Mission debrief
DIRECTOR MATTHEW VAUGHN ASSESSES THE IMPACT OF ARGYLLE, AND LOOKS BACK ON HIS CAREER TO DATE
WORDS CHRIS HEWITT
A FRESH LOOK AT HOME ENTERTAINMENT
EDITED BY CHRIS HEWITT
SPOILER
WARNING
MATTHEW VAUGHN IS lost for words. This is something of a rare occurrence —the 53-yearold director is normally the talk-the-hind-legsoff-a-donkey type, but Empire has flummoxed him with a simple observation: it’s been 20 years since he made the leap from producing movies with his old mucker Guy Ritchie, and took the director’s chair for the first time on the excellent 2004 gangster movie, Layer Cake. “Wow,” he says. “Wow.” Then there’s an uncharacteristic long pause. “The 20 years thing has shut me up for a second,” he admits. “Fuck me, it has been 20 years.”
Twenty years in which Vaughn has ploughed his own furrow to great effect. There have been studio movies (Stardust, X-Men: First Class), and flirtations with studio movies (he was attached to Thor for a while, and was set to follow up Layer Cake with X-Men: The Last Stand before walking off that movie deep into pre-production), but mainly he’s one of the last independents, developing and largely funding movies like Kick-Ass and his Kingsman trilogy, which combined his nose for commercial cinema with a penchant for wildly ambitious action sequences and the odd juvenile joke. They weren’t always critically beloved, but worked well with audiences.
However, when Empire calls Vaughn in late April, he’s licking his wounds, for pretty much the first time in his directorial career. Argylle, his new episonage caper, has not only had something of a kicking critically, but also fell rather flat upon its theatrical release in February, grossing just under $100 million worldwide. As we talk, Argylle’s recent bow on Apple TV+ (Apple part-funded the movie, while Universal released it theatrically) has slowly shifted the sands somewhat. But the whole experience has rendered Vaughn somewhat reflective, even before Empire accidentally plunges him into an existential crisis…