The King's Man Will Reinvent Swordfighting Says Director Matthew Vaughn

The King's Man has a unique take on action -- particularly sword fighting, director Matthew Vaughn [...]

The King's Man has a unique take on action -- particularly sword fighting, director Matthew Vaughn says. The filmmaker spoke to Comicbook.com at New York Comic Con 2019 on Thursday, describing how the movie allowed him to flex a different kind of muscle.

Vaughn is the director behind The King's Man, the World War I era origin story for the hit spy series. As fans have seen, the trailer is much more grounded than its futuristic counterparts, and much more grim. After the panel, we asked Vaughn whether he and his crew treated the action differently from that of the other films.

"We had to!" he said. "We tried to reinvent sword fighting, let's put it that way. We've done some very good sword fights, and the weapons were -- I mean, they're still guns, they're still..."

Vaughn went on to talk about building a new action sequence from the ground up. The director admitted that his movie is different from the first two Kingsman movies, but felt that it still has something that their fans will recognize.

"I think action just has to tell a story, and not be boring," he said. "So those rules are in The King's Man. The whole movie is a very distant, but loving cousin to the original Kingsman. So there is action, but it's slightly different."

Vaughn brought The King's Man to NYCC on Thursday along with stars Djimon Hounsou, Ralph Fiennes and Harris Dickinson. They showed the new trailer for the movie before discussing its guiding influences in a panel discussion. Outside of the Kingsman franchise, Vaughn said that the movie draws on the action movies he loved growing up, including some WWI period pieces.

"I was watching a lot of the Oscar movies and thinking, I never want to watch any of these movies again," he said. "I wanted to do a love letter to the movies I grew up to, and especially The Man Who Would Be King."

"We actually used the same lenses Lawrence of Arabia was shot on. Which was good and bad, they kept falling out of focus and falling apart, but we didn't have to color grade it," he shared to laughter. "We shot as much as possible in camera. I love CG, but I think there's a little too much of it at the moment."

The King's Man is due out in theaters on Feb. 14, 2020.

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