Argylle trailer confirms we were totally right about its “official story” being super-suspicious
More than a year ago, online detectives noticed there was something weird going on with Henry Cavill's new movie
Aux News Argylle
Universal Pictures released the first trailer for its new spy thriller Argylle early this morning, which is presumably a big deal for fans of Kingsman director Matthew Vaughn, who’s returning to directing after last helming The King’s Man in 2021. But it’s also a big deal for people who like it when we are right—i.e., us—because it confirms that we were, in fact, totally and completely right when we pointed out about a year ago that there was something extremely goddamn suspicious about this movie when details about it first started rolling out.
Flash back to September 2022, when online detectives started noticing that there was something slightly off about the backstory being presented for what was being billed as a Henry Cavill spy thriller—and specifically, with the author of its source novel, a first-time writer by the name of Elly Conway. Despite having an Instagram page, and a (very short) bio on Penguin Books, there was no other information available about Conway, who had supposedly sold the rights to her as-yet uncompleted first book to Vaughn on the basis of an “early draft manuscript.” At the time, we couldn’t do much more than speculate, writing that, “We have no idea what the actual answer here is—Weird metafictional twist? Celebrity author pseudonym? Boring old reality?” And that’s why we’re geniuses, because “weird metafictional twist” is exactly what this whole thing was!
Which you’d know, if you watched the trailer for Arglle, which opens as a typical spy movie in which Henry Cavill has very sharp hair—only to have the curtain yanked away to reveal that it’s actually a novel being written by Bryce Dallas Howard, who is playing, you guessed it, Elly Conway! We’re deep in meta territory here, as Howard gets rescued from evil spies by Sam Rockwell, because it turns out that she’s very good at predicting spy stuff with her novels. (Also, there’s a lot of cat comedy, for them’s that likes it.) The trailer teases some whole other mystery surrounding the “real” Argylle, but honestly, we’re so pumped about being right about this first thing that we can’t even be bothered to go 2-for-2.
Argylle co-stars John Cena, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O’Hara, and Samuel L. Jackson; it arrives in theaters in February.
93 Comments
I’m calling it: the real Argylle is the bald ice cream guy from Phantasm.
The real Argylle is the friends we made along the way.
The real Henry Cavill was inside us all along.
Well that’s one way to get audiences back to the cinema.
Could be a litmus test for how far along the Kinsey scale most folks are, anyway.
Hank Cavill was the friend we made along the way.
Please go on
Nope, my money’s on the limo driver from Die Hard.
It’s the cat.
This looks like a whole lot of fun. I’m in.
I understood nothing.
…and I cared even less. Though I might show up if kittycats are involved.
Please put Sam Rockwell in all the movies. Like, get him and Walton Goggins in the same thing and it will instantly become my favourite thing of all time.
Sam Rockwell is just the secret sauce that makes mediocre movies worth watching. Even as a hormonal youngster, I found the T&A fest of ‘Charlie’s Angels’ terribly dull, but Rockwell as the villain saved it.
He’s the only good part of Iron Man 2
He’s the only good part of Iron Man 2 I liked Iron Man 2 more than most people do – but Rockwell was in fact the best thing in it.
Oh he was such a sniveling shit in that!
I like the suitcase armour, but otherwise, agreed.
Sam Rockwell playing Zappos Beeblebrox in Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy by channeling George W. Bush if he was an intergalactic superstar was inspired. Then he actually PLAYED Dubya in Vice, and it was perfect. I can only hope that Adam McKay went after Rockwell for the role because of his performance in HGttG.
Walton is one of the many reasons I’m excited for the Fallout series coming next year.
And yet you still can’t get through a standard news item without typos.
First they Photoshop-out Cavill’s moustache. Now that picture above looks like they’ve Photoshopped his entire hairdo. Treat a man’s hair follicles with respect!
But seriously, this has me thinking the movie can’t actually be as fun as it looks in the trailer, but also has me hoping that because it’s Matthew Vaughn it might actually get there.
God didn’t treat my hair follicles with respect so I say all is fair…
It also looks like that Vivek asshole used the same hair in the Republican circle jerk the other night.
When a cast is that good, I *have* to think something about the script really must have popped for them. Cavill, Bryce Dallas Howard, Catherine O’Hara, Sam Rockwell, Bryan Cranston, Samuel L. Motherf*ckin’ Jackson, John Cena, and Ariana DeBose (who I admit I’m not super familiar with her work yet, but I hear good things about)? Either this thing is fantastic, or at least a good romp. Or they backed one of those dump trucks full of gold from Die Hard With a Vengeance up to their houses.Oh and a cat!
Is the overt syncing of sound effects with the music in trailers a new thing or am I just noticing it for the first time? I swear, I’ve seen several recent trailers that use this effect.
It was the only thing good about Suicide Squad.
Suicide Squad trailer was the first thing I thought of after watching this. Also made me remember that sometimes the best movies of the year are the trailers to the worst movies of the year…
In similar best-trailer / worst-movie vein, it was done to great effect with a trailer for Wonder Woman 1984 and New Order’s “Blue Monday”.
Great trailer for a bad movie.
I remember when everyone was big mad that Suicide Squad was making money and Ghostbusters reboot bombed.
The earliest example I can remember off the top of my head was the final trailer for 2015’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E.Funnily enough also starring Henry Cavill as a prototypical suave spy. Wish that we could get a sequel to this instead, with Ilya being recast obviously.
Well, Arme Hammer was a seriously reworked version of Ilya Kuryakin anyway, and I’m sure David McCallum was relieved he wouldn’t be repeating in the role. I have to say, despite Henry Cavill saying he’d never seen THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. television series, he did an amazingly spot-on impersonation of Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo….
The first time I noticed it was in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. Which was genius and still hasn’t been topped.
Aww, great. Now I have to watch the trilogy again.
Old, old trailer technique – and addressed & allowed for in the oldest music licensing formats for them. (Even “Tubular Bells” was manipulated to sync with effects in trailers for “The Exorcist”.)
That header photo looks like Cavill was trying to look like Fantastic Four era Chris Evans but only had a funhouse mirror and supplies from pre-Halloween Party City.
This is stupid enough that I’m probably gonna watch it at least once a year. Forever.Dammit.
How you watch that trailer and not mention Dua Lipa in the cast list is baffling.
I don’t know what a Dua Lipa is and I don’t care to find out.
She’s levitating.
She’s lucky.
I believe it’s an old Creole name for an intestinal parasite you get if you eat undercooked conch. Either that or a communist-era Romanian car.
While she’s from the UK, her family is of Albanian and Bosniak descent, so geographically you’re not far off with Romanian! Though the languages themselves are not terribly related, other than being of Indo-European roots.Interestingly, her mother’s maiden name is Rexha – I wonder if she’s related to Bebe Rexha. But not wondering enough to Google it; the only time I’ve heard either of their songs is in a restaurant or an Uber.PS – Bosniak typically refers specifically to Bosnian Muslims, but it can be used also to refer to the ethnicity specific to Bosnia. Bosnian means you’re from Bosnia, even if ethnically you’re something else. There’s a reason Balkanization means what it does – there are tons of little ethnic enclaves that made drawing borders by ethnicity so damn difficult there.
You’ll learn and you’ll like it!
I tried learning French on it but it didn’t, how you say, le stick.
Well it’s not quite a Dua but not quite a Lipa but man…. So to answer your question I don’t know
No, no, it’s Dual IPA, and it’s just way too hoppy.
They’re always way too hoppy.
I too am attracted to her physically.
All I know about her is that Trent Reznor respects her because his kids like her. And she did a music video where she tips her cowboy hat to the camera like ten times.
I don’t mean to sound mean, but does anyone else think of Bryce Dallas Howard as the no-name brand Emma Stone?
Of course not.She’s the generic-brand Jessica Chastain.
When she got her big start due to The Tree of Life, there was a baseless rumor about Jessica Chastain being Ron Howard’s illegitimate daughter. As Ron Howard tends to give his children the name of the place where they were conceived as a middle name, it provided in the fourth season of Arrested Development the backstory for Ron Howard’s biological daughter, an actress of Malickesque arthouse films called Rebel Backalley Howard, and played by Isla Fisher.
Wow, I really must not have paid attention when watching the Netflix seasons of that show, because I totally forgot Fisher was in it.Ron Howard and Cheryl Alley are my go-to example of two people who are – not being mean here – not conventionally super attractive, who have a child that who is stunning as an adult. I’ve seen it happen a lot in real life, but it’s the best famous example I can think of in BDH.
Honestly, BDH is my favorite of the bunch, though they’re all great. Though, I could listen to Emma Stone read the phone book, and Isla Fisher is funny as f*ck. Queen Bee of the redheads would be Christina Hendricks, but she’s actually a natural blonde. I love her in everything she’s been in, including voice acting on Rick & Morty and Solar Opposites, but she will be forever etched in my memory as Joan on Mad Men. Terrific performance, and she rocked the style of the era of that show like no one else. Plus, she clearly isn’t shallow, she was with the guy who ate a whole bag of psilocybin shrooms in Super Troopers who also was on Madame Secretary. I assume he had a good sense of humor or something, because I don’t know anyone attracted to men that found that dude attractive!
Chastain has picked better roles than Howard but I enjoy seeing Howard on screen much more than Chastain.
Nope but it is weird that they both played Gwen Stacy.
As a rare fan of The Village, I will not stand for this BDH slander.
Huh?
Precisely.
I mean, it’s the cat, right? Every single thing about this trailer is exactly positioned for a reveal that it was, somehow, the cat all along. It’s the cat. The cat is Argyle. I am calling it now.
Came here expecting way more comments calling this one. Seems obvious.
The only thing in life that i’m 100 percent certain of is that at the end of this movie the cat is going to swivel around on a high back office chair, face the camera, and speak.
…While petting a bald man.
I mean he’s in an argyle backpack, maybe it and the spy just share a name?
Might as well call it ‘Meowguffin’.
it’s her mom (my guess)
Been meaning to pick this up. Scalzi never disappoints.
This looks tremendously silly in all the right ways. My interest is piqued.(Also, there’s a lot of cat comedy, for them’s that likes it.)
So a mix between “Le Magnifique” (a classical 70s Belmondo movie about an author writing James Bond type novels that is a parody of Bond tropes) and Knight and Day.
I might toss a coin to this movie.
It looks like a decent movie. seems of the same kind of genre of romancing the stone, the lost city with a little mr. right.
The movie looks fine. The writing on this site, still awful.
Which you’d know, if you watched the trailer for ArglleCome on…
Since when do AV Club writers need third-party validation of their self-perceived infallibility?
And here I wanted an origin story for the cute diamond pattern common on sweaters and socks!
Isn’t this the same premise as that Kevin James Netflix movie?
Was there a movie years ago that kind of did this same thing, where the story of the movie unfolds as the author is writing it? Can’t quite place my finger on it. Maybe that John Candy movie Delirious? I though there was a romance novel one as well. Anybody?
Stranger Than Fiction starring Will Ferrell and Emma Thompson is the only one that comes to my mind right away.
There’s the opening of Romancing the Stone. There’s American Dreamer (Jobeth Williams and Tom Conti). And I suppose Cloak and Dagger. And I think there was one where everyone turned out to be video game characters? Anyway, not exactly a new idea but the trailer makes the movie look fun. (Which is a trailer’s job, so that part’s done.)
“And I think there was one where everyone turned out to be video game characters?”Serenity. Not the one in space.
Ah, yes, Serenity! Never saw it, just the trailer and read some scathing reviews. The REAL Serenity, the space one, I own on dvd and watch it every year or so….
There’s also The Lost City from the last year or two, where Sandra Bullock played a pulpy romance adventure novelist who actually gets sucked into an Indiana Jones meets Romancing the Stone adventure with the Fabio-esque model on the book covers played by Channing Tatum. Brad Pitt also shows up. A true four quadrant movie, IMO. Everyone who I know has watched has loved it.
God, I totally forgot about that movie, and I’ve seen it. Entertaining enough for the plane ride I was on, though!
Stranger Than Fiction. Though it was more of a dramedy than a spy movie (than the director went on to make a Bond film).
Ooooh. Someone lower mentioned The Lost City. In that movie Sandra Bullock wrote romance novels that incorporated her previous knowledge of South American Indigenous People’s legends and a baddie thought she would be able to find the Lost City.
Yes, the pseudo-fiction of it all reminds me of Tàr (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14444726/)And its initial no, this is a real composer advertising.
I love Dua Lipa’s music, but the brief appearance here was very wooden. fingers crossed she’s more like a Cher than Beyonce, in acting.
Our guy, Argylle