How One Bad Scene Can Ruin a Movie: 'The King's Man'

A spoiler alert and a trigger warning. This article goes into detail about a key plot point in the new prequel movie, The King's Man, part of The Kingsman series of movies. I don't recommend seeing The King's Man, for reasons I am laying out in this article, but if you are committed to seeing it regardless of this warning then skip this article. But do not say that you were not warned.

Trigger warning, this article will discuss Gay Panic and Homophobia in a scene from The King's Man if you have a hard time with those topics or frank discussion of such topics, again, you've been warned.

The King’s Man is an upsetting movie and it really should not be. Really, it’s a movie with one bizarre scene that is upsetting for reasons that I will try to lay out here. Let me be clear, I’m not upset on a moralistic level, I’m not offended by this scene. Rather, I am merely baffled by it being included in this movie. The scene I am going to describe in full is so wildly out of place in this movie and action franchise that it stands apart and demands attention. Questions must be asked, why did anyone think this scene was a good idea?

Interior: The castle of the Russian royal family circa 1914. The Duke of Oxford, played by Ralph Fiennes, and his son, Conrad, played by Harris Dickinson, are attending a holiday party. They have a secret reason that they have attended this party, The Duke intends to kill the villainous Grigori Rasputin, played by Rhys Ifans, the legendary advisor to the Russian Royal Family. Intelligence gathered by The Duke and his remarkable spy network indicates that Rasputin is using magic tricks or hypnotism of some sort to draw the Russian Monarchy away from war with Germany, one that Britain may lose without Russia’s help. Killing Rasputin is the only way to break his spell over the Russian Royal Family.

Initially, Conrad is drafted to attempt to seduce the notoriously bisexual Rasputin into a private tete a tete where a poisoned cake should be enough to quietly bring an end to Rasputin’s reign of terror. However, Rasputin sees through the ruse and instead invites The Duke for a private conversation. What proceeds from here requires a warning. There is some bizarre gay panic humor going on here and if that is offensive to you, as it definitely is to me, know that you’ve been warned. The entire joke of the scene turns on how grossed out men are by gay subtext and outwardly homosexual presentations.

The Duke was shot in the leg in a scene we see as an early flashback. The wound left The Duke with a pronounced limp. Rasputin, seeing the limp, claims that he can restore the Duke’s leg. The two retire to a private room in the castle where the poison cake awaits. While The Duke encourages Rasputin to try the cake, Rasputin tells The Duke to remove his pants. The Duke strips down to skivvies. Rasputin takes hold of The Duke’s bare leg and begins to paw at it. The Duke is skeptical but begins to succumb to Rasputin’s mysterious, hypnotic eyes and touch.

Then something happens that spins the entire movie into a skid. It’s a moment so out of nowhere, unexpected and just plain weird that it broke my brain. We see a close up of the long ago scarred wound, we see Rasputin’s mad eyes, and we see The Duke having some sort of fit of ecstasy. Then, apropos of nothing, Rasputin bends down and begins to fell-ate the wound with his tongue. I’m not joking, this is a real scene in a mainstream popcorn action movie, Rasputin appearing to perform oral sex on Ralph Fiennes.

The mind reels in this moment as you cannot begin to process how this scene made it into this movie. It would be one thing if The King’s Man were presented as a low rent, z-movie shocker but this is a movie being released by a subsidiary of Disney. How did anyone watch this scene and say yes to keeping it in the movie? The scene functions only as shock and a joke that does not land at all. The joke is simply ‘eww’ and the subtext, including cutaways to Djimon Hounsou and Harris Dickinson’s characters reacting to what they are hearing through the door is pure gay panic. Ugh!

Nothing in the rest of The King’s Man is like this. Before and after this truly bizarre and unwelcome scene, The King’s Man is a trifle, a big budget glossy action movie being distributed by a subsidiary of Disney. It’s a great looking movie with some terrific action set pieces and it fits well in the canon of The Kingsman movie as a terrific origin story. And yet, because of this insane scene that stops the movie dead, halting the action narrative and destroying the goodwill of the rest of the movie, I kind of despise The King’s Man.

It’s just so insultingly needless. There is nothing to justify the existence of this moment. It doesn’t fit the tone of the movie, it tanks the momentum of the movie at a key moment, and it features the kind of so-called ‘humor’ that we should be aspiring to put into the past. The scene could be altered to remove this moment and it would have no effect on the rest of the movie. The scene is a gag, a quite bad and unfunny gag. What’s more, the movie wasn’t struggling to be likable or fun by this point. The movie wasn’t desperately in need of a joke at this moment, Rhys Ifans’ performance as Rasputin was already broad and wild enough to make the scene work.

The visual joke of Ralph Fiennes playing out a sword fight in his boxers is more than enough to capture the silliness of the moment. Adding this needless gay panic humor and shocking gross behavior just ruins the whole thing. Removing this moment would genuinely improve the movie. Instead, the scene, this moment of unnecessary gay panic humor, breaks the fourth wall with how terrible and unnecessary it is. A mediocre but not unpleasant action movie suddenly becomes so deeply unpleasant that it lurches into becoming a bad movie.

The King’s Man will open over Christmas in the United States. I recommend skipping it instead of having to explain to members of your family why Rasputin was licking Ralph Fiennes’ leg wound over egg nogs and hot chocolate.