"Fine, I'll go change. But you could have told me this was going to be an INFORMAL skinhead initiation."

KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE

The Abridged Script

FADE IN:

INT. MIDDLE EASTERN SAND FORTRESS

A bunch of HEAVILY-ARMED MEN burst into a BUILDING and start SHOOTING EVERYBODY. Masked gunmen COLIN FIRTH, MARK STRONG, JACK DAVENPORT and NOLINES McDEADGUY tie some GUY to a CHAIR and INTERROGATE HIM.

COLIN FIRTH

Give us the information we need or we’ll blow your brains out!

TERRORIST (PRESUMABLY)

Wait, could we take half a second to establish just what us guys do that’s evil? I mean your actions right now are pretty much indiscernible from Hans Gruber’s, so a little context might be useful.

COLIN FIRTH

The context is that you’re middle eastern and have guns. Just because this is a British movie doesn’t mean we can’t borrow Hollywood stereotypes.

TERRORIST

Fine, I might as well just own it then. SUICIDE BOMB TIME!

McDEADGUY throws himself on the TERRORIST’S BOMB and DIES, SAVING EVERYONE.

COLIN FIRTH

NOOO, McDEADGUY!! On the bright side, congratulations, Jack, you just won the position as our new agent. By default. Due to the other candidate being MORE competent and heroic than you.

JACK DAVENPORT

Well that’s dissatisfying. Hang on, by what definition am I a fresh-faced recruit? I’m clearly in my early forties here.

COLIN FIRTH

Yeah well, we’re about to skip ahead seventeen years so we’ve got the rest of the movie to look age-appropriate.

(pause)

Well, me and Mark do. You’ll be abruptly hacked up in the next scene.

JACK DAVENPORT

Damnit, it’s At World’s End all over again.

INT. LONDON POLICE STATION, SEVENTEEN YEARS LATER

Troubled youth TARON EGERTON, whose nickname, “EGGSY”, sounds like an apt shortening of TARON EGERTON but doesn’t relate to his character name GARY UNWIN even slightly, has been arrested for stealing a car.

TARON EGERTON

Fortunately I’m McDeadguy’s son, and when he died his agency gave me a special phone number I can use for a one-time favor of my choice, so now I can avoid prison!

(pause)

Wait a minute, my mum lives in poverty in an abusive relationship with a violent gangster. Why the hell have I never thought to use this Get Out of Anything Free card until now?

TARON is LET GO. As he leaves, he is approached by COLIN.

COLIN FIRTH

So Jack’s dead now, and we’re bringing in candidates for his replacement. Since your dad saved my life I’m picking you.

TARON EGERTON

Which means you would have sprung me for your own reasons anyway, and I just completely wasted my magic phone call?

COLIN FIRTH

That’s right, sucker! Now, you should be ideal Kingsman material as you were a straight-A student, a master gymnast and a model marine before your life went tits-up. Kind of kills the “diamond in the rough” premise behind your character, doesn’t it?

Suddenly they are confronted by the THUG whose car TARON stole, and several of his cronies.

THUG

We want a word with Taron, y’old geezer, so piss off. Doan mess wiv us, becoz the angrier we get the ficka ow axents get, so leave bafaw yoo cuzzaz wiv a fedgin wobbla!

But then COLIN kicks all of their ASSES using MARTIAL ARTS and BOND GADGETS. Finally he knocks out a potential WITNESS with an AMNESIA DART.

COLIN FIRTH

Wait, I have instant knock-out amnesia darts? Shit, I should have used those on everybody. Letting a bunch of random goons witness my bulletproof umbrella-gun and electro-bracelets and whatnot kind of takes the “secret” out of “secret service”, after all.

INT. KINGSMEN HEADQUARTERS

COLIN takes TARON to a HUGE AUSTENTATIOUS MANOR with the KINGSMEN LOGO emblazoned on the lawn, meaning that this super-secret organization could be found in FIVE MINUTES by anyone who knows how to use GOOGLE EARTH.

COLIN FIRTH

The Kingsmen are a group founded just after World War I by a bunch of wealthy aristocrats. They independently identify and neutralize threats to world peace, answering to no goverment and operating outside the law.

TARON EGERTON

In other words, a bunch of millionaires have a private army of assassins and use them against whatever organizations they personally take a stand against. Are you sure you’re the good guys?

TARON goes to the CANDIDATES’ BARRACKS, where he meets the LEAGUE OF UNDESERVING RICH ASSHATS.

EDWARD HOLCROFT

Well well, would you look at the kind of riffraff they’re letting in these days? Jeeves, laugh at this peasant for me.

JEEVES

Ha ha ha!

TARON EGERTON

Oh yeah? We’ll see who’s laughing once you realize this movie is playing the “smug toffee-nosed assholes beaten by noble working class underdog” cliche to the hilt!

EDWARD HOLCROFT

Noble working class? You are aware that this is a movie where every single lower-class male character is a criminal, yourself included.

SOPHIE COOKSON

Meanwhile, I’m the token non-jerk aristocrat.

TARON EGERTON

And my love interest?

SOPHIE COOKSON

Not even a little bit, surprisingly. It seems that this parody of all spy movie tropes managed to forget about the sex almost entirely. The closest thing you get to a love interest is a Swedish princess who lets you do her in the ass.

Suddenly, the TESTING BEGINS! The room starts to FILL WITH WATER!

SOPHIE COOKSON

SHOWER HEADS!

EDWARD HOLCROFT

Ah yes, good idea! Every single one of us except Taron knows exactly what you’re talking about, as that standalone, context-free noun could only refer to that one obscure survivalist technique which is apparently taught to all military cadets except for the marines.

SOPHIE and the JERKS all jam SHOWER HEAD TUBES into TOILETS and BREATHE COMFORTABLY. Instead of NOTICING THIS and FOLLOWING THEIR LEAD, or possibly just because he thinks that that is SUPER GROSS, TARON punches out the bathroom MIRROR and they all escape to an adjoining OBSERVATION ROOM where MARK STRONG is watching.

MARK STRONG

You all fail because, as none of you noticed, one of the candidates drowned!

TARON EGERTON

Okay, I can understand how I missed that while I was flailing around looking for a way out, but the rest of you were staring out into the main room, calmly breathing your sewer gas while you apparently watched the other candidate thrash and die. What are you, a bunch of sociopaths?

EDWARD HOLCROFT

I guess. Except for Sophie, is that really at all surprising?

INT. KINGSMEN BRIEFING ROOM

COLIN and MARK are called into a BRIEFING with MICHAEL CAINE.

MICHAEL CAINE

I’m the head of the Kingsmen, code name “Arthur”, as we are all named after the Knights of the Round-

(looks at long, straight table)

Bloody hell, would it have been too much to make this table round? Seriously, that seems like a pretty basic reference to incorporate here.

MARK STRONG

So Jack died while investigating some kind of biological weapon which induces animalistic rage in humans, kind of like a version of the 28 Days Later virus where the zombies actually attack each other. Or in other words, a much more logical version of the 28 Days Later virus.

MICHAEL CAINE

Jack’s last lead was kidnapped environmental scientist Mark Hamill, who has turned up seemingly not kidnapped at all. Colin, go ask him what’s going on.

INT. UNIVERSITY

COLIN goes and confronts MARK HAMILL.

MARK HAMILL

(cartoon voice)

Well hello there! Sorry about the silly accent, but I’ve been exclusively doing voiceovers for so long I’ve honestly forgotten how to sound like a human.

COLIN FIRTH

Tell me why you’re not kidnapped anymore.

MARK HAMILL

Why certainly, what happened was AHHH, MY HEAD IS OVERHEATING! OH WELL, AT LEAST I JUST BARELY MANAGED A SINGLE HIT FILM BETWEEN RETURN OF THE JEDI AND THE FORCE AWAKENSAAAAAAHHHHHH

His HEAD EXPLODES, showering COLIN with some kind of WEIRD GUNK!

COLIN FIRTH

ARGH! Some kind of chemical... putting me into a coma... almost as though the rest of the plot has to be stalled... until Taron has finished... his... traiiiiuhh...

(slips into coma)

EXT. THE SKY

The six remaining CANDIDATES go SKYDIVING.

MARK STRONG

(over radio)

Anybody who fails to come in under the radar and land within the ten-foot target will immediately fail out of the entire program, because I guess the Kingsmen consider sub-par skydiving skills more inexcusible than allowing your fellow candidates to drown. And while you’re falling, here’s a fun fact: one of your parachutes is a fake. Enjoy!

TARON EGERTON

Ah shit. Okay, this is fine, logically we just wait until we’re below the radar and then everyone except Sophie and me open their chutes immediately. The one whose chute doesn’t open can pair up with me; or if all of you are fine, it must be one of us two, and we’ll have plenty of time to safely make it down together.

EDWARD HOLCROFT

OR we could waste precious time having all six of us take turns opening our chutes, one at a time, with stupidly long pauses in between each one.

TARON EGERTON

Moronic yet hair-raising, I like it!

They ALL SURVIVE, but only TARON, SOPHIE and EDWARD make it through to the NEXT CHALLENGE.

TARON EGERTON

Since everybody else’s chutes opened, mine must have been the dud! What the hell, Mark? Why’d you pick me? And don’t say the chutes were randomly assigned, because that’s the obvious answer and I’d look like an idiot!

In response to this, MARK pulls TARON’S CHUTE and demonstrates it WORKED THE WHOLE TIME.

MARK STRONG

See, it was all a bluff! You were never in danger at all.

(pause)

Wait, earlier we faked that drowning to make you all believe these tests were a hundred per cent real and dangerous. Going out of my way to reveal a later test as a fakeout was kind of a dumb move then, huh?

SOPHIE COOKSON

Oh well, we made it through. Even me, with my fear of heights. Let’s just hope the next challenge isn’t as unfairly stacked against me.

MARK STRONG

Your next challenge is to seduce a beautiful woman.

SOPHIE COOKSON

Oh for FUCK’S SAKE.

They all go to a NIGHTCLUB to try and sleep with some HOT CHICK, but their DRINKS are DRUGGED and they all BLACK OUT. TARON wakes up tied to some TRAIN TRACKS, about to be RUN OVER.

EVIL-LOOKING DUDE

I’ll cut you free if you tell me about the Kingsmen.

TARON EGERTON

So this is a loyalty test, huh? Seeing if I'll turn on the Kingsmen under pressure?

EVIL-LOOKING DUDE

Actually it's probably more an intelligence test. I mean come on, how was I meant to guarantee you'd come round before the train arrives? How much useful intel could you even give me in the next six seconds? Have I never heard of good old-fashioned torture? Basically, if you found this whole scenario plausible, you're way too dumb to be any use to us.

TARON and SOPHIE pass the TEST, but EDWARD is eliminated.

INT. KINGSMEN BRIEFING ROOM

Having come round from his COMA, COLIN is in another BRIEFING.

MARK STRONG

We tracked the radio signal that set off Hamill’s head explosion to tech billionaire Samuel L. Jackson. Here’s him on the news earlier today:

THAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKTHON

(on TV)

I’m happy to announthe that I’ll be giving away billionth of free THIM cardth which will allow everyone to uthe my communicationth network for free from now until the end of time! Thith ith far too good to be true and there’th no way for me to profit off it, everybody in the world jutht figured out that I’m up to thomething.

COLIN adopts a fake identity and goes and has a meeting with SAMUEL.

COLIN FIRTH

So you’re a dorky computer geek who can’t stomach the sight of blood. So why the hell are you being played by one of the coolest, most devastatingly masculine actors who ever lived?

THAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKTHON

Eh, they thought they could cover all that up with a thilly hat and a thpeech impediment.

COLIN FIRTH

I see. By the by, I happen to know a cracking good s-s-speech th-therapist.

THAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKTHON

Hey, how about we thuddenly change the topic to thpy movieth, apropos of nothing?

COLIN FIRTH

So I take it that’s your way of straight-up telling me that you’ve sussed me out. Thus putting me on my guard, so you won’t be able to just track me back to base and learn all about the people I work for.

THAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKTHON

Uh, yeah. Tell you what, if you’ll jutht be an idiot for me and not figure out I’ve bugged you, later on I’ll be equally dumb and put on an equally bugged hat when you tell me to.

COLIN FIRTH

Sounds like a deal!

INT. MICHAEL CAINE’S OFFICE

TARON is sent in to see MICHAEL.

MICHAEL CAINE

Now comes the last test. At the beginning of your training we gave you a small dog to look after. Now to prove yourself, you have to kill it.

TARON EGERTON

Holy shit, you’re using the same training techniques as fucking Astapor slavers? Once again, are you SURE you’re the good guys?

TARON doesn’t shoot the DOG, and fails out of the KINGSMEN.

COLIN FIRTH

You idiot, Taron, that was just a test! The gun was really full of blanks!

TARON EGERTON

So it was all a bluff? Like how the parachute thing was a bluff? And the bit with the train was a bluff? Wow, I need to work on my pattern recognition skills.

COLIN FIRTH

I’m so disappointed that you could be so stupid! Now if you’ll excuse me, the bad guy in our biological weapons case has just mentioned that he’s planning some kind of test at an American church tomorrow, so I have to go walk straight into the church when the test is scheduled and sit down.

TARON EGERTON

Remember, this bad guy has seen your face, so when you head in there be sure to wear no kind of disguise whatsoever.

INT. THE CHURCH OF BIGOTOLOGY

COLIN heads into a CHURCH full of ANGRY FUNDAMENTALIST ASSHOLES.

PREACHER

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE CAUSES HURRICANES!! TAXES ARE A SIDE EFFECT OF EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE!!! JEWS AND ATHEISTS AND ETC. ETC.!!!!

COLIN FIRTH

Alrighty then, clearly this movie is gearing up to gruesomely kill all these people, I’m getting the fuck out of here.

But as he goes to LEAVE all the PHONES in the room start emitting a weird NOISE that causes EVERYBODY including HIM to start VIOLENTLY MURDERING EACH OTHER.

COLIN FIRTH

(shoots heads)

Hang on, earlier when Jack got chopped in half, he-

(beats dude to death with empty gun)

-fell neatly into two pieces, with no blood or guts, like-

(snaps woman’s neck)

-a fucking cartoon, and when-

(grenade)

-Hamill’s head exploded I was showered with-

(stained-glass shiv)

-that coma juice but no blood or brains, so-

(punches straight through guy’s rib cage)

-why the hell were we being so obnoxiously PG-13 before, if later-

(clubs man with his own torn-off leg)

-we were going to go full Hobo With a Shotgun?

(rips out preacher’s lungs)

Finally COLIN is the ONLY ONE LEFT ALIVE. He then strolls STRAIGHT OUT THE FRONT DOOR where SAMUEL is waiting for him, because it’s a little late now to stop making dumb decisions.

THAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKTHON

Ath you can thee, I can make any phone with one of my free THIM cardth in it give off an audio thignal which triggerth homithidal rage in any human being who hearth it.

COLIN FIRTH

Call me crazy, but if you’re testing a device to see if it can make people homicidally angry, I wouldn’t think the ideal location would an angry church of bile-spewing rageoholics in the middle of their Two Minutes Hate.

THAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKTHON

I thuppothe you’re ekthpecting me to thtand here telling you my evil planth?

COLIN FIRTH

Er, isn’t that exactly what you were just-

(shot in head)

Blimey, in a coma for part of the second act, dead for the third. Not exactly working overtime for that top billing, am I?

(dies)

INT. KINGSMEN BRIEFING ROOM

A grief-stricken TARON heads in to see MICHAEL.

MICHAEL CAINE

Hang on, you failed out of the program, how come you still have access to the nerve centre of our operation? Don't we have passcodes or keycards or anything?

TARON EGERTON

Oh please, your innocent-seeming tailor’s shop in London has a hidden weapons room that you access by pulling down on a fucking coat hook. For a secret service you suck at security.

MICHAEL pours them both a DRINK, but then TARON notices MICHAEL has a SCAR BEHIND ONE EAR, meaning he has one of SAMUEL’S EXPLODING HEAD IMPLANTS and is a BAD GUY.

TARON EGERTON

Uh oh! Um - say Michael, LOOK OVER THERE!

(switches drinks)

MICHAEL CAINE

Holy shit, do I actually fall for that? I really have no business being a spy, do I?

TARON EGERTON

Oh well, since you’re secure in the knowledge that I and not you will die of poisoning, you might as well explain Samuel’s evil plan, right?

MICHAEL CAINE

Why not. These head implants make us immune to Samuel’s rage phones, so we’ll survive when he makes everybody kill each other. He’s convinced lots of world leaders, celebrities and other rich people to get them. Instead of killing the ones who didn’t go along, he simply kidnapped them, because in the aftermath he’ll need a lot of beloved and respected faces... as well as, apparently, the obnoxious racist idiot Iggy Azalea.

TARON EGERTON

These important people are all going along with Samuel’s insane genocide plot? How the fuck did he manage that?

MICHAEL CAINE

He just pointed out that global warming is when the world gets hot, and a virus is when a person gets hot, so people are like a virus, and we need fewer of them.

(pause)

No seriously, that’s basically it. That’s all he needed to say to convince people like the American president and the queen of England to help murder billions of people.

TARON EGERTON

Wow, this fictional world is populated entirely by gullible idiots! Just drop dead already you useless moron.

MICHAEL CAINE

(dies)

TARON gets together SOPHIE and MARK and tells them about SAMUEL’S PLAN.

TARON EGERTON

Fortunately Michael’s phone has a big convenient readout on it stating the exact time of the attack and Samuel’s exact location when it happens. We need to send all the Kingsmen there to stop him!

MARK STRONG

No, it’ll have to just be us. We have no way of knowing who else Samuel has won over to his cause!

TARON EGERTON

Um, yes we do. They’d have that same noticeable scar that tipped me off about-

MARK STRONG

(amnesia-darts Taron)

Let’s go!

They get on a PLANE and fly off towards SAMUEL’S BASE. On the way they discuss their PLAN.

MARK STRONG

Taron, you head in and get me connected to Samuel’s computer so I can take control of it. Incidentally, that’s the same computer he uses to blow up the heads of anyone who tries to squeal about his evil plot.

TARON EGERTON

Ah, so once you’ve hacked his computer you’ll be able to-

MARK STRONG

Shhh! The audience may have seen the obvious connection, but we’re not allowed to until the last possible moment. Sophie, you’ll buy us some time by flying a ridiculous balloon-mounted missile launcher into the upper atmosphere and destroying one of Samuel’s satellites.

SOPHIE COOKSON

Say, here’s a thought: since I have a fear of heights and Samuel knows what Taron looks like, maybe HE could take the flying job, and I could infiltrate the evil lair? You know, give that more important job to the ACTUAL KINGSMAN?

TARON EGERTON

I'm sorry, who here is wearing the Protagonist Pants?

SOPHIE COOKSON

(sighs)

You are.

INT. MOUNTAINTOP LAIR

TARON gets off the PLANE and heads into SAMUEL’S LAIR, disguised as a RICH ASSHOLE. He manages to CONNECT MARK to SAMUEL’S COMPUTER, but then he’s spotted by EDWARD.

EDWARD HOLCROFT

That’s right, I’m officially evil now! Note that I too could still access Kingsmen headquarters if I wanted, it’s really a stupid situation.

TARON beats up EDWARD and RUNS FOR IT! Eventually he’s cornered by a million ARMED GUARDS.

TARON EGERTON

(over radio)

All right, Mark, are we allowed to realize the obvious connection NOW?

MARK STRONG

(over radio)

Yes yes, beginning head-explosion protocol. Just be careful none of that coma gunk gets on you, okay?

TARON EGERTON

(over radio)

Pretty sure the movie has forgotten that that was ever a thing.

MARK does some HACKING and everyone who was IN ON SAMUEL’S PLAN has their HEAD EXPLODE in COLORFUL, GORE-FREE CLOUDS OF NEON SMOKE AND SPARKLES, because the movie apparently is under the impression it can re-PG-13 itself. One of the EXPLODING HEADS belong to the UNNAMED AMERICAN PRESIDENT who is nonetheless quite clearly BARACK OBAMA.

TARON EGERTON

Wow, so this is a movie where the heroes are rich people who work free of government regulation, the villains are rabid environmentalists, and Obama’s head explodes onscreen? This is turning into something Rush Limbaugh would write to use as whacking material.

But SAMUEL'S HEAD remains UNEXPLODED, so he initiates the INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF MURDER. People all over the world run each other over, throw each other out of windows, shove salad forks into ane another's eyes and so on.

TARON EGERTON

Seriously, Samuel, if you absolutely had to cull the human race, was it necessary to pick such a horrific, inefficient method? What's wrong with neurotoxin, hm? Or killer drones? Almost anything would be better. Oh, and what the hell were you going to do about the billions of corpses rotting in the streets?

THAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKTHON

I dunno. You might ath well be wondering how ekthactly I plan on thtaying alive after I let all the kidnapped thelebritieth go and they, no doubt, tell a hundred million angry thurvivorth everything I did.

TARON EGERTON

Or ask what good you and your friends expect your wealth and status to be worth once you've knocked the world back to a subsistence-level society. Look, if we point out everything that's wrong with your plan we'll be here all day.

TARON goes to KILL SAMUEL, but he is intercepted by SAMUEL’S NUMBER TWO, SOFIA BOUTELLA.

SOFIA BOUTELLA

Behold, my weapons of choice are my own prosthetic legs! They’re razor sharp, and while they might seem awkward to use, that’s only if you compare them to basically any handheld weapon ever invented.

SOFIA attacks TARON! He fends her off using VIRTUOSIC MARTIAL ARTS SKILLS that were NEVER SEEN IN HIS TRAINING, then he manages to POISON HER using a “FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE”-STYLE SHOE KNIFE.

SOFIA BOUTELLA

Wait, did you just beat me in a stabbing-people-with-your-feet fight? Come on, that’s literally my entire thing!

(dies)

Finally TARON is able to easily KILL SAMUEL.

TARON EGERTON

Okay then! We stopped the in-progress genocide and saved the day, we can all relax now.

MARK STRONG

(over radio)

Er, what about the fact that millions of people were just murdered and most world leaders just had their heads exploded and presumably the entire world has just descended into chaos?

TARON EGERTON

Bah, let the closing credits sequence ignore that for us, I have bigger fish to fry. I believe Sophie said something about buttsex with Swedish royalty?

END.

Discussion