All the die-hard Henry Cavill fans know just how desperately the actor wanted to star in spy action movies like those from the James Bond franchise. This is why, when he landed Argylle, everyone was over the moon about the news. However, as opposed to fans’ expectations, the film crashed at the box office and performed equally terribly among both critics and general audiences.

Following its bombing and the massive disappointment that it was, multiple reports pointed the blame hand on Cavill. However, according to all these newly noticed facts, Argylle‘s bad performance may not have been Henry Cavill’s fault after all. If anything, these facts just reveal that the film was doomed — right from the start.

Reasons Why Argylle Bombing Wasn’t Henry Cavill’s Fault

Besides having a plot much more unique than anything ever seen before in the spy action genre, Argylle also had one of the most star-studded casts which included big names like Henry Cavill and Bryce Dallas Howard in the lead besides Dua Lipa and John Cena.

Despite this, the film was a massive failure among both critics and general audiences, garnering a stunningly low box-office performance over its reportedly ginormous budget. But what most didn’t notice was the fact that this movie might as well have been doomed from the beginning.

First of all, Argylle had an entirely distinctive plotline, which increased its chances of failing to a whole 50% since new movies are often not nicely welcomed by audiences; especially those that don’t have it confirmed if they would continue to spawn sequels and become franchises or not.

If the audience is not familiar with the storyline of the film in talk, they usually end up ignoring it, not giving it enough credit to even be explored. While this adds to the fact that the film was at a high risk of failing right from the start, it also leads to another reason: the movie’s marketing campaign.

Argylle‘s bombing directly indicates the marketing campaign used to promote the film as being one of the major reasons behind the film’s epic failure. Unlike most other films that usually end up succeeding with unique marketing campaigns, Henry Cavill’s spy action was just not handled well.

Even though the film has been fairly well advertised through its multiple trailers showing Cavill and Lipa as spies, it never truly covered Bryce Dallas Howard‘s Elly Conway’s real story. This ignited a lot of confusion among the viewers, making deciphering what the film stood for all the more difficult.

If the trailer alone is unable to catch the viewer’s attention enough through its uniquely displayed outlines of the plot, then such a film is bound to be doomed due to the viewers losing their interest in it before even developing it.

Adding to all these facts is the fact that all of the above-listed reasons were pretty much out of Henry Cavill’s hands. He couldn’t control these factors, and could only continue to perform in the film, which he notably did as remarkably as ever. Thus, Argylle‘s failure wasn’t quite his fault after all.

Other Indirect Reasons Behind Argylle‘s Bad Performance

While the already discussed facts are more or less some of the most direct reasons behind Argylle‘s tanking, some indirect reasons may have played a hand in the film’s epic failure as well. These include the director’s performance as well as some other box-office factors.

Talking about the director’s performance: Argylle director Matthew Vaughn is indeed one of the most remarkable directors, renowned for helming masterpieces like 2014’s Kingsman: The Secret Service and 2010’s Kick-Ass. However, not all of his films have received such commendation.

The King’s Man, his most recent film before Argylle, for example, failed to live up to the mark of the Kingsmen saga. This could have significantly contributed to the poor performance of the Henry Cavill-starrer as it could have diminished the audience’s interest in Vaughn’s newest projects.

Then there are the box office factors, which basically include the fact that the creators chose to release Argylle at the very time when the theatres are usually at their lowest points, i.e. in January and February, because films released around this time are oftentimes not the best ones.

Taking Argylle‘s release date into consideration, which was the 2nd of February, 2024, there is a considerable chance that since audiences usually prefer not to go to the movie theatres much at this point of the year, this factor ended up affecting Vaughn’s recent spy-thriller’s box office success.

Thus, because of all these reasons and not because of Henry Cavill, Argylle ended up suffering a massive defeat at the worldwide box offices, garnering only $41.2 million on its budget of a whopping $200 million (as per The Numbers).

Argylle is still in theatres as of this writing.