The King's Man : Première Mission

The first panoramic views of the trenches with the voiceover of The Shepherd, particularly the depiction of mountains of spent shell cases, are taken from real photographs of the Battle of The Somme. Fought between July and November 1916, with no clear winner, it cost the lives of around 700,000 British and French soldiers and 550,000 Germans. As shown, entire battalions were mowed down with machine gun fire and over one million shells were fired in the first week alone.

There is a brief flashback showing the death of Tsar Nicholas and his family and while the scene has been painstakingly reconstructed down to the wallpaper of the basement, the family is shown being quickly killed with a single discharge of what appears to be a machine pistol by one person pretending to be a photographer. The real execution was far messier and cruel.

There is a scene in the closing credits: the Flock introduce Vladimir Lenin to their newest member, Adolf Hitler.

Featured in La 93e cérémonie des Oscars (2021)