After months of anticipation, Matthew Vaughn's star-studded spy flick "Argylle" has finally graced cinemas, only for it to emerge as the first major box office bomb of 2024.

Thanks to mediocre reviews, poor (and oversaturated) marketing, a bloated budget, and a changing theatrical landscape, "Argylle" was never going to be a breakthrough hit.

Across the board, it was maligned by critics, with Looper reviewer Dominic Griffin giving the picture a 4/10 due to its two-hour-plus runtime and excessive plot twists.

Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a 35% critics score, which is the lowest score Vaughn has received as a director, while on CinemaScore, opening night viewers gave the flick a C+.

Word of mouth for the picture is mixed-to-positive, and it's certain that many ignored the film because of the poor reviews, which have dominated the internet over the last week.

While "Argylle" is a big-budget, original flick with a motley crew of superstars that needed to be front-and-center for audiences to care about, its initial marketing was overexposed.

As the first trailer hit the internet in September 2023, cinema audiences became inundated with the same trailer for months on end, which led to an exhausting marketing cycle.

On the r/movies subreddit, u/1991mgs claimed that the trailer for "Argylle" played while they were seated for "Argylle," which is indicative of the narrative surrounding the film.