Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell at Argyle Photo: Apple/Universal
Matthew Vaughn was director of Casino Royale for one day . Had the gig gone longer, it would have reunited him with Layer Cake star Daniel Craig, whose casting as 007 was largely credited to his cool and charismatic performance in Vaughn's 2004 crime drama, and would have immediately established him as one of the best directors.
As Vaughn told the story in 2023, “It was a really weird time when I got a call and said, ‘Would you like to meet about making Casino Royale?' And I was like, “Oh my God, yes, I would.” So I had this. I read the book again and went and met them. In fact, I think we all got along very well. And then, welcome to Hollywood, MGM called me and said, “You have a job, don’t tell anyone.”
Vaughn may have frozen Bollinger, but he stayed that way. He met with Bond producers over lunch, pitched his ideas for the film — including the casting of Craig, which was met with lukewarm approval at best — and, although he expected to be formally offered the director's job, was not approved. As he described it: “So I went home, completely confused, and called the chairman of MGM. And I asked, «What's going on?» And they said: oh, we spoke too early, “you don’t understand this.” And we're going to play Daniel.» And I was like, “Oh, okay.”
Detours like this are part and parcel of life in Hollywood. However, Vaughn's subsequent career can be seen in part as a result of the neglect, given that he produced numerous films, all of which owe much to the James Bond franchise in terms of casting, action sequences and even musical score.
His latest meta-picture, Argyle, was unfortunately a disaster: it bombed at the box office both in the US and abroad in its opening weekend, earning just $18 million in America. This is a disastrous result for a film that was budgeted at $200 million and was also intended to launch a new franchise as well as a continuation of the Kingsman series that Vaughn has been working on since 2014.
Not only was it met with criticism and widespread indifference from audiences, but it looks as if its failure killed the potential film series before they even began. All this despite a tsunami of hype and a star-studded cast (albeit mostly in micro-cameos), including everyone from singer Dua Lipa and Oscar-winner Ariana DeBose to supposed leading man Henry Cavill and actual leading man Bryce Dallas. Howard stars as Ellie Conway, an amnesiac spy turned writer. Suddenly the Bond producers' decision not to trust him with the crown jewels seems very wise.
It will be interesting to see how the director reacts to the failure of Argyle. After all, it represents yet another eventful turn in a life that has already been full of them, even at the relatively young age of 52. Vaughn was born into a wealthy family and believed that his father was «The Man from U.N.C.L.E» actor Robert Vaughn. but subsequently discovered that this was not the case, and that he was instead the son of the banker George de Vere Drummond, whose surname he now uses in his personal life.
Daniel Craig in layer cake
After leaving university a few weeks later, he made his first film appearance as Guy Ritchie's co-writer, producing Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, both of which were successful, as well as Madonna Farrago Gone, which was not a success. Vaughn then switched from producing to directing in Daniel Craig's 2004 gangster film Layer Cake, which was a critical success that earned Vaughn a Bafta nomination for Best Newcomer and was also a key factor in Craig's casting as James Bond. Combining thrills with an impressive sense of foreboding, it was an auspicious debut that suggested Vaughn could have a serious career as a director targeting adult critics.
The director then misled audiences by diving into the 2007 fantasy epic Stardust, which was a big-budget, special-effects picture featuring both comic and romantic elements, based on a Neil Gaiman novel, and featuring a wildly eclectic cast, including which included everything from Peter O'Toole. and Robert De Niro to Sienna Miller and (in an early, uncharacteristically pompous role) Cavill. It was a big success in the UK, flopped in the US and gave the world the popular theme song Take That Rule the World.
In hindsight, the PG-rated film would contain elements that would later define Vaughn's career, for both good and ill. It contains stunning action scenes (the slow-paced scene midway through the film in which evil sorceress Michelle Pfeiffer tries to trap and kill the main characters in a fake inn is remarkable filmmaking by any standards), a charming central romance between Charlie Cox's Tristan and Claire. Danes Yvaine's «Fallen Star» and some truly terrible moments of comic relief. De Niro's terrible performance as cross-dressing pirate Captain Shakespeare is one of the great actor's worst (against stiff competition), and the Ritchie-esque bickering among the supporting cast is terribly disconcerting.
Chloe Grace Moretz in the movie «Kick-Ass»
However, the picture that defined everything Vaughn has done since was 2010's Kick-Ass. Made at the dawn of the current craze for superhero fare, it's a gleefully subversive and deliriously violent film that derives much of its shock value from Chloë Grace Moretz's Assassin character, an 11-year-old vigilante driven by her vengeance. -I'm looking for a father (Nicolas Cage no less) to become an agent of destruction for one girl. The killer happily spits out profanities (sample line to a room full of armed thugs: «Okay, you ___, let's see what you can do,» shortly before she kills them all) and happily steals the movie.
It was released with a mixture of approval and horror. Roger Ebert called it «morally reprehensible» and the Guardian critic praised it, saying: «What I experienced was less a moral panic than a full-blown fit of stand-up gibberish.» It was a commercial success, and suggested that Vaughn's relentless attack on any conventional notions of taste might also be linked to a keen understanding of what audiences wanted to see — in this case, as the US ratings board MPAA described it. , «strong, violent violence throughout, widespread use of language, sexual content, nudity and some drug use, in some cases involving children.»
If Vaughn's excellent 2011 X-Men film First Class is today most notable for Michael Fassbender's steely and terrifying performance as the vengeance-seeking Erik Lehnsherr, aka Magneto, than for the director's (relatively) low-key approach, he'll soon cast aside all understatement for his The 2014 film Kingsman: The Secret Service featured Taron Egerton as a working-class youth recruited into an elite secret service unit headquartered in a tailor's shop on Savile Row.
Like many of Vaughn's paintings, it is a very strange mixture of apparently incompatible elements. There's an old-fashioned, even dour political message about the importance of hard work and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps — a reminder that Vaughn is one of the few overtly conservative commercial filmmakers working today — coupled with gleefully absurd and brutal action scenes, especially the set pieces , in which Colin Firth's Kingsman character Harry, temporarily driven mad by a poisoned SIM card (don't ask), murders a church full of hateful parishioners.
It ends with a smirking, dirty joke in which Egerton Eggsy offers and receives anal sex from a young Swedish princess in exchange for saving the world and her life. Vaughn's reaction to the controversy was to describe it as his take on the traditional moments at the end of Bond films when 007 is seen at the crime scene. “Some damn feminists are accusing me of being misogynistic,” he said. «I was like, 'That couldn't be further from the truth.' In my opinion, it's a celebration of women and women being empowered in strange ways, which I'm sure will be a big controversy again. It's meant to be tongue-in-cheek and crazy.»
Ten years later, even the film's defenders, myself included, still cringe. However, the controversy it generated also spoke volumes about Vaughn's knack for upsetting people, coupled with his undeniable savvy when it came to marketing his photographs. To promote the release of Kingsman, a real-life pop-up show was organized on Savile Row, selling versions of the costumes featured in the film, hilariously blurring the lines between fantasy and reality in a much more successful manner than Argyle would later do. a decade later. And of course, it helps that Vaughn's wife and co-producer, model Claudia Schiffer, can always be counted on to bring the glamor to his films' red carpet premieres, meaning they'll always grace the front pages.
Matthew Vaughn with his wife Claudia Schiffer in 2017 Photo: Getty
Kingsman also envisioned Vaughn breaking away from traditional expectations of filmmaking. Through his production company, Marv Studios, Vaughn self-finances his films and then sells them to larger studios, meaning he personally retains full artistic control over the finished pictures and presents them as a fait accompli to predatory distributors. In the case of Kingsman and its sequel, 2017's The Golden Circle, this proved to be a shrewd and commercially successful move for everyone involved; Both films were extremely profitable despite being R-rated action films starring a middle-aged man.
Unfortunately, when it came to 2021's underrated prequel The King's Man, post-Covid release patterns meant it flopped significantly, not least because its darker tone confused those accustomed to associating Vaughn with absurd speed and the “take no prisoners” principle. . And now the failure of Argyle has proven that the director's Midas approach is showing clear signs of tarnishing. How to get out of this crisis?
Vaughn is not a modest man — like most A-list directors — and his announcement that he has already produced another Kick-Ass film, Schoolhouse Brawl, directed by his stunt coordinator Damien Walters, suggests he is happy to remain in the film industry. the beefed-up fantasy films with which he made his name, at least for now.
However, it takes a certain arrogance to make a film that flops as badly as its last release. It was, it's still a reminder that audiences may have become bored with his stunts. One of the problems with his films is that Vaughn seems to find them funnier than many viewers; he might well be advised to tone down his attempts at over-the-top comedy in his next film. Fassbender's scenes in First Class, in particular, show how effective he can be when he plays it straight rather than cracking up with laughter.
As Vaughn dusts himself off and plans his next attack in good taste, he can look to his near-contemporary Christopher Nolan — not a director ever associated with trying to cheat for the sake of cheap jokes — and learn some lessons from his success. Both directors have been praised for reviving previously moribund superhero franchises, and both are outstanding, exciting auteurs whose films are always an event when they come out.
However, while Nolan's rise to commercial fame and awards with Oppenheimer was extremely impressive, he was honest and straightforward. Both viewers and his colleagues consider him a simple dealer who strives to create the best films possible.
Argyle's cunning and smugness, coupled with the baffling attempt to use the Beatles' underwhelming posthumous single «Now and Then» as a musical theme, presents a creative dead end for its director. If he is offered another chance at 007, he should take it and act honestly this time. Who knows, the results could be great.
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