‘Kingsman: The Secret Service’ explained: Why does Valentine want to “cull” humanity?
Few movies manage to have it both ways quite like the first in the Kingsman franchise, combining action and comedy in a crowd-pleasing spy thriller with something in it for almost everybody. Matthew Vaughn brings the slick cuts and no-nonsense humour of Layer Cake to the table, while Colin Firth fits gentleman spy Harry Hart like a glove, and Taron Egerton comes of age as a young maverick ‘Eggsy’ Unwin.
But the biggest draw of all is undeniably Samuel L Jackson, who seems to enjoy a good espionage movie. He steals the show as villainous billionaire Richmond Valentine, imbuing his character with overtones of Kanye West – insanely brash but intensely insecure, superficially hard-headed but deeply vulnerable. He’s also prone to attending far-right church congregations and has some big, bad ideas for how to solve the existential threats to humanity. It’s as if West consulted the 2014 film for his abortive presidential campaign playbook.
Specifically, Valentine has a plan to “cull” most of humanity using a psychoactive phone signal emitted from the free SIM cards he distributes around the world. On Valentine’s command, the signal activates, turning all SIM card users into violent maniacs hellbent on murdering one another.
He carefully selects a collection of politicians and businesspeople to immunise against the murderous signal, which is done by implanting microchips into their necks to counteract it. Valentine intends to wipe out most of humanity using his evil invention, leaving behind only those who’ve had his special implants fitted. That is, the global elite he himself is a part of.
It’s down to Kingsman, the secretive intelligence agency that lends its name to the film and subsequent franchise, to stop him. That means agents Firth, Egerton, Sophie Cookson and co, with a little help from their computer wizard Merlin, played by Mark Strong.
But why kill most of humanity?
The motivation behind Valentine’s “mass genocide”, as his henchwoman Gazelle rightly puts it, is finding a solution to a real problem. Humanity’s role in climate change. He explains to Kingsman double agent Chester King, “Global warming is the fever, mankind is the virus. We’re making our planet sick”. That may be the case, but the killing of billions of people is the most depraved solution imaginable, amounting to far larger human costs than any devastation global warming might cause us, at least in the short term.
“A cull is our only hope,” Valentine insists. “If we don’t reduce our population ourselves, there’s only one of two ways this can go. The host kills the virus, or the virus kills the host.” He’s already taken matters into his own hands, appointing himself the person responsible for the awful way things are going to go. Unless Merlin, Galahad and Lancelot can stop him. Kingsman agents, not mythical members of the Round Table.
Egerton’s Galahad manages to kill Valentine and stop his killer phone signal just in time before humanity’s murderous rampage goes beyond the point of no return. A mother breaking through a bathroom door with a knife to get at her baby in a clever inversion of the famous scene from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is stopped in her tracks.
Humanity is saved. And tasked with fighting climate change by more humane and productive means instead. Meanwhile, Kingsman have other missions ahead of them.
