Skyfall and Kingsman Comparison

Both Skyfall and Kingsman (Both British movies) have shown a great amount of success in the Gross profit region, Skyfall managing to break through the stigma of the other previous Bond movies and made it to $1 billion internationally and became one of the most successful in the franchise, although Kingsman did not do as well it still made a decent amount of $128,261,724 considering the fact that it was not a sequel as James Bond was but simply stood on its own with a gentle push of having a successful director as Matthew Vaughn who directed Kick-Ass and X-Men First Class, there wasn’t much else to make it stand out off the shelf, especially with the huge amount of competition with sticking with the same ‘MI6 and Spy genre’ that his been running its way through the Film Industry since the mid 90s with movies like Men In Black, The James Bond sequels and The Bourne Identity. However despite that it still managed to create quite a good profit which may be because it appealed to a newer form of audience.

Kingsman: The Secret Service was centred around Eggsy, a misfit teenager from England whose Dad (before he was murdered) was a Kingsman Agent, which later on in the film Eggsy turned out to train in his father’s footsteps and become one. There was a chronological narrative structure (linear) throughout the movie as we the audience saw the various disruptions and issues Eggsy was faced with as he was facing them which therefore built a connection with the audience. As mentioned before both movies are British and were set and filmed in Britain however Kingsman pays attention to the grittier side of Britain showing more realistic elements of the suffering a mother goes through after the loss of a husband and the troubles Eggsy went through in the movie in order to help his family e.g. dropping out of extra-curriculum activities. Baring this in mind there is still typical British iconography for example the ‘bull dog’ which also features in the Bond movie right at the beginning, there was also the scenery at the pub throughout the movie which is ideal to an international viewer, this is where stereotypes come into play, but not necessarily in a negative light, it is simply done to infuse profit as because it is a British movie, people who are not from Britain want to see the typical ‘British’ setting.

Skyfall the 23^rd Installment to the James Bond sequels although set in the same place and from the same action thriller genre it focuses on a different aspect. The James Bond movies tend to target a much older audience due to the sophisticated dialogue used and the general approach the characters have to one and other, it is much more efficient in the way that it is run and has less comical references than Kingsman had in my opinion because it did not need comedy in order to make the viewers focus as the viewers would’ve been in the ‘James Bond’ fan base typically for quite a considerable amount of time. Skyfall also had a linear structure, starting straight into action with the ‘assumed death’ of agent 007 which in its own kept the audience captivated right from the start. Skyfall has much more of a masculine ideology and characteristics throughout the movie than Kingsman did, both the protagonist and the antagonist were males both having high status.

In conclusion although both movies follow the same genre they still remain quite different however tend to both incorporate similar attributes from other movies e.g.  Captain America: Winter Soldier, in terms of revealing the real plan of the technocratic cryptocracy but also in Skyfall there is some links to the Dark Knight, for example when James Bond is pronounced dead and he is aimlessly walking around getting drunk he is only pulled back to 'save London' much like Bruce Wayne's only motivation is saving Gotham after being constantly cooped up in his mansion doing nothing. However there is still a link to the dominant ideology in both movies, this being that in both movies the main heroes such as the Kingsman Agents and the Agents of Skyfall are both middle aged white men, this clearly shows that a lot of these large blockbuster movies always have a solid reflection of their roles in the industries with the movies that they make and always come off as the prestigious heroes.