice actors from the original cast would also be joining the telefilm. Patton Oswalt will reprise his series role as the villainous Professor Dementor (sort of a poor man's Dr. Drakken, despite Oswalt's considerable talent), and the voice of Kim, Christy Carlson Romano, will have a cameo.

Many adult spy fans may be asking themselves, why does this matter? Why do I bother covering a Disney Channel kids' spy movie? In short, because the original series was brilliant. Kim Possible was one of the sharpest, smartest James Bond parodies ever. It often dealt with the myriad problems of being a Bond-type villain, from the overhead costs of maintaining elaborate underground or underwater bases, to the perfect real estate for said lairs, to the difficulty in finding good help. (Turns out that standard-issue henchmen are provided by an entrepreneur named Jack Hench who runs a large staffing agency.) And it did so even better than the Austin Powers movies ever did, calling out the genre's cliches and turning them over on themselves. At the same time, the love and reverence for the material they spoofed was evident everywhere, from the truly impressive Ken Adam-influenced designs to Adam Berry's music to the Bond-inspired title sequence of the original, animated Kim Possible movie, So the Drama.

In the original show, which was sort of Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets James Bond (with all the high such a comparison implies), Kim was an ordinary teenage girl dealing with ordinary teenage problems like crushes, dating, acne, social hierarchy, cheerleading, and homework... along with less average ones like supervillains, monkeys, ninjas, and monkey ninjas. Because in addition to being a regular full-time high school student, she was also a freelance superspy and crime fighter. (Her genes were in her favor, being the daughter of a rocket scientist and a brain surgeon.) With her best friend and sidekick, the clumsy but utterly loyal Ron Stoppable, his pet naked mole rat Rufus, and 10-year old Q-type gadget genius Wade, she took on the likes of the nefarious Dr. Drakken and his henchwoman Shego (who will both be in the live action movie), Lord Monkey Fist, Señor Senior, Sr. and Señor Senior, Jr--not to mention her cheerleading rival, Mean Girl Bonnie Rockwaller. The series never condescended to its young audience and featured razor-sharp scripts sure to entertain any adult spy fan with humorous send-ups of 007, Mission: Impossible, S.H.I.E.L.D., Alias, and countless more spy standards. Hopefully the live action version will maintain those loving references, and the witty and intelligent scripting fans came to expect. It's honestly hard to tell from this incredibly brief teaser, but this is our first (not entirely inspiring) look at the new, flesh and blood Kim Possible. The telefilm is expected to premiere early next year.

Tradecraft: Teen Spy Kim Possible Makes a Live Action Comeback

Well, here's some unexpected and very cool spy news! According to Deadline, teenage superspy Kim Possible is poised to make a comeback after an 11-year absence. (And a decade after an unsuccessful campaign for a fifth TV season.) But not quite as you might expect, should you be familiar with the hilarious, whipsmart cartoon spy parody Kim Possible that aired on the Disney Channel from 2002-2007. The new Kim Possible will be a live-action movie. The trade reports that series creators Mark McCorkle and Robert Schooley have penned the script along with Josh Cagan (The DUFF). Adam B. Stein and Zach Lipovsky (Mech X4) will direct. Casting is currently underway. Unfortunately, the new Kim Possible won't be a theatrical feature, but a Disney Channel Original Movie.

In the original series, Kim was an ordinary teenage girl dealing with ordinary teenage problems like crushes, dating, acne, social hierarchy, cheerleading, and homework... along with less average ones like supervillains, monkeys, ninjas, and monkey ninjas. Because in addition to being a regular full-time high school student, she was also a freelance superspy and crime fighter. (Her genes were in her favor, being the daughter of a rocket scientist and a brain surgeon.) With her best friend and sidekick, the clumsy but utterly loyal Ron Stoppable, his pet naked mole rat Rufus, and 10-year old Q-type gadget genius Wade, she took on the likes of the nefarious Dr. Drakken and his henchwoman Shego, Lord Monkey Fist, Señor Senior, Sr. and Señor Senior, Jr--not to mention her cheerleading rival, Mean Girl Bonnie Rockwaller. Part Buffy the Vampire Slayer and part James Bond, the series never condescended to its young audience and featured razor-sharp scripts sure to entertain any adult spy fan with humorous send-ups of 007, Mission: Impossible, S.H.I.E.L.D., Alias, and countless more spy standards. It was also quite impressive visually, with sets galore inspired by Ken Adam.

I'm a bit dubious about the live-action angle, and particularly worried about how Rufus, the naked mole rat, will be handled. (An anthropomorphized CG critter could ruin a live-action version.) I wish we were getting an animated feature or a rebooted cartoon series, but I'm excited to see Kim Possible returning in any form! The original remains one of my favorite spy shows of this century.

Tradecraft: Netflix Orders Spy Kids TV Show

The Spy Kids are returning, this time on TV. Variety reports that Netflix will debut Spy Kids: Mission Critical, a series spinoff of the Robert Rogriguez theatrical kids' films, in 2018. According to the trade, "the show follows brother-and-sister team Juni and Carmen Cortez as they attend Spy Kids Academy, a top-secret spy school for kid agents. They must train and lead a team of fellow Spy Kids cadets against the forces of S.W.A.M.P. (Sinister Wrongdoers Against Mankind’s Preservation) and their leader, Golden Brain." It's unclear from this article whether this is an animated or live-action kids' show, but the head writer is FM DeMarco, who previously worked on Netflix's animated show Dragons: Race to the Edge, so that might be a clue. Bob Weinstein and The Weinstein Company will produce. No mention is made of any involvement from Rodriguez, who has directed all four installments of the film series, most recently the quasi-reboot Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 2011. In that film, Juni and Carmen (the child heroes of the original trilogy) were young adults who had passed the torch on to a new generation of Sky Kids.

Alex Rider to Return... in Print and on Screen?

Author and TV producer Anthony Horowitz (Foyle's War) gave a spoiler-filled interview with The Mail promoting his new James Bond novel Trigger Mortis, and in it he says that his popular teen spy character Alex Rider may soon return. Rider was very publicly retired in Horowitz's 2011 novel Scorpia Rising, which was subtitled "The Final Mission" and billed as a definitive swan song for the boy agent. But now the author tells the tabloid he will return in a surprisingly political (and now historical) scenario. In the midst of discussing his disillusionment with Tony Blair and disgust with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Horowitz told the Mail, "I’m going to write a new novella – my 'Octopussy.' A five-chapter story set in Iraq. Nobody knows that, so you’ve got a scoop. It has Alex penetrating the mountains in northern Iraq to discover the weapons of mass destruction."

"There are some, then?" interviewer Cole Moreton probes.

"Not after Alex finishes with them. That’s why Tony Blair never found them!" replies Horowitz. Moreton treats this as the very scoop Horowitz promises (and, indeed, the timeline fits; Alex's literary adventures spanned from 2000-2011), though to me it sounds like dry humor, so I'm not sure whether to take that "scoop" at face value or not. A new Alex Rider story would certainly be welcome, however!

Horowitz also teases that the teen spy could return to film. There was a movie made of the first book, Stormbreaker, back in 2006 (review here), but it was unceremoniously dumped by its American distributor and consequently flopped at the U.S. box office, despite a cast that included Ewan McGregor, Damian Lewis, Alex Pettyfer, Bill Nighy and Stephen Fry. Owing to the novels' immense popularity, though (especially in the UK), the franchise would seem one ripe for rebooting a decade later. And apparently there's someone, at least, thinking along those very lines. All Horowitz will reveal is, "There is interest from producers about making another but it is way too early to be able to talk about a film without putting a curse on it." That would be great! In fact, I would rather see Alex Rider get another shot cinematically than make a comeback in print. Let's all cross our fingers.

The whole interview (in which Horowitz makes some controversial statements about Ian Fleming and Skyfall, among other Bondian topics), as well as an exciting excerpt from Trigger Mortis that accompanies it, is well worth reading—but perhaps not until after you've read Horowitz's Bond novel. As I noted above, it certainly appears to be shockingly full of spoilers for the novel, and I wish I hadn't read it prior to reading the book. So proceed at your own risk.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment has announced Blu-ray and DVD releases of Kingsman: The Secret Service on June 9 (following a digital release nearly a month earlier on May 15). According to The Digital Bits, extras on the Blu-ray will include the 6-part documentary Kingsman: The Secret Service Revealed ("Panel to Screen: The Education of a 21st Century Super-Spy," "Heroes and Rogues," "Style All His Own," "Tools of the Trade," "Breathtakingly Brutal," and "Culture Clash: The Comic Book Origins of the Secret Service") and galleries of behind-the-scenes images and photos of sets and props. Matthew Vaughn's Kingsman, about a delinquent teen (Taron Edgerton) recruited by a John Steed-like gentleman spy (Colin Firth) to follow in his footsteps and save the world in fashionable suits, proved the first big hit of a year filled with spy movies, grossing over $400 million worldwide and reportedly spawning a sequel. Read my review of Kingsman: The Secret Service here.

Barely Lethal Trailer

The trailer has dropped for the brilliantly titled Barely Lethal, starring Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) as a teen spy trying to fit in at a ordinary American high school. An orphan raised in Samuel L. Jackson's assassin school, Steinfeld's character fakes her own death to leave her secret spy agency and attempt to enjoy a normal teenage life. Her plans are thwarted, however, when her old life catches up with her in the form of enemy agent Jessica Alba (Spy Kids: All the Time in the World) and rival spy Sophie Turner (Game of Thrones). Fanboys' Kyle Newman directs. I'm a sucker for the teen spy subgenre, and this looks like fun to me. While we've seen plenty of movies about ordinary kids becoming spies (If Looks Could Kill, Kingsman, Alex Rider), I can't recall one about a trained teen spy trying to become an ordinary kid before. Barely Lethal premieres April 30 on DirecTV, then opens in limited theatrical release and comes to VOD May 29.

Tradecraft: CW Orders Teen Spy Pilot

Deadline reports that the CW has given a pilot order to the teen spy school drama from Desperate Housewives' Marc Cherry and Law & Order: SVU's Neal Baer that we first heard about late last year. Written by Cherry, Baer and Blue Bloods' Dan Truly, the "Heathers meets Alias" drama follows a disgraced CIA agent turned Washington D.C. prep school teacher who tries to get back in the Agency's good graces by training his well-connected students to be his own personal network of agents. Alan Van Sprang (Reign, The Tudors) plays the agent, Stone, and Gia Mantegna (And Soon the Darkness), Pepi Sonuga (General Hospital) and Abbie Cobb (Intelligence) play the mean girls he trains to be spies, Grace, Ursula and Maddie, respectively. Speaking of mean girls, the actual Mean Girls helmer, Mark Waters, directs. Newcomer Aylin Bayramoglu also has a role. Regular readers know I'm a sucker for the teen spy subgenre, so I'm really rooting for this one to get picked up to series!

Movie Review: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)

NOTE: This review contains some SPOILERS.

Kingsman: The Secret Service is a nasty, hateful poison pill of a movie wrapped in delicious candy coating. That candy coating includes not only cool, colorful, slick, budget-stretching production design, but also knowing nods to an encyclopedia’s worth of past spy movies and TV. For these reasons, it’s safe to assume that it might appeal greatly to readers of this blog and spy fans in general… but ultimately that appeal will depend on the spy fan’s individual tolerance for truly excessive violence, gleeful and graphic slaughter of innocent people, on-screen murder of world leaders played for laughs, and pervasive misanthropy. While I was genuinely torn, for me, sadly, the latter ultimately kept me from enjoying the former. As a self-confessed aficionado of the teen spy subgenre to which this movie belongs and someone who enjoys James Bond imitators almost as much as James Bond movies, and as an avowed fan of director Matthew Vaughn (X-Men: FirstClass), I really, really wanted to love Kingsman. I was greatly looking forward to it. But I’m afraid it comes off as my first major letdown of 2015.

Based on the comic book The Secret Service by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, Kingsman tells the story of Eggsy (Taron Egerton), a working class teenage London street punk whose life is transformed when he’s recruited by Harry Hart (Colin Firth), a British spy of impeccable breeding and John Steed-like class and sophistication, and trained to be a gentleman and a spy. It’s a My Fair Lady story (acknowledged in one of the movie’s funniest exchanges), a teen agent in training story, and a paranoid global conspiracy story all in one. Eggsy’s father was a Kingsman candidate killed while saving Harry’s life in the movie’s opening moments. For that, Harry feels a sense of debt, and promises the late agent’s widow and young son one favor in their moment of need. Eggsy’s moment of need comes years later, when he’s in jail for stealing a car and needs a way out. Harry not only offers him that way out, but offers him a new future following in his father’s footsteps.

During the first half of the movie we follow Eggsy’s Alex Rider-style training as part of a group of cadets competing for the single spot on the Kingsman roster, while Harry pursues a mysterious threat that leads to celebrity kidnappings, sudden outbursts of extreme violence from ordinarily peaceful people and exploding heads. (There are a lot of exploding heads in this movie. If that’s not your thing, stay away.) And ultimately, probably, the annihilation of all life on earth outside of the proverbial Ivory Tower. The man behind this threat is social media mogul Richmond Valentine (a lisping Samuel L. Jackson in full over-the-top mode). In the second half of the movie Eggsy ends up with a mission of his own, and of course finds himself using his training to take on Valentine.

The candy coating I mentioned really is delicious stuff. It’s lots of fun to spot the spy references. I won’t itemize them all here because that would be a bigger spoiler than anything I could say about the plot, but they range from broad tropes of the genre (which the film attempts to both celebrate and subvert at once) to specific details from Bond movies or classic TV shows like The Avengers or Get Smart. The best ones manage clever new twists upon the tried and true. It was a brilliant idea, for example, to relocate The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’s tailor shop entrance to the secret spy headquarters to Savile Row. What could be more classically spy than entering the office through a Savile Row tailor?

Even better than the references are the performances. There is a lot of strong acting talent in Kingsman. Egerton is all charm and makes an easy to root for protagonist; I look forward to seeing where his career goes from here. I find Mark Strong (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) infinitely more enjoyable as a good guy than a bad guy, so it’s nice to see the former ubiquitous villain following up his scene-stealing turn in The Imitation Game with another savory spy role. Edward Holcroft (London Spy) makes a good impression as a sneering fellow cadet. Jack Davenport and Mark Hamill have entertaining cameos. And Michael Caine is Michael Caine! But the performance of this movie is Colin Firth’s. The role of Harry Hart (changed in a stroke of genius from the comic’s Bond-inspired “Jack London” to a more original Steed-inspired part) is Kingsman’s best creation, and Firth inhabits it brilliantly. Good as Egerton is, I couldn’t help but wish that the whole movie was about Harry Hart, and that there would be a long series of others to follow! Firth combines Patrick Macnee’s refined wit and sophistication with Daniel Craig’s brutality in what really might be the ultimate British gentleman spy role. Sadly, there is ultimately too little of Firth in the movie, and Kingsman suffers for it.

Then there are the trappings. Kingsman gets the trappings just right for the most part. There’s gadgetry galore, and Vaughn demonstrates how to handle spy gadgetry in the modern age. Some Bond screenwriters have gone on record saying that there’s not much you can do with gadgets in an era when we all have amazing smartphones in our pockets, but Kingsman makes a good joke out of that. When Harry first shows Eggsy the room full of meticulously organized Kingsman gadgetry, the teen takes in the pens and shoes and gold cigarette lighters—all with secret lethal functions—and then his eyes land on a wall of cell phones. “What do those do?” he asks. “Nothing,” says Harry. “That technology has caught up with the spy world.” So it has, but that doesn’t diminish the coolness of a good old fashioned poison pen!

There’s impressive production design, including the immaculate tailor shop and Kingsman headquarters, a secret subway from London to the countryside, and an airplane hangar and landing strip built inside a mountain. There’s even more impressive clothing, thanks to costume designer Adrianne Phillips (Knight and Day). Men’s fashions haven’t looked this good on screen since the Sixties. And there’s a great spy score full of Barry-esque horns and a strong theme courtesy of composers Henry Jackman and Matthew Margeson.

All that candy coating crumbles away upon closer inspection though. The sets, though initially impressive, show at the seams. The score is great, but too often it’s ignored for key sequences in favor of uninspired pop songs. The giant spaces are too obviously digital, lacking the grandeur of those cavernous Ken Adam physical sets. Even Eggsy’s epic third act shootout in the villain’s lair loses some of its luster when you realize he’s just running through the same white hallway set again and again. Maybe that, too, is a reference—a nod to the Eurospy movies and PovertyRow spy pictures of the Sixties that somehow maintained a shabby dignity in their attempts to achieve Bondian spectacle when they had to use curtains to stand in for walls—but I doubt it.

Like the sets, when you see past the spectacle, the movie itself loses a significant amount of its luster. Vaughn again and again promised in interviews a return to the sense of fun that modern spy movies have lost since the Sixties. But he doesn’t deliver. Kingsman doesn’t convey the sense of fun of a Sixties Bond movie. It’s far too misanthropic for that.

Rather than tantalizing us with the horrifying prospect of sadistic violence, as Goldfinger did when Bond came within inches of being sliced in half by a laser, Kingsman indulges that violence. Valentine’s henchwoman, Gazelle (dancer Sofia Boutella) has razor-sharp prosthetics for legs. That’s kind of a cool deformity/weapon, like we might have seen in Bonds of old, but Vaughn can’t resist wallowing in the violence of the weapons. Kingsman doesn’t stop at the prospect of a person being sliced in half; it gleefully slices them before our eyes, delighting in the shoddy digital effect of two halves of a severed body splitting.

With Kick-Ass, Vaughn and co-writer Jane Goldman cut out a lot of Millar’s mean-spirited violence, creating a movie that was far more fun than its unpleasant source material, but in Kingsman they wallow in Millar’s misanthropic excesses. This is a movie where a character with a vomit-inducing aversion to bloodletting is destined to be brutally impaled and then vomit at the sight of his or her own blood while expiring. Perhaps you find such an image as funny as Vaughn seems to, but it’s not something that screams “the fun of Sixties Bond movies!” to me. And lest I come off as squeamish, let me state that I am no prude when it comes to screen violence. I’m an ardent Tarantino admirer, and I like my horror movies as gory as possible. But gore has a place in horror that I don’t think it has in a Bond-type movie. I find Milton Krest’s exploding head in Licence to Kill to be a step too far for 007 (or even Imitation 007), and Kingsman is full of exploding heads. Like The Interview, it even explodes the heads of sitting world leaders, including President Obama and the Royal Family. I found this rather tasteless in The Interview (even with a dictator!), and I find it tasteless again in Kingsman.

The deaths of world leaders comes in keeping with Kingsman’s confused anarchic politics. There’s a reason that the Kingsman organization, despite being so obviously British in every way (right down to its name), is not tied to any one government. (In the comic it was MI6.) That’s because Vaughn and Goldman want to tap into a prevailing mistrust of governments in general… though they don’t seem to know why. (Or at least they don’t share that with the audience on screen.) Where Bond is for Queen and Country, Eggsy ends up fighting that system—and even facilitating the death of that Queen 007 would lay down his life for.

Like all the best British spy stories (and, well, pretty much all British fiction in general), Kingsman is obsessed with class and the British class system. Unlike the works of masters like John le Carré, Len Deighton and Graham Greene (whose The Human Factor may contain the best class commentary in all spy fiction), Kingsman doesn’t seem to know what it’s saying about class though. Eggsy finds himself competing with a bunch of snobby Etonian types for a spot on the roster of the ultra-secret, non-governmental spy agency, and we certainly side with him against their class-based bullying. His own trajectory is to become a sophisticated gentleman and prove that a man can defy his origins and achieve class status without the prerequisite birthright, yet the head of the snobbish Kingsmen opposed to his progress is played by Michael Caine, spydom’s leading working class hero, who seems to betray similar origins to Eggsy in a crucial cockney slip.

Like John Steed, Firth’s Harry Hart is the epitome of class and breeding, yet he is the one who believes steadfastly in Eggsy. In its macro plot, Kingsman espouses full-on class warfare, essentially advocating the slaughter of the One Percent (lest they slaughter the masses), yet in its micro arc Eggsy’s personal growth is demonstrated by his rejection of his roots and adoption of Harry’s exquisitely tailored upper-class ways. The politics of Kingsman are more The Spook Who Sat By the Door than The Spy Who Loved Me, but unlike that revolutionary classic, Kingsman doesn’t convincingly portray social ills in need of such drastic countermeasures. The upshot is offensive to liberal and conservative alike, but not in a biting satirical way. In fact, despite seeming to want to be political, it’s really just crass. Because the enemy to Vaughn isn’t so much the upper class as humanity itself. And when Harry, the movie’s most likeable character, is written into a situation where he must use his previously cool fighting prowess to brutally slaughter a church full of unarmed civilians (racist, hateful civilians, in a slight attempt to make the scene more palatable than in the comic, but civilians nonetheless), that’s when the movie loses me.

Kingsman: The Secret Service is a contradiction. Part of it is pure, reference-loaded spy fun, and part of it is hopelessly misguided and terminally half-baked social commentary soaked in far too much blood and viscera for me to find enjoyable. Harry Hart is perhaps the best new spy hero since Steed himself, but stuck in a movie that misuses him. But I will enjoy those trappings. I will buy the soundtrack and revisit its terrific spy score frequently. I will even download the surprisingly hummable Take That theme song, “Get Ready for It.” And if I could afford them, I would also buy the Kingsman suits and cravats from the Mr. Porter menswear tie-in. But I probably won’t find myself revisiting the film itself too frequently. It’s just not as fun as the sum of its parts. 

Tradecraft: Top Showrunners Team Up for CW Spy School Series

As regular readers know, I love the "teen spy" subgenre. And I feel like it's been pretty neglected on television, given its potential. So I'm pretty excited that Deadline is reporting that two very successful showrunners, Marc Cherry (Desperate Housewives, Devious Maids) and Neal Baer (Under the Dome, Law and Order: SVU) are teaming up to create a prep school spy drama for the CW. Here's how the trade describes Cheerleader Death Squad: "Described as 'Heathers meets Alias', Cheerleader Death Squad centers on a disgraced CIA agent-turned-teacher at an elite Washington DC prep school. When he realizes that his students have high level access through personal connections, he trains a select few to be his eyes and ears into the world of international espionage and help him earn his way back into the agency." Sounds promising to me! Cherry and Baer will co-write the pilot along with Blue Bloods executive producer Dan Truly. And with that kind of star wattage behind the scenes, I'd say it's got a pretty good shot at going to series at a small network like The CW. Here's hoping!

Matthew Vaughn's The Secret Service Gets New Title, Poster, Trailer: Kingsman

Matthew Vaughn's (X-Men: First Class) adaptation of the Mark Millar/Dave Gibbons comic book The Secret Service has undergone a title change—for the better, I think. The Secret Service was always a pretty generic title for a spy movie (or comic, for that matter), but Kingsman, which was the title of the first arc of the comic, has a real ring to it. The new full title is a bit clunkier, but I suppose it's necessary to let readers of the comic know what it is, so movie is officially Kingsman: The Secret Service. And it's got an extremely cool poster, and a very promising trailer! The teen spy movie (a favorite subgenre of mine) stars relative newcomer Taron Egerton as a London street thug recruited into the secret service by his dapper Uncle Jack, a superspy played by Colin Firth (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy). Mark Strong (Body of Lies), Samuel L. Jackson (Captain America: The Winter Soldier) and... drum roll... Michael Caine (Billion Dollar Brain) co-star. (All-time spy movie vet Caine plays the head of the secret service.) Check out the trailer:

 

Tradecraft: Disney Channel Orders Spy Comedy

It's not just the primetime networks who are getting in on the spy action this season. Deadline reports that Disney Channel has ordered a half-hour spy comedy called K.C. Undercover. According to the trade, the live-action, multi-camera series "focuses on K.C. Cooper [played by mononymous Disney star Zendaya], a high school math whiz who’s training to be an undercover super spy, following in the footsteps of her parents. Each episode finds the Coopers balancing typical family issues while performing undercover missions to protect the country." I'm on record as being a fan of the teen spy genre (and Disney Channel was home to one of the best teen spy shows ever a decade ago, the animated Kim Possible), so I'm definitely curious to check out this family series when it premieres in early 2015.

Trailer: The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box

No, it's sadly not a new feature version of the hilariously risible 1970s ITC series starring Gene Barry, but there is a new movie on the way called The Adventurer. The full title of this Adventurer is The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box. It seems to be a sort of Alex Rider-meets-Indiana Jones period teen fantasy spy movie, and it's got a surprisingly stellar cast for this sort of thing including Sam Neill, Michael Sheen, Keeley Hawes, Lena Headey and Ioan Gruffudd. The film opens in limited release January 10, when it will also become available on iTunes.

Tradecraft: Colin Firth Joins the Secret Service in A Foreign Country

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy's Colin Firth is looking to renew his spy vows in two very different sorts of spy movies. The actor is in talks to star in both Matthew Vaughn's action comedy The Secret Service, based on the comic book by Vaughn, Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, and A Foreign Country, based on the 2012 thriller by acclaimed spy novelist Charles Cumming. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Firth is in talks to play the co-lead in The Secret Service. The Secret Service is a teen spy movie (a subgenre I'd love to see rejuvenated) about a rowdy street kid recruited into the secret service by his James Bond-ish superspy uncle (the character Firth would play) in order to save him from a life of crime. He doesn't exactly hit it off with his posh public school fellow students at the spy academy, but is able to hold his own thanks to his rough background. Like Millar's Kick-Ass, it's all very over-the-top, with flying spy cars and the like.

Meanwhile, Screen Daily reports that Firth's new production company, Raindog Films, is partnering with Zurich financier Silver Reel Partners on a $30 million adaptation of Cumming's A Foreign Country, a much more down-to-earth spy story. The book won the 2012 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for Best Thriller, and is the first novel of a projected trilogy, making it a potential screen franchise. Firth would play disgraced former MI6 operative Thomas Kell, who is tasked with finding Amelia Levene, a fellow spook who disappears on the eve of taking over as MI6's first female director. Locations include Paris, Egypt and Tunisia, where, according to the book jacket, "he uncovers a shocking secret and a conspiracy that could have unimaginable repercussions for Britain and its allies." I'll have to take their word on that, because I haven't gotten to the unimaginable repercussions yet. I'm actually in the middle of this book right now, and thoroughly enjoying it, so I'm excited at the prospect of a film! Interestingly, Firth starred in a (sort of) spy movie at the very beginning of his career with the similar title Another Country (about the formative years of Cambridge spy Guy Burgess).

Tradecraft: Matthew Vaughn's Secret Service Lands at Fox

We've known for some time that Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn planned to re-team with comic book creator Mark Millar for an adaptation of Millar and Dave Gibbons' comic The Secret Service. Today, Deadline reports that Fox will distribute the film, and is aiming for a November 14, 2014 release date. Vaughn directed the excellent X-Men: First Class for Fox (review here). Before we get to the material itself, this news has a few ramifications for Bond fans to consider. First, it effectively takes Vaughn out of the running to helm Bond 24, something many fans had hoped for following Sam Mendes announcement that he wouldn't return for the franchise's next entry. (Vaughn previously directed Daniel Craig in Layer Cake.) Second, though no date has been announced for the next 007 movie (all MGM has promised investors is within the next three years), if EON is able to get the movie made in time for a 2014 release, then November 14 would likely be its target date (following the pattern of recent Bonds, anyway). Would that put two spy movies head to head? Or would Fox back down and move their upstart out of the way of the Daniel Craig juggernaut coming off of a billion dollar series best? Probably the latter, I'd imagine.

As for The Secret Service, the comic book book follows a hoodie-wearing London street thug who's plucked from his dead-end life by his Bondian secret agent uncle and given a second chance in Her Majesty's Secret Service. I love the teen spy subgenre, and thanks to his stellar work on Layer Cake, Stardust, Kick-Ass, and most especially X-Men: First Class, I'm a big fan of Vaughn's. I like the premise of the comic, and indeed there's a lot to like within its pages as well. But there's also a lot that frustrates the hell out of me. Despite its wonderful art, the comic feels like a first draft. Despite Deadline's assertion that the film "closely follows the comic," I'm hoping that Vaughn and his frequent co-writer Jane Goldman will once again elevate the material far above Millar's comic book, as they did very ably with Kick-Ass.

More Alex Rider Graphic Novels Announced

With the series officially over, there may be no more Alex Rider novels coming, but the teen spy lives on in graphic novel adaptations from Walker Books. Writer Antony Johnston tweeted a link earlier today to an article on the publishing trade site The Bookseller with the official announcement. Johnston has previously adapted Anthony Horowitz's first four young adult Rider novels, Stormbreaker (which was actually based on the movie script rather than the book), Point Blank, Skeleton Key and Eagle Strike, and is now signed on to pen the next two, Scorpia and Ark Angel. While Johnston remains a constant, there is a change on the artistic front, with Emma Vieceli taking over from Kanako Damerum and Yuzuru Takasaki. Besides chronicling Horowitz's teen spy's adventures in the four-color format, Johnston should be well known to spy fans for his adult espionage graphic comics, including a run on Greg Rucka's Queen & Country Declassified, and the original graphic novel The Coldest City (review here), which was published earlier this year by Oni. Unfortunately, Alex Rider's new illustrated adventures are still some ways off. Scorpia is expected in 2014, with Ark Angel following in 2015.

Tradecraft: An Almost-Bond Takes TV Spy Role in New Fox Series

Nip/Tuck's Julian McMahon was supposedly one of the final candidates to replace Pierce Brosnan* as James Bond in 2006's Casino Royale. At the time, the Australian actor seemed the best-suited to me of the names we kept seeing mentioned. Since then, Daniel Craig has proved me wrong, and I can't imagine anyone but him playing the 2000s incarnation of 007. (But I'd still take McMahon over Sam Worthington or Henry Cavill any day!) Now, Deadline reports that McMahon is close to taking another spy role—on Fox's still-untitled teen spy drama scripted by Karyn Usher. (They really need to come up with a title for that one, because I'm sick of typing "untitled Karyn Usher spy pilot.") According to the trade blog, McMahon is "in final negotiations" to play the "mysterious rogue agent who serves as surrogate father and professional mentor in the spy world" to Jane Forsythe, the Hanna-esque teenage CIA orphan lead we learned earlier this week would be portrayed by relative newcomer Saxon Sharbino.

Meanwhile, Angela Bassett will reprise the tough intelligence boss role we've seen her in on Alias and in This Means War as "the calculating and political director of the CIA who takes Jane under her wing." Or, returning to Hanna terms, the Cate Blanchett part. No matter how much debt the final show turns out to owe or not owe to Hanna, La Femme Nikita or The Professional (and despite the involvement of director Brett Ratner, who's helming the pilot), I'm rooting for this one. I like the teen spy subgenre, and I'm curious to see how this Fox show turns out... especially considering the impressive way its cast is shaping up.

*Brosnan himself was once referred to in People Magazine as a "mighty might-have-been" with regards to the role.

Tradecraft: Elton John Developing Animated Elementary School Spy Movie

Trade blog Deadline reports that Elton John's Rocket Pictures (a company started by John and his partners Steve Hamilton Shaw and David Furnish with a mandate to produce family and music-themed projects) "is developing an animated feature from the Michael Buckley novel series NERDS, about kids who run a spy network from their elementary school." Buckley himself is writing the screenplay.

"NERDS" is an acronym for "National Espionage, Rescue and Defense Society," and according to the Amazon blurb, the series "combines all the excitement of international espionage with all the awkwardness of elementary school, and the results are hilarious. A group of unpopular fifth graders run a spy network from inside their school. With the help of cutting-edge science, they transform their nerdy qualities into incredible abilities! Their enemies? An array of James Bond–style villains, each with an evil plan more diabolical and more ridiculous than the last." Sounds good to me! Rocket Pictures is responsible for last year's Gnomeo and Juliet and its upcoming sequel about "Sherlock Gnomes." (Perhaps for further sequel inspiration, John should turn to fellow platform aficionado David Bowie's "The Laughing Gnome," which is just chock-full of equally risible gnome puns.)