20.10.2022

Kingsman: The Secret Service, 2015

‘The Church Fight’

In classic cinema, an important aspect is continuity and making sure the audience always knows where they are. But that has been set aside with post-cinema. Action scenes are a good example of how post-cinema has changed the art of movie-making completely. Mattias Stork’s video essay explains how classic cinema was made with careful consideration, and patience, and that every shot composition, cut, or camera move had a purpose. Rapid cuts were seen as something negative or “sloppy or amateurish” (Stork 2011). This later changed as post-cinema started to take over. Rapid cuts and the shaky camera became the way to go when it came to creating pace and intensity, especially in action scenes, but it has also been used in other settings as well.

In Kingsman: The Secret Service, the church fight, an iconic fight scene from a movie that can be categorised as post-cinematic, is shot in a way that can resemble classic cinema. An almost five-minute-long fight scene has barely any cuts and no shaking camera, yet the pace and intensity build as we go along.

Let’s just quickly rewind and give some backstory to this scene. The villain played by Samuel L. Jackson, Richmond Valentine, has equipped the majority of the population with free phones which has a sim card that will send out a high-frequency noise when Valentine activates them, which turns everyone that can hear it into cold-blooded murderers, in hopes of preventing overpopulation. This scene is situated in a crowded church full of people equipped with Valentine’s phones, so when the sound is activated, the highly trained agent Harry Hart, played by Colin Firth, becomes a killing machine. 

The scene is made to look like a one-shot scene but cuts off a few times to show other characters in other locations reacting to what’s happening, but it cuts right back to where we were left off in the church. The camera follows Hart making his way through the church killing everyone in his way, in various different ways. We sometimes see the camera quickly panning to see some action happening outside the frame, but it quickly pans back to Hart.

The affect driving this scene is created by seeing Valentine about to activate the phones, knowing Hart will be affected by the noise. Also from seeing his trainee agent watching what is going on, through a camera in Hart’s glasses. But not fully grasping what is about to happen, we as viewers are invited to Valentine’s headquarters and understand exactly what is about to go down. According to Brian Massuni quoted in Shaviro (2010), affect is “non-conscious, asubjective or presubjective, asignifying, unqualified, and intensive,”

References

• Dir. Matthew Vaughn, Kingsman the Secret Service, 2014. 
• Mathias Stork, Chaos Cinema, 2011. Accessed: 20. 10. 2022 Available: https://vimeo.com/metafilm, 

• Steven Shaviro, 2010, Post Cinematic Affect, p.8. John Hunt Publishing. Accessed: 20.10. 2022 Available: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/goldsmiths/reader.action?docID=664329

• Shea Serrano, 2017, The Killings in the ‘Kingsman’ Church Scene, Ranked by Absurdity. Accessed:20.10. 2022 Available: https://www.theringer.com/movies/2017/9/22/16346680/kingsman-church-scene-kill-spree-ranked

Synne Rage