5 things to know about Argylle, according to director Matthew Vaughn

Matthew Vaughn is no stranger to crowd-pleasers. From directing The Kingsman franchise to producing Kick-Ass, his films are rich in visual flourishes, slathered in a little bit of the old ultra-violence and damn-right entertaining.

Argylle is the same but different. It has all the hallmarks of a Vaughn movie but it’s a story that subverts what a spy flick is, winking at the audience every step of the way.

There are knowing nods to both classic spy films and buddy movies - Romancing The Stone, Charade and North By Northwest are all influences - making for a twist-filled, sometimes silly buddy adventure that never goes where you think it will.

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At the heart of Argylle is the following premise: best-selling author Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) has created a series of spy books about Agent Argylle (a flat-topped Henry Cavill). While writing her fifth book in the franchise, it’s revealed that what she is writing about is more fact than fiction - and that’s when real-life spy Aidan (Sam Rockwell) appears and upends what she thinks she knows about her life.

It’s a script packed with out-there ideas - and eyebrow raising moments - so how did Vaughn get all of this across to his cast and crew? Using a Harry Potter analogy, of course.

“I said to everyone, ‘just imagine that JK Rowling was sitting in a cafe and a wizard came in and went, ‘It's all true. What you've written there has happened and I'm a wizard’.

“Then the wizard teaches her the reality of what she’s been writing about,” explains Vaughn to ShortList when we met up with him recently for a chat.

“I thought that was an interesting idea but we did it with spies instead of wizards.”

Intrigued? Of course you are, so here are 5 more things you need to know about Argylle, according to its director, Matthew Vaughn.

1. On the inspiration for making Argylle

"The initial script was a page turner but I wanted to dial up the fun, dial up the twists - dial up everything.

"I watched movies with my kids during lockdown and Romancing the Stone seemed to win the prize. My daughter was like, ‘why are you not making a film like this?’

"At the time I thought the world was bleak and my instinct was that it's gonna get bleaker.

"So, I was thinking, ‘My God this is a bleak world but that film made me feel happier’. And when I went outside, the blue sky made me feel happier. And I just said to myself, ‘I want to make a ray of sunshine in a dark world’. And that was the whole aim of this movie. It was to be entertaining, fun, and escapism for two hours."

2. On real life versus fantasy

"It was really fun making Argylle, because it was taking all the tropes that you know people like, or have liked, in that fancy gentleman's super spy world.

"We take those tropes and then turn them on their head, showing what a real spy should be like and juxtaposing that with fantasy spies and an author in the middle of it going, ‘what the hell?’"

3. On action set pieces

"First of all, I always imagine I'm an audience member and I want to be entertained. I also don't want to say the same thing again. Excuse the pun but, for this movie, I wanted to give everyone a novel experience.

"Then I think how can we do action in that way, but also how does it tell the story? Any action sequence I do has got to have a beginning, a middle and an end - it's got geography and it pushes the narrative. Therefore, it doesn't get boring. It's not just action for action's sake.

"Then I always try to come up with something people haven't seen before. It's not easy - and I’m running out of ideas [laughs]. Pretty soon I’ll just be doing a straight-up drama but I love it. I love action. I'm always inspired by Jackie Chan - that's where it all comes down from."

4. On using The Beatles’ Now And Then

"I worked with Giles Martin [producer on Now And Then] before, we did Rocket Man together. I rang him and said, ‘Look, I'm struggling to find a love song. Can you help me because I need a song that is sad, but hopeful. He said, ‘Do you want to hear a new Beatle song?’

"Now Giles has got a wicked sense of humour, so I was like, ‘Yeah, of course I do’. And he said, ‘no I'm being serious.’

"And I was like, ‘Yeah, of course you are.’

"And he then said, ‘Look I'll play it to you but the problem is you won’t be able to talk about it until it is released’ and this was a year and a half ago.

"So he plays it to me and I'm listening to the lyrics and I'm feeling it and thinking, ‘Giles, this is perfect’.

"We put it on the scenes and didn't have to change the song, we didn't have to change the edit. The lyrics, the tone, the style were all perfect.

"At the end of the movie, we have this big orchestral version of the song and the idea that I got to meet Sir Paul McCartney, and speak to all the family members of each Beatle and they said ‘yes’ to me, and then I got to remix and play with the music...

"It was a dream come true. It was a massive honour and it was surreal. Sometimes things happen and it’s best not to question them, Just enjoy it."

5. On whether he’s a cat or dog person

"I am a dog, dog, dog, dog, dog guy. Now, that being said, the cat is my daughter's. We had to fire the first cat, so I brought in my daughter's cat Chip and I had to take it to work, look after it at work. I was the director and the cat handler in this movie.

"By the end of the movie, I did fall in love with Chip. But I'm a dog man with a capital ‘D’ and a cat man with a very, very small ‘c’."

Argylle is in cinemas now, courtesy of Universal Pictures