Director Matthew Vaughn has reflected on the panning his spy caper Argylle received from the critics earlier this year, calling the reviews ‘vitriolic’.
The $200million would-be blockbuster starred an impressive cast led by Henry Cavill and his bafflingly styled barnet, alongside Bryce Dallas Howard, Samuel L. Jackson, Dua Lipa and Sam Rockwell.
But despite his pedigree in the genre, Vaughn stumbled when asked to produce his own original story after the success of his Kingsman franchise, with Argylle showcasing a muddled story about Cavill’s Agent Argylle, who is a fictional creation of introverted author Elly Conway (Howard), with an uncanny knack for mirroring the actions of a real-life spy organisation in her books.
Vaughn admitted his ‘guard came down’ on the film after Argylle’s test screenings ‘had gone fantastically well’.
‘The premiere was a really fun night, and it was like going back to the Snatch days where there was such excitement. And I started drinking the Kool-Aid,’ he confessed to Empire magazine, referencing the popular Guy Ritchie-directed flick he produced in 2000.
However, the gloss quickly wore off Argylle, which was dubbed ‘messy’, ‘dull’, tedious’ and even ‘Arg-vile’ – the latter courtesy of Little White Lies.
‘It’s a fun, feel-good movie, or I thought it was a fun, feel-good movie. We didn’t make Citizen Kane, but f**king hell, then the reviews came out and I’m like, “Wait, what have I done to offend these people?” They were vitriolic,’ the filmmaker continued.
‘I’m not saying the movie’s perfect by any means, but I didn’t think it was offensive.’
Vaughn also said that he actually visited cinemas to see how the film was being received after he started to question his own judgement.
He said he was ‘genuinely scratching my head about that because you can’t ignore it. It wasn’t like [just] a few bad reviews’.
Metro.co.uk’s own two-star verdict stated: ‘Argylle has given high hopes to Henry Cavill (and cat) fans alike, who will likely only have them dashed.
‘It works as an entertaining piece of escapism, but nothing beyond that with the way it’s been crafted. The suggestion that this could be a fresh take on spy films is proven unfulfilled when Argylle had the potential to do what it did much better.’
Argylle managed only a rotten 33% rating on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, but fared better among fans with a much stronger rating of 72%.
However, it reportedly pocketed a measly $96.1m at the global box office, with Variety suggesting that it would have needed to rake in approximately $500m to break even as a traditional studio release.
Although it was distributed by Universal though, Argylle was actually an Apple Original film, meaning it’s a little murkier to understand its results – especially as it was also made to be streamed on Apple TV Plus.
In this arena, Vaughn is much happier, claiming that the movie is ‘doing very well on streaming’ and that ‘people are liking it’.
He also said that he was ‘getting texts saying, ‘“Wow, those reviews were f**king harsh!”’ as he admitted ‘nothing would make me happier than making another one’ – which the team already has ‘planned’.
As viewers may remember, the mid-credits scene set up the potential for a prequel, as well as sequels in the series, with Vaughn encouraging people to keep watching the film to help make some of that happen.
Argylle is available to stream now on Apple TV Plus.
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