Henry Cavill is not the star of Argylle, despite the poster

Director Matthew Vaughn's new movie Argylle came out in theaters this weekend. Vaughn is best known as the guy behind the Kingsman movies, a series of comedic spy capers. Argylle is also a funny spy movie. Will lightning strike twice?

According to critics, no. Argylle has a miserable 35% score among critics on Rotten Tomatoes, although viewers are much more forgiving at 71%, which ia good-but-not-great score. The movie has been dinged for its convoluted plot and inflated runtime. There's also an argument that its poster is misleading:

Argylle revolves mainly around Elly Conway, an author whose spy novels hew weirdly close to reality. When she's targeted by a myterious organization, an actual spy named Aidan (Sam Rockwell) helps her survive from death-defying situations. Howard and Rockwell are the lead characters.

So why are they behind Dua Lipa, Samuel L. Jackson and Henry Cavill, who stands in the front of the poster holding Elly's cat Alfie? Going in, you might think that Cavill — who's played Superman in the DC Cinematic Universe and Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher. Here he plays Argylle, the fictional spy in Elly's novels, and shows up at the very end of the movie in the last in a long series of twists. True, he plays the title character, but looking at the poster you might think we spend a lot of time with him, whereas he shows up in the movie for a few minutes at most.

Does Argylle have an end credits scene? Is Argylle connected to the Kingsman series?

It's possible that the intention was to feature Cavill's character more fully in future Argylle movies. The movie has a mid-credits sequence where a young Argylle (Louis Partridge) is revealed to have worked with the Kingsman spy agency, the subject of Vaughn's other movie series. Perhaps the director has a plan for the future?

Well, plan or not, Argylle's chances of getting a sequel seem dim. In addition to the critics hating on it, the box office returns have been dire, with the movie taking in $16.5 million over its first couple days in theaters, according to Deadline. That's a lot of money, but the movie cost $200 million to make, and since movies usually make most of their money early in their run, chances don't look good for Argylle to recoup its budget. All of that means that the story may well end here.

That said, the movie was made by Apple TV+, and Apple has enough money to make however many movies it wants. But between the bad box office and and the poor critical reception, you have to wonder if it will want to make another Argylle movie.

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