Why Argylle Just Flopped

3. The PG-13 Rating

Though it might sound contradictory to suggest that giving a movie a more permissive content rating could actually harm its box office, you have to consider the context within which Argylle was made, marketed, and released.

With the trailers placing a frankly irritating focus on how it came from "the twisted mind of Matthew Vaughn" and likening it to his ultra-violent, over-the-top Kingsman movies, it was reasonable to expect a film in a similar tonal vein.

Yet Argylle was actually released with a PG-13 rating, in turn meaning it lacked the cartoonishly gory mayhem of Vaughn's Kingsman movies, no matter how desperately the trailers promised a wild and insane time.

There's a fundamental disconnect between marketing the film as akin to the Kingsman franchise only for the end result to be considerably more tame.

If you promise Vaughn's usual brand of carnage but end up serving something decidedly more sanitised, can you really be surprised when the audience rejects it?