Movie
- Harry fighting Dean's goons at the pub, all while keeping his composure.
- Gazelle and her weaponized prosthetic legs are awesome on their own, but when she puts them to use, she is practically unstoppable.
- Her entrance is awesome. Lancelot has just taken down some mooks and is about to free Professor Arnold when there is a flash of one of Gazelle's bladed legs and he is sliced in half from the head down
- Eggsy using his Le Parkour skills to escape from Dean's thugs. He was already a bit of a badass even before Kingsman.
- The church fight scene is incredibly well choreographed and very creatively put together. Not to mention satisfying for seeing so many hateful bigots getting what's coming to them.
- The church scene is a HUGE MoA. Every single person in a packed church becomes hell-bent on murdering each other, and Harry just mows through ALL of them.note
- And being set to the iconic guitar solo of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" certainly made it even better.
- Eggsy literally suiting up for the first time on the plane. It's both the perfect closure to his Training from Hell, and the sure sign that shit's about to get real.
- Eggsy taking on Valentine's private army while using every Chekhov's Gun we saw earlier in the film. We also get to see his gymnastics skills and his excellent weapons scores put to damned good use.
- Eggsy's story in general. Coming from a poor, working-class background, adapting brilliant Le Parkour skills and entering a secret service his father was in, only to end up beating him in training. Even flunking the last test and not officially becoming a Kingsman agent doesn't stop him from showing the program what an ideal candidate he is.
- Eggsy managing to outsmart Arthur by switching their brandies (so that Arthur gets the deadly glass) when Arthur got distracted by a painting. Simple Yet Awesome, indeed. Bonus points for Eggsy giving no reaction when Arthur clicks the pen; he just sits there patiently waiting for the poison to take its effect on Arthur.
- Gazelle vs Eggsy was another well choreographed fight that was simply a joy to watch. As was the fact Eggsy kills Gazelle with the toxic knife boot, the only scratch Gazelle had ever suffered in the course of the movie. Also, that was some fast toxin.
- Major world leaders who were totally fine with their citizens dying en masse getting their heads blown up in a colorful explosion, in slow-mo, set to Pomp and Circumstance.
- A Swedish princess rewarding Eggsy with sexytimes for saving the world.
- Before that, her refusal to go along with Valentine's plans even though she was imprisoned for over a month. She may not be a Kingsmen agent, but she sticks to her morals.
- Roxy (Lancelot) doesn't get to storm the base. What does she do instead? She has to fly up into the exosphere and use a shoulder-mounted missile to shoot down a satellite. Bonus points for doing it after one of the balloons exploded, so she's slowly falling and cannot get a firm lock on the target. Then she HALOs back to Earth and lands on the side of a mountain. Not bad for someone with a fear of heights.
- Harry giving Eggsy's abusive stepdad a well-deserved fright through a mini-speaker planted on Eggsy's shoulder.
- Merlin's reveal that Eggsy had a parachute the whole time.
- A subtle one, but during Harry and Eggsy's first official meeting (after Harry busts Eggsy out of trouble with police), Harry criticizes Eggsy for wasting his talents and throwing away his growing career as a Marine. Eggsy then not only successfully counters all of his criticisms, but manages to rub it back in his face that given the right circumstances, slobs like him could be as good as, if not even better than, the snobs who only complain about things they don't like about slobs without knowing all the reasons why they did what they did. This impresses Harry enough to consider him as a potential Kingsman candidate.
Eggsy: Then we wouldn't be cannon fodder for snobs like you, judging people like me from your ivory towers with no thought about why we do what we do. We ain't got much choice, you get me? And if we was born with the same silver spoon up our arses, we'd do just as well as you, if not better.
- On the other hand, Harry shows his good sense by acknowledging what Eggsy says and counter-arguing that things aren't as black-and-white as Eggsy thinks and that there are both Royals Who Actually Do Something (such as himself and the Kingsman organization as a whole) and Lower-Class Lout (such as Eggsy's "friends").
- A lot of Kingsmen candidates tests are Moments of Awesome for Eggsy in general. Not only did he keep up with the other elite candidates who received higher education than him, he managed to beat most of them, despite all those Training from Hell subjected to him by Merlin, and managed to be one of the two last candidates left facing the final test along with Roxy. One of the most prominent moments being the semi-final test, where Eggsy got tied up onto the train track and being threatened by a man who wanted info on the Kingsmen. A train is approaching at high speed, and the only way to escape is by using the knife the guy is holding which he will only give when Eggsy spills out every secret. Eggsy, demonstrating extreme loyalty, refused to rat out his associates, despite being scared out of his mind as he saw the train coming closer and closer. He even showed his extreme loyalty when the guy asked him "Is Kingsmen worth dying for?" How does Eggsy respond? "FUCK, YEAH!" This applied to Roxy, as well, offscreen, as both of them passed the test. Defiant to the End moment at its finest, people.
Meta
- The fact that the film managed to take in $35 million at the US box office on its opening... which just so happened to be the same weekend that Fifty Shades of Grey, a major film adaptation of a hugely popular novel, was released. Its projected box office was only in the 25-30 million box office range given the circumstances, and even though it lost first place to said movie, that is one insanely impressive debut for a smaller British film released on the same weekend as a major blockbuster.
- At the end of its theatrical run, it's made just shy of $415 million, more than five times its budget even before DVD, Blu-Ray and On-Demand sales are factored in.
- For fans of Mark Hamill, seeing him return to the big screen—in his biggest live-action role since Return of the Jedi, no less—is awesome. Even if Professor Arnold is just a supporting character, and he gets killed off less than halfway through the movie, it's great to see him sharing the screen with the likes of Samuel L. Jackson and Colin Firth.
- Taron Egerton gets one for, while being pretty much a rookie like his character, managing to stand well on his own against established legendary actors such as Colin Firth, Michael Caine and Samuel L. Jackson. Of course, the writers don't make the film rely on those actors, but rather give Taron enough of his own screen time to carry the film and good enough character development too so that when the film no longer revolves around Galahad and Arthur, the audience doesn't even notice the transition.
- How the female characters,
Gazelle and Roxy were written. No nude scenes, neither are sexually objectified, and prove to be badass. Even Princess Tilde gets a nod in the post:
- Roxy isn't made to be the typical Love Interest for Eggsy and proves to be very skilled despite not getting a lot of screen time. She even earns the title of "Lancelot", when everyone in the audience likely considers it a Foregone Conclusion that it'll be Eggsy.
- Gazelle: "A woman of colour, who is not only mentoring the villain, but she turned her disability into deadly advantage."
- Princess Tilde: "The princess proposed sex to him, not the other way around, and it was her idea to make it anal. She didn’t passively fell into Eggsy’s arms as a prize, she very actively wanted to have sex with the guy, who saved the world. I don’t know how owning her sexuality and enjoying sex lessens the fact that she was the only one who stood up to Valentine or that she didn’t break after month of imprisonment."
