Kingsman: The Secret Service

Kingsman: The Secret Service is a 2014 spy action movie, based on the 2012 comic book The Secret Service. It focuses on a secretive, private intelligence agency known as Kingsman, who operate behind the front of being a tailor shop. Eggsy (Taron Egerton) is the son of a Kingsman-in-training who dies on a mission, and (when he grows up) is approached by his father's mentor Harry Hart (Colin Firth), feeling guilty over his death, to train to be a Kingsman himself. Eggsy is rather rough around the edges to be a gentleman spy, but when dealing with a megalomaniac billionaire (Samuel L. Jackson) who intends to bring about mass slaughter, an outsider might be just the man for the job.

Tropes used in Kingsman: The Secret Service include:

• Adult Fear: For some reason, you start to feel like killing anyone and everyone around you -- even your own baby...
• The Antichrist: Valentine has quite a lot of this imagery -- spreading his Mark of the Beast via SIM cards and implants and plotting the destruction of the old world and creating a One World Government.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Than the classic James Bond movies it parodies. People are sliced (bisected even), stabbed, and blown up in full view of the audience.
  • Bloody Hilarious: Galahad violently killing an entire church full of Activist Fundamentalists to the tune of "Free Bird", most of the bad guys' heads exploding to the tune of "Pomp and Circumstance".
• Casting Gag: In the original comic, it was Mark Hamill (the actor himself) who was kidnapped by the villain. In the movie, Hamill plays the kidnapped Professor Arnold.
• Cultured Badass: Part of what being a Kingsman is all about.
• The Dragon: Gazelle, Valentine's bodyguard.
• Evil Plan: Valentine intends to use his satellite network to send a signal to the SIM cards he's handed out to the lower classes to spread a Hate Plague and cause something like 99% of humanity to wipe themselves out, while his chosen from the elite ride out the event in shelters.
• Front Organisation: Kingsman Tailor. Locks and Co. (hats) is another. In this case, the front organizations came first -- the owners of Kingsman lost many of their sons to World War I and, having nobody to inherit their fortunes, as well as a desire to prevent more such massive wars from claiming the sons and fathers of other families, they decided to pool their resources to found a private intelligence agency.
• Genius Bonus: The Gaia hypothesis is mentioned a couple of times. The "weak" or "influential Gaia" version which has achieved scientific consensus is that the biotic world has a definite impact on the abiotic world. The strong (not very widely supported, sometimes called a "philosophy" instead of a "hypothesis") version, which Valentine espouses, is the idea that Earth and all living creatures on it are, in some ways, a super-organism themselves.
• Hate Plague/Not Himself: Valentine's Evil Plan causes this. Both Galahad and Eggsy's mum remember and feel horribly guilty over what they did while under the influence, though Eggsy's mum at least doesn't kill her baby.
• Knight Errant/Knights in Shining Armor: Explicitly referenced with their Theme Naming. Galahad says that the suit is the modern man's armor, and that they are the modern world's knights. Their usual method is to perform solo missions in circumstances where the big intelligence agencies and governments are too slow to operate, and then pass along enough information so that the big guys can go after the whole enemy organization. It doesn't work so well this time, because Valentine has so much of the world under his control.
• My Suit Is Also Super: Kingsman suits are bulletproof, in addition to looking snazzy.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Richmond Valentine, likely named for British media mogul and entrepreneur Richard Branson of Virgin Group.
• Parasol of Pain: Part of the standard Kingsman equipment. It's bulletproof and comes with an integrated camera (to allow the user to see through it) and gun.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: "This is not that kind of movie." Used by villain and hero alike. (Neither the kind where the villain explains his plot to the hero and the hero escapes by some convoluted means, nor the one where the hero makes a bad pun before killing the villain.)
• Pygmalion Plot: Discussed by Eggsy and Galahad. Galahad expresses disappointment with some of Eggsy's life choices (leaving Marine training to stay with his mother and deadbeat stepdad, falling in with criminals) and Eggsy insists that if he and many of his friends had been born with "silver spoons up [their] asses", they'd make something more of themselves. Eggsy certainly does, when given the chance. Of course, they both acknowledge that there are exceptions: Eggsy's stepdad's gang, and at least one of the upper-class Kingsman candidates.
• The Quisling: Just about every major politician and celebrity in the world, including Arthur. The only exception we see is the Princess of Sweden (though the number of cells in Valentine's fortress indicate that there are more).
• Shoot Your Dog: The final test to become a Kingsman. The gun is filled with blanks. The point is that an agent must be willing to kill anyone for the sake of a mission. Roxy passes, Eggsy does not.
• Shout Out: Oh so many to classic (and not-so-classic but very popular) works of Spy Fiction.
  • Galahad and Valentine talk about the "old spy movies" that they loved as children, and Valentine also talks about how this is "not that kind of movie" (leaning on the Fourth Wall in the process).
  • Eggsy names his pug JB, which Arthur guesses stands for James Bond or Jason Bourne, before Eggsy reveals it stands for Jack Bauer.
• Theme Naming: Arthurian legend. The leader is Arthur, their Gadgeteer Genius is called Merlin, and the agents themselves are named for the Knights of the Round Table.
  • Also Harry Hart (the real name of Galahad) and Richmond Valentine.
• Tuxedo and Martini: Very much so, even in the movie's world. Kingsman's Front Organisation is a tailor shop, Galahad refers to the suit as the modern man's armor, and one of the lessons that Galahad teaches Eggsy is how to properly mix a martini.
• Well Intentioned Extremist: Valentine. He's convinced that humanity is akin to a virus on Earth, and that global warming is the planet's fever. If he doesn't set his plan in motion, he thinks, all of humanity is doomed.
• While Rome Burns: Valentine advises his guests to "eat, drink, and paaaarty!" while the rest of humanity kills each other.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Valentine does, when he's got Galahad cornered.
• Your Head Asplode: Valentine's implants, given to all of his co-conspirators, can do this to anyone considered a security threat, as Prof. Arnold experienced firsthand. Merlin turns the tables by setting off all of the implants at once in the climax.