With Bruce Greenwood as the President, ‘Kingsman’ joins the ‘National Treasure’ Cinematic Universe

Spoiler alert for Kingsman: The Golden Circle

Bruce Greenwood isn’t a particularly versatile actor, but he makes a damn President. So no wonder he’s played 3 — in Thirteen Days, in one of my favourite films ever National Treasure: Book of Secrets, and in Matthew Vaughn’s divisive new Kingsman sequel.

Greenwood is arguably the best thing about Kingsman: The Golden Circle, constantly hitching up his trousers and declaring victory in the War on Drugs when Julianne Moore’s Poppy starts to murder all pot smokers and ecstasy enjoyers worldwide, and since his POTUS is never named in either film, we can only assume it’s the same character he played in 2007’s National Treasure: Book of Secrets. If we pretend that either Secrets was set in the future, or Golden Circle is set a few years in the past, it’s plausible that President Greenwood is still serving his term, and has merely turned into a real dick since he met Ben Gates at the end of Jon Turtletaub’s masterpiece sequel.

At the end of The Golden Circle, the President is impeached (Emily Watson’s character — his Chief of Staff? — takes largely undue credit for this. So it seems that, a decade after National Treasure: Book of Secrets, the President who told Ben to look at Page 4 of the titular manuscript may finally be an ex-President, opening the door for him to join Ben, Riley and the Diane Kruger character on a whole host of alt-history adventures!