One of the highlights of the original Kingsman: The Secret Service was the performance of Samuel L. Jackson as the film's villain. The sequel is now revealing some detail about what the sequel will have in store. In Kingsman: The Golden Circle the big bad will be named Poppy and will be played by Julianne Moore. According to director Matthew Vaughn, Poppy's goals would seem minor and even altruistic under other circumstances. She wants to return the world to her view of 1950's Americana, by using the global drug trade to do it. Also, she wants to be in Forbes. As Vaughn says...
She's taken over the global drug business and wants to be on the Forbes list. She has a speech where she goes, 'Sugar is 10 times more addictive than cocaine. It causes more death and misery in America. Yet one is legal. Peddle that shit and you're in the Forbes 500. Peddle coke and you're in jail. What the fuck!' So the points she's making are not insane.
In the first Kingsman movie, Samuel L. Jackson's character wanted to curb global warming, a noble effort, but his plan to do that was to murder most of the people on the planet. Good goal, crazy plan. It seems that Julianne Moore's Poppy will be somebody quite similar. She's described in Entertainment Weekly as being "Martha Stewert on crack" and she appears to be similarly over the top. Her base of operations will be a location that looks like 1950s America, except it's been recreated in the middle of the jungle someplace. It looks like the world she would like to bring back, but her method sounds nuts.
To be sure, the idea that sugar can be a dangerous substance isn't crazy. Most of us probably abuse it to one degree or another. However, it would seem that while some would use this argument as a way to regulate sugar, Julianne Moore's Poppy apparently goes the other direction. If she controls the global drug business, she might be looking to legalize serious drugs, perhaps believing that a well-intoxicated nation is a happy nation.
Clearly, Poppy is looking for legitimacy. As the head of the global drug business, she is almost certainly one of the richest people in the world, but because her business is technically illegal, she doesn't get the respect she feels she deserves, like being included on the Forbes 500 list. Exactly what lengths she will go to in the film to gain that credibility are not clear, but then that's why we can't wait to see the film.
Kingsman: the Golden Circle will be in theaters September 22.
