Photos
Before we get into this, let me first say that I never read the graphic novel, Kick-Ass, on which the movie, Kick-Ass, is based. I don’t know if that means I have to go to Nerd Jail, or what, but also I am not scared of Nerd Jail. I’ve got a feeling I could survive an eternity in Nerd Jail. It would be like Oz, except with less wheelchair slam poetry and with more me bossing nerds around. The point is, Kick-Ass is for nerds, and if there was a sweatshirt company called FNBN that made American Apparel style shoelace hoodies, all the advertising would feature Kick-Ass wearing boyshorts. (That is such a confusing company I just made up, combining poorly defined characteristics of so many other companies that have nothing to do with each other. It is so weird that I am not a billionaire, since my head is basically filled with BUSINESS.)
So, Kick-Ass, I liked it. Let’s talk about it!
Watching the trailers for the movie, you could tell that it was scientifically designed to hit all of the nerd pleasure centers. I mean, a movie about an awkward teenager who decides to become a superhero, makes friends with other superheroes, hangs out in comic books stores, all to a pop-punk soundtrack, and a little girl saying the word “cunt”? I hope there are enough beds in the Nerd Hospital, because we’re facing a Global Nerd Health Crisis. And in that sense, the movie looked really annoying. And was annoying. Just because you appeal to some kind of lizard-brain desire to watch socially awkward people become heroes and also sick katana fights set to bubblegum pop doesn’t mean that the part of my brain that isn’t a lizard-brain doesn’t recognize that it’s getting manipulated.
But then, at a certain point, you’re just like “You know, I am having fun. So, there’s that.”
Three nerds in a nerdpod.
On that note: the moment near the beginning of the movie, when Nicolas Cage shoots Hit Girl in the chest at close range in a drainage ditch and her tiny body goes flying backwards and the air fills with feathers from her tiny pink down-feather coat? There has to be a German word for the feeling one gets in watching that moment. It’s not unpleasant! But it should be! I know that it is, again, just the smirking manipulation of juxtaposing graphic violence with tiny children, the same way we laugh in a comedy when Will Ferrell or Steve Carrell or whoever wrestles with what is obviously a stuffed animal, and then kicks it through a window, off a bridge, into a wall. Speaking of graphic violence, the movie was way more violent than I thought it was going to be! That one guy got crushed in a trash compactor, and another guy got microwaved. Yikes! Is that what teenagers are into these days? Teenagers! Just make out!
For the most part, everyone was perfectly decent at acting in it. I did think that Aaron Johnson, who played Kick-Ass, was overly nerding it up. At one point, he was trying on his Kick-Ass costume, and they lit it in such a way that he had a really chiseled jaw, and you’re like, oh, wait, right, he is a handsome actor playing a nerd, which is fine, and a thing I have come to expect, but he can scale it back a little bit. Also, Christopher Mintz-Plasse doesn’t seem like he’s going to be able to shake the yoke of McLovin from his tiny neck, and it didn’t help that this movie was literally, Superbad 2: Superheroes. And Nicolas Cage was awful. Just awful. But that goes without saying. But Mark Strong was great as Frank D’Amico, and I also enjoy the comedic stylings of Clark Duke (although how about not as much smirking, Clark Duke!)
Now, the main “controversy” (more like NONTROVERSY, right people who talk like moms?) surrounding Kick-Ass is the whole Hit Girl thing, and about having a tiny little sweet baby child using cusswords and stabbing people in the dick and getting punched in their babyface. I understand where someone who might complain about this is coming from, but it seems like a pretty bankrupt argument. I mean, Hollywood and the movie industry are disgusting pits of amoral despair, period. If you want to argue that 11-year-olds shouldn’t be in movies, ever, because it twists their perspective on the world around them and distorts their value system with an emphasis on ego-gratification and materialism and narcissistic self-exploitation, then I will agree with you. But personally I don’t think there’s really that big of a difference between playing an 11-year-old assassin with a trucker’s mouth, and the little boy in Sleepless in Seattle. It’s not like either of those kids are normal kids doing normal kid things. They’re monsters in a monster world perfecting the art of YIKES.
Fuller, go easy on the bullets.
My main problem with Kick-Ass, besides the aforementioned man-handled-nerd-pleasure-center-massage, is that while it’s purportedly a satire of superhero comic books (and now a satire of superhero movies), it’s also not, because ultimately it is a superhero movie (based on a superhero comic book). And who would want that satire anyway? What I’m trying to say is that while the movie pokes fun at some of the tropes of the superhero genre, ultimately it doesn’t subvert any of them. At the end of the day, we’re actually dealing with a pretty straight-forward superhero narrative complete with a final boss, an orphaned hero, and the birth of a supervillain in the wake of his supervillain father’s defeat. For as much as Kick-Ass likes to be arch and knowing about the genre it’s “satirizing,” really it just wants to be part of the club. And that’s fine, it’s a fun club to be a part of, who doesn’t like that club? But ultimately, an arch and knowing parody of a superhero movie that genuinely just wishes it was an actual superhero movie isn’t going to be as good as a superhero movie that knows its a superhero movie. Batman will always be better than Big Daddy, even if Big Daddy wasn’t played by Nicolas “The Tutankhamun of New Orleans” Cage.
But I liked it. It was fun. What did you guys think?
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Can you please address the offensive Roger Ebert review of this movie? I know you love him and think he’s the best but he is the absolute worst. He said this movie is bad because violence. He said the characters in this movie are dead for real when in fact this movie is a work of fiction and no one died during the production of this movie.
and he tweets too much.
Ebert got unfollowed last night. Between the anti violence rant and ripping he gave this movie (which he changed?), the 700 tweets a day, and all of the “Video Games Are not now nor ever Art” BS, I’m done with olde E.
First off, I could care less about Kick Ass.
Secondly, I have heard this “Ebert tweets too much” thing a few times. If you don’t like it, UNFOLLOW. The guy lost his ability to communicate verbally, so maybe we should cut him a little fucking slack if he is playing fast and loose with a new medium (where people are eating it up, by the way). He is a venerable critic who I have often disagreed with, but it is his job to give his opinion on movies. What good would it be if all of those opinions fell in line with yours.
“Eat a hot bowl of dicks, bishop fontana” @rogerebert69
I actually find a lot of the articles he tweets about to be interesting, so it would do me no good to unfollow him — it’s purely an annoyance from time to time. And of course I can understand his attraction to Twitter given his physical state, it’s a great new medium that he absolutely should be utilizing. I just don’t need to be retweeted every time he reads someone’s overt attempt at poetry on twitter or every time anyone does something he disagrees with. Is everything OK, bishop fontana? You seem stressed.
I’m good. Thanks for asking.
You are on the money holy smokes!
Awesome you named yourself after a Maiden song too.
I think I want a little more internal consistency from his reviews and his message. And personally, as a gamer and game enthusiast (?) I found this weekend’s crusade – Video Games Are Not Art – to be beyond biased and annoying in tone. So yeah, I’ll read all of his interesting links, websites of note, retweets, etc, from their original sources. (I woulda kept him Holy Smokes, but now he’s on a list of entertainment and news peoples. So he’s there, just unfollowed from my main twit feed.)
Oh, that video games one made me grin. He hasn’t even played the games in question, when so many of the art games rely on actually making the choices in the game yourself. It’s more interactive, more personal.
Also, this discussion also gets deep into “No True Scotsman” territory. Either the games aren’t true Art, or they’re not actually games. Frankly, when someone’s bed becomes Art, who’s to say that games aren’t?
http://yfrog.com/hqicoxg
my bad
This is art too
My point is that as much as like roger ebert, when it comes to video games he cannot get pass his bias and just try see that games can give moving and enthralling expiriences just as any other media
@mxl
You’re my new favorite monster. Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are two of my all-time favorite games. Their stories moved me. And although I only borrowed Ico and played through it once, I own SotC and have played through that game around 20 times. It’s music, it’s environments, the colossi, Agro’s ridiculous stubborn horse behavior (Why don’t you listen to me, Agro!), the whole thing is ridiculously enchanting.
The sole reason I will be buying a ps3 when the time comes is for The Last Guardian.
Thank you bishop fontana “What good would it be if all of those opinions fell in line with yours.” Sums up my feelings perfectly.
Also, it seemed Ebert biggest issue was with Hit Girl’s (non)reaction to the many deaths she witnesses/caused. Now we can all agree/disagree with him, but it doesn’t change his opinion & doesn’t make him wrong for having it.
Plus, he isn’t completely adverse to violence:
i’m applauding.
Anyone complaining about someone “tweeting” too much obviously doesn’t understand Twitter.
please explain?
Twitter’s entire deal is about giving voice to people in only 140 characters or less. Of course there are all sorts of emergent conditions and relationships that have evolved beyond the initial constraints of the program, but it still continues to be the latest development of a society infatuated with the desire to be seen and heard. While this is indeed a generalization, Twitter ultimately becomes a substance-less form of communication. Rarely, anything of worth is limited to 140 characters. Instead those 140 characters are regulated to other means of expression. Twitter, is then, simply the tool to be heard. It becomes a game of how many people are following you and listening to you.
I’m rambling and losing my point, which is: it’s fucking twitter. There are worse things happening in the world then someone sending too many 140 character messages.
PS I have no idea why you’re downvoted. It’s okay to ask questions, everyone!
I agree with a lot of what you’re saying, and I completely agree that emergence is still defining exactly how Twitter is and will be used. While there’s no arguing that a ton of people just use it to broadcast whatever they ate for breakfast in the hopes of gaining followers, there are a lot of people out there, @ebertchicago included, that post meaningful pieces of information. I believe over time that those that use it in meaningful ways will outnumber the noisemakers, but of course this is still in progress. My point is that while I appreciate a great deal of what Easy E posts, sometimes it’s a bit overwhelming, and that can be annoying. See: @questlove, et al.
in summary: “one tweet is too many tweets”
if so I completely agree. look at me stir the twitter argument pot
I agree, but also, couldnt similar things be said about monsters posting comments?
don’t things have meaning because we give them meaning? you know, existentialism?
“I invented Twitter”
Max the King of All Wild Things, 1987-2012
If only. Just don’t get my going on the videogames as art thing. That blog post was the most ugh. “I watched this game, and it doesn’t seem like art!”
Ebert hated that a little girl was doing all this very nasty stuff in a rated R movie.
And he gave Orphan 3 1/2 stars.
So as long as the little girl is actually [spoiler warning] it’s genius.
He also said the half-baked Death at a Funeral remake was the “best comedy since The Hangover.” Also, why do people keep saying that? Get over The Hangover. Pop an aspirin or something. (Get it?)
Okay you guys, I just read Ebert’s review. It’s weird how upset he seems that 6-year-olds won’t appreciate this movie.
“The brutality isn’t properly contextualized, as it was in Goodfellas.” — 6-year-olds everywhere
He also gave the movie Pretty Baby from the 70s three stars. Do a quick search and look up what that movie’s all about and then tell me the dude isn’t being the biggest hypocrite.
Mr. Ebert and I don’t always agree, but that does not make him any less The Best.
Here here.
Exactly, who agrees with everybody all the time? Commies that’s who
I agree.
I agree to disagree.
#socialism
I love Ebert, and I agree, the fact that I don’t agree with him 100% of the time does nothing to my opinion of the man. Much like the “video games can’t be art” argument, I respectfully disagree.
I will say that I didn’t like how condescending he came off in the Kick-Ass review, though.
Yeah, I felt that way too.
I actually overheard someone on my way out of the movie saying that he went because Ebert hated it so much.
Anyway, loving the movie as much as I did, I spent a lot of time wondering where the hell Ebert et al. were coming from. I think people who hated the movie because it was violent think that Hit Girl’s character allows perverts or idiots or child-haters to inflict violence onto children because they saw it in a superhero movie.
Most importantly, what if Hit Girl meets a nice young man in a few years and he discovers she once said “cunt?” She can’t deny it — the evidence has been caught on film! She’ll never get engaged at the rate she’s going.
her parents originally wouldn’t let her say the title of the film–or anything when she wasn’t on set.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlEdDizp8Aw&feature=player_embedded
I interviewed her and kickass a little bit. don’t expect any REAL JOURNALISM though. red carpets are wacky.
I think the Kick-Ass nerds (and video gamers, but that is an argument for videogamesgum) need to relax a little about Roger Ebert. The man is a LEGEND, as we at Videogum know (I will always, always, love the man who, responding to Vincent Gallo wishing cancer on his colon and calling him fat, said, “[A]lthough I am fat, one day I will be thin, but Mr. Gallo will still have been the director of The Brown Bunny.” He’s got a ZINGitzer on a shelf in his library.).
Ebert criticizes by this dictum: It’s not what a movie is about; it’s how a movie’s about what it’s about. The distinction is crucial for Ebert, and we can cite examples ad nauseam where he positively reviews movies that show horrible things happening to children, but we’d be missing the point: Ebert argues that Kick-Ass doesn’t know how it’s about what it’s about. Yes, this is a subjective call, one that the Kick-Ass nerds on Ain’t It Cool News (you guys are in very cool company!) disagree vehemently with Ebert about, but can we relax with the Ebert-directed vitriol?
Ebert didn’t like Kick-Ass! He makes a valid, supportable argument! I have liked movies before and been disappointed when Ebert does not like them (c.f., The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which Ebert dismissed as archetypical, superficial, and juvenile, and which made me cry–cry!–every time I watched Gandalf the Grey slip from the bridge of Khazad-dûm). That is a regularly occurring part of life, don’t you think? I’m always disappointed when people don’t love the things I love, but that is the hodgepodged complexity (and beauty!) of life. Let’s all just hold hands and jump into life, OK?
Good comment!
I liked Lord Of The Rings too!
We the Videogum versus those who side with Ain’t It Cool News.
Make me wanna vomit.
I think people have the right to bag out Roger Ebert because they don’t see merit or consistency in his argument.
Continue the onslaught Team side with Ain’t it Cool News!
I thought it was great!
I agree, friend.
I like this Steve Winwood!
Loved it. Saw it twice! (Without Videogum, I just go to movies and drink alone.)
I went in expecting a passable, forgettable little superhero flick, but it is actually a pretty smart movie. Like, there’s some real heart to the thing! The plot flowed well, the different genres blended neatly, it looked great, and I actually thought that this is the sort of role that Nick Cage should be playing. Actually, this should be his last role. Go out in style, Nick Cage.
But, yes, I agree that this is basically Superbad 2: Heavy on the Super
Superbad 2: Too Super? Too Bad.
Sometimes I wish I was a (bigger) nerd so that I could enjoy stuff like this like A LOT. But alas, I am less nerdy than I like to think I am, so I just liked it sort of a lot.
I enjoyed it and laughed a lot.
Nicholas Cage wasn’t that bad! I mean, he wasn’t great, but his weird, staccato, Adam West voice was pretty funny, I thought.
Agreed. One upvote for you
I will take that upvote, and I will cherish it. Forever.
Get a room you two!
Also agreed – though I legitimately thought he was trying to sound like a computer?
Also SPOILER [kind of]:
I was really hoping for him to call out: “HOW’D I GET BURNED” over and over at the end. You know what I’m talking about.
I can’t say it was Kick-Ass or Suck-Ass because I did not see it, but what I can say is that from the trailers it Looks-like-it-aint-worth-my-11-bucks-Ass
I think it will be worth mine because the kid playing Kick Ass impregnated the director of the film, who is in her forties and CELEB SCANDAL!!
? am I missing an inside joke? I’m sorry sir I’m going to have to ask for some linkdentification.
No it’s true! I’ve heard it several places. Here’s a link. I don’t know if I’m doing this correctly, but here goes!
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/confidential/nowhere-boy-director-sam-taylor-wood-42-pregnant-to-fiance-aaron-johnson-aged-19/story-e6frf96o-1225817332171
Next news item will be that he’s died of high-fiving.
Woah that is crazy for so many reasons. Pregnant at 42! By a 19 year old!
But, man, that guy is really hot. Maybe I’ll see this movie sometime. (Probably not)
Didn’t Matthew Vaughn direct this? (pushing up nerd glasses)
Whoops. Yes. This is what happens when I cheat on Videogum with other blogs – MISINFORMATION.
yeah he knocked up Sam Taylor-Wood, director of Nowhere Boy, which Kick-Ass dude was in… And Taylor-Wood’s ex is currently with Lily Allen, also like a 20 year age gap… Gossip over.
Well he would have Impregnated Matthew Vaughn, if Matthew Vaughn had breasts.
Also,If all those Roman Polanski movies are any indication, I need to see this Nowhere Boy.
Uh, Matthew Vaughn, director of Stardust and Layer Cake directed Kick-Ass. I can’t believe he’s pregnant!
There I go, anxious to type out things I know.
Not so anxious to read 2 more posts.
Anyway.
We’re all monsters in a monster world perfecting the art of YIKES!
Gabe, I agree with you about all child actors being in the same fetid boat. Here’s someone who dislikes “having a tiny little sweet baby child using cusswords and stabbing people in the dick and getting punched in their babyface” — Manhola Dargis of The New York Times:
There’s something about the killer schoolgirl that turns some filmmakers on, and audiences, too — who knows what further dangers lurk beneath that kilt? However chastely, Mr. Vaughn plays on that unsettling image, which shores up the false impression that because Hit-Girl is a powerful figure she’s also an empowering one.
And here’s what Dargis said about Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle: “He plucked my heartstrings… with well-practiced dexterity, coaxing laughter and sobs out of each sweet, sour and false note.” Also: “the young actors are very appealing and sympathetic, and the images are invariably pleasing even when they shouldn’t be.”
So let’s review: tiny brown children covered in shit and being blinded and sold into prostitution is OK (“invariably pleasing,” even) because they’re powerless and had no choice, but a tiny white superhero stabbing people in the dick is perverted. Got it. Excuse me while I take myself to jail, because I vastly preferred watching the little girl kill people to watching the other little children starve.
Yeah but Dargis used the word “dexterity” which is how people talk so give Dargis a little Dargis break
Have you had your Dargis break today? I’m going on mine right now with tons of dexterity up in this piece.
She would take it to a sexual/pedophilic level “What’s under the Skirt?” WTF was anyone HONESTLY contemplating this while watching her “Kick Ass”?
Ugh to this Manholo broad
Seriously, barf. Who the hell is thinking, “What’s under the kilt?” Also, isn’t it weird that Dargis’d be watching all this crazy ass jujitsu and deploring its message of empowerment? Or whatever it is she’s deploring? “Sigh… all this ‘karate’ the kids are into today is but an illusion. It will lead so many little girls to grow up wanting both their parents killed by a crime boss so that they finally have good reason to slaughter dozens and dozens of armed thugs.”
I second your “barf.” She’s so patronizing!
+1 for a very professionally organized, styled, and linked comment.
Outing myself as a giant nerd here: I wrote my comment in advance because her review made me so mad!
If only I could be so honest in life…
“who knows what further dangers lurk beneath that kilt?”
GROSS!!! Disgusting! Shut up Manhola Dargis!
I agree with Manohla Dargis and admire her POV, so I wonder if you’re fairly reporting what she says in her Kick-Ass review, or if you want to misrepresent her because she didn’t like Kick-Ass.
1. The “unsettling image” of the kilted school girl is worth critiquing. Don’t we all know the image? And isn’t it fair to say Kick-Ass, Kill Bill, etc. “quote” this fetishized image for their own means? And that Kick-Ass, even if it is critical of school girl fetishism (and I’m not sure it is, since I haven’t read a powerful argument on what Kick-Ass is criticizing, satirizing, or parodying), is culpable in engaging said fetishism? Dargis, like Ebert, argues that Kick-Ass lacks a coherent grasp on its message: is it critiquing or exploiting its schoolgirl murderess? Or is it doing both? And if it’s doing both, does that pull the rug out under the critique?
2. Dargis’ review of Slumdog Millionaire is extremely reserved put into context. The meat of her criticism is that she enjoyed, while feeling horrible that she enjoyed it, the exoticization of horrible poverty. In her words: [W]hat gives me reluctant pause about this bright, cheery, hard-to-resist movie is that its joyfulness feels more like a filmmaker’s calculation than an honest cry from the heart about the human spirit (or, better yet, a moral tale). Dargis admires the effects of Danny Boyle’s “calculation” as she wonders about the film’s honesty. I’d call that mixed praise.
NERD COMPARISON: There were several differences between the film and the comic, because this is Hollywood. I was perfectly fine with all of them but one. THE SPOILERS ARE COMING. In that this was an attempt at subverting superhero stories, Big Daddy’s character in the comic worked so much better than his Nicholas Cage counterpart (no shit, right?). In the comic, Big Daddy says he’s an ex-cop, but it turns out he’s just a super nerd who sold all of his X-Men #1s to fund this crazy killing spree. His wife wasn’t dead, and he basically kidnapped his daughter and forced her into this life because he wanted to fulfill his nerd fantasies. I personally like that more than “grizzled ex-cop doesn’t get mad, he gets even (madder).”
Fellow nerd here! I too had a problem with the way they changed Big Daddy. That was one of my favorite things about the graphic novel. I liked that Kick-Ass returned Hit Girl to her mom in the comics, but I guess it wouldn’t have made a difference in the movie.
Can we find some common ground here on the question of whether Kick-Ass (I’ll stick with the comic, having not watched the movie) actually “subverts” anything? Changing the motivation for vigilante violence doesn’t seem to really subvert the central allure of many superhero stories, which is precisely that violence. Just because your main characters wear costumes doesn’t automatically make the movie any more subversive than, say, Death Wish or any of the Dirty Harry movies.
Apologies for needing some clarification on terms like “subversive” and “satire.” I keep reading how Lady Gaga is a “subversive satire of subversiveness,” which has ruined all of those words for me.
Interesting point but I’d argue: Kick-Ass is subversive because it places its violence in an arena that is traditionally colorful fantasy. Even the Dark Knight movies give you semi-cartoonish goonsquads who die essentially by falling off-screen — they don’t take a lot of bullets to the face and get their throats cut and heads crushed. But that is how they really would be dispatched, if you are going to kill a lot of mafia goons in a lifelong revenge scheme…
Dirty Harry/Deathwish movies rely on/fuel a 1970s-style resentment over Our Cities Run Amok; they attempt to establish an arena of “realism” and then place their killing there; their brutality is meant to mirror/expiate some audience’s wish for order at all costs, a wish to wipe out the bad guys in the movie (and maybe in real life). Whereas Kick-Ass’s brutality is installed jarringly in an arena of total make-believe — which makes it initially shocking, rather then emotionally satisfying. Then the shock is dissipated in a lot of fantastical stunts and color — the point here is never to see justice done, it is just to see more and more breathtaking action — whereas Dirty Harry keeps you on a grim “realism” simmer and wants you to really want the bad guys to eat it, and no sissy Miranda rights.
Different wishes are being fulfilled by these movies — in the end, Harry delivers an unforgettable “take that, punk” speech and blows away the bad guy, cleaning up his world via violence. Whereas in the end of this, with the little girl getting beat up, the violence so far actually comes home to roost… before via bazooka being dissipated into full-blown comic book explosion (really, for the first time in the movie). The big emotional moment in Kick-Ass is her getting hurt and losing her dad; in Dirty Harry it’s Harry total and complete victory through killing. So, I see some subversion.
I wish I were a movie critic.
Hotspur: “I wish I were a movie critic.”
I’m glad you’re not
Subversive of you, Steve Winwood!
Kick-Ass (the comic, at least) comes VERY close to being subversive, since its take on realistic superheroes is just about the most realistic I’ve ever read. Kick-Ass SUCKS. He can’t do anything right, and is constantly beaten to a pulp. That’s pretty much what would happen if someone decided they were a superhero.
The problem lies in how it eventually gets to a point where he redeems himself. He fights back and actually does some damage. This, to me, is where it misses an opportunity. Who would want to read a story about a superhero that literally loses every battle because he’s a naive idiot? Me. I would. But that’s not what I got.
Also, once Big Daddy and Hit Girl arrive, two people who are very good at being real-life superheroes, it misses its mark again. The comic and the movie are both very fun, but hardly satirical or subversive or any other words that mean about the same thing.
I’d argue it’s a deconstruction of the Superhero genre (post-modern, what have you). Similar to how Scream is both cognisant of horror movies while also being a horror movie in it’s own right.
Watchmen is basically “what if, in the late 30′s, people started to become super heroes? What would motivate them, how would it work, etc?” Remove Dr. Manhattan from the equation and you get something like what happens in Kick Ass. People deciding to dress up and be heroes. Now, I haven’t read the book, but I’d hardly guess it’s anywhere near the level of Watchmen in terms of subtext, etc. But still, it seems to have a similar post-modern take “heroes inspired by comic heroes” and looks into what would motivate them. Also, the violence is very Punisher-esque (the movie reminded me a bit of Punisher War-zone). Big Daddy, in the movie, was basically Punisher pretending to be Adam West Batman, which is pretty funny. The comic book origin seems to be a bit more crazy in that the person is not “motivated by revenge” which is the classic comic trope for tons of vigilante types, but instead basically a sociopath without even a flimsy excuse to inflict the violence, just a desire to do so, albeit “aimed” at an acceptable target of criminals.
The movie leaned more towards a traditional comic book superhero movie, although it was different enough to stand out.
I had no idea there was any controversy about the girl. I just fell totally in love with her because she was so violent. Although, she’s also 11. So, to avoid charges of pedophilia, it is probably more accurate to say that I fell in love with a purple wig and amazing choreography.
Huh. Putting it like that, I sound kind of gay. Hit-Girl turned me gay?
It is the most powerful movie of all time.
Quoting the friend that didn’t get to make out with any girls at the movie’s end: “Dude, I’d wait for her.”
But seriously, she WAS awesome. Brainwashed killing machine, maybe, but so damn fierce! At eleven! I wish I wanted to be a vigilante at 11! (Powerpuffs don’t cut it, apparently.)
i liked it. it was lots of fun. and while i understand your problem with it, Gabe, I also don’t understand your problem with it at all. is it really purported to be a satire of superhero movies? i don’t remember anyone saying that. maybe it has been marketed that way, much like Inglorious Basterds was marketed as Brad Pitt takes on Nazis the movie. it makes it an easier sell, but the movie is something else. i think it’s fine for this to be a superhero movie.
a couple of things:
1. what was the deal with the guy at the beginning who jumps off the building?
2. Chloe Moretz saying “cock” bothered me more than her saying “cunt”
3. That nerd friend who is not Clark Duke needs to be cast in a Jay Reatard biopic immediately becaue he looks like Jay Reatard.
That dude at the top of the building is one of MANY of the Kick-Ass/homemade superhero copycats mentioned in the comic book. That guy is a nerd with mental problems.
In the comic that narration is in caption boxes as you watch this guy do all the stuff you saw in the film, only to smash into a car and die. Then it is revealed, just like in the film, that that’s not the narrator.
But we already knew that because we know who Kick-Ass already is because PREVIEWS.
I disagree about your last point Gabe; that the film purports to be a parody while actually just being the thing, (which is basically what the onion review said).
The ending is no question by the book, but I feel like enough stuff happens before that where audiences dont need to just follow blindly at that point. Meaning isn’t just what the film presents, it’s how audiences react to that. And I agree, when Kick-Ass gets on the jetpack and “saves the day” at the end, lots of stupid nerds probably loved that. But I am not a stupid nerd and I got that it was a big dumb joke. The bazooka is from friggin True Lies, “You’re fired!”, and I never believed he could save the day for a minute, or that hit-girl was in trouble because throughout the entire film they show how much of a sissy kick-ass really is. And hit-girl had been in impossible situtations before and gotten out of them. And red mist isnt a real supervillain for the same reason kickass isnt a supervillain, they are pussies. While he was fighting red mist, the dork, ‘saving the day’ hit girl was battling the true villain.
The movie does work as a parody, remember when he mocked the superhero origin with his mom’s death? And how later they had that same origin for realsies with hit girl? That’s not oversight, thats not hypocrisy, thats parody. And big daddy was basically Chester Gould, a-hole conservative author of Dick Tracy, (using comic books for propaganda). And also more stuff.
But the point is, yes the ending was designed to make the nerds in the audience feel good after they had been stabbed and hit by a car and everything (kickass=the audience). But so what? Its a hollywood film, it’s basically required to do that. That doesn’t mean a smart person can’t get something different out of it.
Working within a constricting system is an art in itself. Douglas Sirk turned women’s films into secret gay propaganda by casting Rock Hudson in “All that Heaven Allows”, Ryan North uses the same comic template every day for his super popular webcomic http://www.dinosaurcomics.com , “Tetsuo the Iron Man” and a billion other low budget movies get way more creative than other films of means, etc.
It really WAS a good parody, and people forget part of a parody is having fun with the elements. As if “Hot Fuzz” never reveled in action movie fluff or the dialogue in the “Black Dynamite” was never funny on face, but only as it made fun of other blaxploitation films?
Kick-Ass, 4/4
In response to the whole whether or not Kick-Ass is a satire on superhero movies, I just wanted to say that the film “Defendor” with Woody Harrelson does work really effectively as satire on the genre, albeit a lot darker and way less nerdy. Check it out…
ARGH! “Satire” and “parody” are two different words! Signifying different concepts!
This is true, I consider Kick Ass to have satirical elements and in no way a “parody” of anything. To me, what the movie really was about was a high school kid who wanted to be a superhero and gets more than what he bargained for when he gets a peek into a world of REAL badasses and dangerous people.
I am a huge comic geek, but I loved the movie. Gabe is spot on that it doesn’t satirize the superhero movie so much as it worships at its throne, but it does have plenty of really fun winks and in-jokes for those of us who make our way in that weird little world.
It also has the most gloriously fun violence since Kill Bill. Bravo, Hit Girl.
Kill Bill — good comparison.
Saving Private Ryan, meanwhile? That’s still hard to see. Same with Resident Evil and other things where heads just get witlessly lopped off. That churns me stomach.
But this was all candy.
Ebert enjoyed The Devils Rejects by Rob Zombie, a very boring pseudo-sleazy movie that is designed to be morally offensive (it’s actually pretty lame and boring, but the intent behind the film was to piss people off and be a punk rock horror sleaze film). Ebert = the worst
I am curious about something since you said you are into comics. I saw it with a friend of mine who read it first, and he hated it because he thought it left out a lot of the darkness that was in the comic. Like the superhero getting the girl, and Nic Cage’s character being much more immoral and crazy than the movie portrays him as being.
I also heard Tom Scharpling say that he hated the comic for being too homophobic, and I was wondering how the movie is in comparison to the comic book and if any of the criticisms hold water.
The comic is a lot more mean-spirited than the film. From Big Daddy’s real origin, to how crazy-indoctrinated Hit Girl really is, to the girl who thinks Kick-Ass is gay, everyone has a bad situation in the comic.
And not bad situation like, “I need to get out of this bad situation.” They’re not conscious of it. I mean bad situation like, “No matter what these characters strive for and trudge through, I, Mark Millar the writer, am going to punish them for the sake of not being cookie-cutter.”
I can’t think of a thing I would have changed, even Nic Cage.
I know.
i would have made the movie all about hit girl. she is my new favourite bit of awesome. i wish this movie had been around when i was a young girl. though, i’m sure my mother would have prevented my seeing it, which she did with a lot of ultra-violent movies. parents, always shielding developing minds from corruption. fuck of a lot of good it did her though! my brothers let me watch pulp fiction with them when i was about 12 on the condition that i not tell our mother that they brought it into the house. and i’ve been hooked ever since.
i’m actually starting to be a little worried about my brain though. i really didn’t think this movie was all THAT violent. i mean, sure it totally was violent. but not superlatively violent, like so many people seem to be saying. or was it??? next thing you know, i’ll become a vigilante myself now that i can’t tell the difference between extreme violence and an appropriate response. because that is exactly what happens when you watch too many violent movies and read particularly graphic graphic novels. i’m mentally designing my superhero outfit right now. it involves a lot of jade green.
I haven’t seen it, so I could be wrong. However, everything I’ve heard about this seems to be along the lines with what was wrong with Watchmen. It all purports to subvert the genre (which the Watchmen comic obviously did), but the films end up just reveling in the violence as much as other films. It sounds like it loses the whole conceit of “What if regular people became super heroes?” by basically just transforming these people into super heroes–again like Watchmen. Maybe people don’t want to watch a movie that actually deals with that question–and I know this movie was ultimately about being “kick-ass”–but it bothers me that it has to advertise its tone as one thing when in reality it’s another.
If only Michael Haneke had directed it:
I didn’t know Diplo was in Funny Games.
German Language Films Fund Terrorism (feat. M.I.A. and Bruno S.)
I can’t upvote this enough (someone let me upvote this enough!)
Agreed, that was a major failing on the Watchmen movie.
But it was a Hollywood superhero movie, it was obvious the message would be lost.
did you know that the kick-ass boy is engaged to a 43 year old milf and she is pregnant? Now you do.
We did! *points upward*
But it’s probably not fair to downvote you because the comment times are close enough that you probably had this page open before the other comment was made. Rotten luck, that.
Guys, regardless of how damning this film is of other superhero movies, it’s still different in another way.
Zombieland was interesting because it’s a film about zombie films. Whether it’s an effective parody or something else is another issue, but traditionally zombie movies are ABOUT something. About race, about the cold war, about consumerism, about class power control, etc. Zombieland isn’t about anything except that it’s kind of about zombie movies.
Same with Kick-Ass. Its about comic books and superheroes, not what they represent. As all the reviewers pointed out, Batman has more meaning than big daddy, and spiderman mroe meaning than kickass. The film is meaningless except in whatever capacity it addresses the system of comic books and superhero movies.
Just because it has no other meaning doesnt mean it does a better job at parody necessarily, but I do think it’s interesting.
Nerd Tangent: About halfway through this movie, while Hit Girl was standing on top of some goon’s shoulders and shooting down into his face, I thought: “Hey! There’s no reason they can’t make a movie of Ender’s Game now!”
If they do I will wet myself with joy!
Kick Ass is my new favorite movie of all time! It was like Kill Bill but with out all the taking itself too seriously, with a little bit of Joss Whedon humor throw in. It was totally obvious that Big Daddy was supposed to be darker in the book. I felt all the characters were total ANARCHY! Off the deep end and crazy! When Kick Ass got stabbed I was shocked! I think that was the most shocking scene in the whole movie.
I could never watch Ender’s Game the movie. The staging of the battle scenes could not possibly live up to what is in my head (nerd alert).
I saw this just over a week ago and right when Craig Ferguson popped up I think I may have audibly said, “Holy shit that’s Craig Ferguson!” I don’t think anyone else but us knew who he was.
Oh, did I mention I saw it a cinema in Glasgow, Scotland?
*at
Jesus I cant keep up with all the downvoting. People are PISSED about this movie, one way or another. Why?
Has anyone said “Relax Nerds!” yet? because seriously. These Kick-ass-heads (tee-hee assheads) need to ChillLAX.
1) I got into a twitter-fight with some film critic Roger Bestbert retweeted at me over this movie.
2) I liked it, but it made me accidentally listen to (and enjoy) a The Pretty Reckless song, and that I cannot abide.
30 I would follow Nic Cage to the ends of the earth, ever since Con-Air. I am not ashamed.
I saw Date Night instead and had an excellent time.
Date Night was GREAT! I laughed the WHOLE TIME! and I have a horrible laugh! But the Theater was empty! So i didn’t fret! Loved it!
date night felt really good, but i don’t think it had many objective merits. all the best jokes were in the trailer, and the action was barely passable. reviewers said the action got in the way of the film, but i thought it was okay enough.
i liked the movie because i liked all the actors who were basically just playing themselves.
this movie sucked balls.
I upvoted you because you are standing in contra distinction to the group think. Bravo
Did anyone see Anthony Lane’s review of it? The word “Child pornography” was used, which is two words. But it can be one if you hyphenate it.
Here it is: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2010/04/26/100426crci_cinema_lane
I really enjoyed Kick-Ass, and I was really interested in how they handled the issue of racism. Apparently when the book first came out, there was a great deal of (not unjustified) outcry due to the fact that all the villains were from ethnic minorities, while all of the heroes were white. Which is, putting it mildly, somewhat troubling. As to the entire question of seeing little children do horribly violent things on film, uh, haven’t we been doing that for a while? I mean, in a perfect world that wouldn’t be happening, no duh. But since it has been happening for a long time – why is this all of a sudden an issue with this movie? Because she said a swear? Is that really all it is? I mean, we’re living in a post “The Good Son” world. Anything is possible now.
I find this picture far more attractive than (a) it was intended to be found and (b) is acceptable at my age.
Wait, I’m 24. Am I allowed to find these boys attractive at 24? Or do I need to go to jail?
Congratulations: They are standing in one of two places they could stand where you can find them attractive and not need to go to jail.
The other one is…?
I’m hoping the answer is “my bedroom”
Wow, it took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out that was a link. Enough time for me to post a response and look like an idiot.
Well, shucks. Despite my efforts to hide it, now you all know that I am truly a spaz.
click on the “two places” link that Patrick M helpfully provided, brainiac
It looks like someone cloned Shia Leboeuf then made a clone from his clone, and so on, degrading with each one.
That being said, I love Clark Duke and his dough southern homo accent.
I am a Nicolas Cage non-hater (I know, what?) living in a Nic Cage Hate World, mostly. Definitely on this site. While he is admittedly pretty much the worst, most of the time, I think in Kick-Ass, he played a perfect parody of himself. And that made me laugh. So DEAL WITH IT, K
nicolas cage is, no joke, my favorite actor working today. he seems to approach every role with something like aplomb and something like THE OPPOSITE of aplomb. he’s had plenty of decent roles (bad lieutenant: POCNO, adaptation, leaving las vegas, raising arizona, wild at heart, world trade center, bringing out the dead).
most of all, though, he is a delight to watch when he’s in bad movies. i guess i love B-movies and nic cage is the epitome of a B-movie actor. he’s a lunatic, too, which is just the best.
maybe that comes across as ironic appreciation, but you’ll have to take me at my word when i say it’s not.
anyway, i haven’t seen “kick-ass” yet and am in no hurry to because i don’t like superheroes and i don’t like violence, BUT i appreciate everybody’s thoughtful discussion of it. good work!
I feel like no-one on this site has seen ‘Raising Arizona’
@KajusX & Chainsaws
Thanks, but you have to agree with me that Agro was a better listener than Yorda.
That is totally worth buying a Ps3.
I find it difficult to tell people whether I truly *liked* this movie or not. I settled for saying that I found it extremely *entertaining*.
Gabe, I like what you said about realizing you were being manipulated, because that is exactly how I felt about the movie (while simultaneously sitting next to a group of teenagers who did NOT feel exactly like this about the movie) in some of the action scenes and points in the characters’ arcs.
I, like a lot of viewers, understood what the deal was – that ‘Kick-Ass’ was trying to satirize the comic book storyline, and the superhero origin, but I felt like the movie lost some of that focus, and just settled for jumping right into just being one of those stories itself. In the process of being commentary, it forgot some of what it was trying to say.
I liked Nicolas Cage (as much as anyone can like him. In a movie. Acting…), but I would have liked to see on screen what some of the Nerds are saying he was like in the comic. (Wait – is it a ‘comic’? Or a ‘graphic novel’?? Am I saying it wrong? I’m sorry, Nerds, I didn’t know what I was doing! Spare me, please!) I felt like it would have been more of a statement on actual vigilante ‘justice’ being sort of unhinged, and that the people who go down that revenge spiral usually lose touch with reality, etc, etc. It seemed like that was only touched on, instead of exploring it fully. I thought that could have been quite a strong concept to explore, and what that meant for Hit Girl when she found herself facing harsh realities in tough situations down the track, without Big Daddy to save her….
Anyways. I would agree with both sides of the ‘Hit Girl debate’ (cause of how ‘Hit Girl’ is a debate now…). I felt a bit uncomfortable with some of her more violent scenes, and I will fully admit that it’s because she was a kid, and I am more used to seeing full-grown adults do crazy stupid things like that on film, and getting away with it. And while she wasn’t actually *spoiler* MAKING PEOPLE SHOOT THEMSELVES IN THE HEAD *spoiler* in real life, she actually was using all those words, FOR REALZ. And I don’t know. It just sort of felt weird to me. Having said that, Chloe Grace Moretz did it all with such charisma that I loved it all anyway.
So I enjoyed it, all up. It was very colourful and fun, with good splashes of humour, and some nice nods to, subtle digs at, and in-jokes about the superhero genre. But I did not like being manipulated into revelling in the violence of it, set to Bubblegum Pop, as Gabe mentioned. I have a tolerance for violence, mostly (I fully realise the hypocrisy of my love for the Kill Bill movies), but for the most part, I like my violence to mean something, or be for something. (Even *spoiler* Beatrix Kiddo *spoiler* had a pretty good reason for titular killing the titular Bill). But ‘Kick-Ass’ didn’t really have that for me. It didn’t dig deep enough into the concepts to balance out the joy with which the violence was depicted.
And when I looked around at the 8-to-12-year-old kids of the family in the next row from me in the cinema at the end of the film, and the enraptured fanboys gushing about all their favourite fight scenes, I did feel a little squeamish for all the people that didn’t get what the movie was trying to be about. But who cares! Asses got kicked! Small girls got punched in the face but also stabbed people in the chest!! NICOLAS CAGE SHOT HIS DAUGHTER!!!! Those are all my favourite things and now they are in the same movie!
I don’t know. I guess I should just let ‘Kick-Ass’ be great…
To clarify your comic-book-inclined questions-
It was an 8-issue series that was then collected once completed. So technically, it’s a trade paperback, not a graphic novel, but the terminology is so blurry these days it’s really a non-issue anymore. Only militant comic fans will prickle at any misuse if the terminology.
As for Big Daddy, in the comic there is no ex-cop partner character to adopt Mindy because Big Daddy was never an ex-cop (or a comic book artist in his spare time). Big Daddy was an accountant.
He hated his job and was married to a wife he (I guess) also did not like. He was also a major comic book fanboy who owned all the valuable 60′s Marvel issues, which he was auctioning off on ebay to fund his crime-fighting life. He kidnapped his daughter when she was a baby and totally brainwashed her into thinking he was an ex-cop and that the gangster badguys killed her mom. Big Daddy really just said “I want to be a superhero. Who’s a badguy. Oh look, a crime boss. I’ll try and take him down.”
I was just flipping through the issue before I wrote this, and man, I always have to go back to what I\i always say when it comes to Mark Millar’s writing. He’s really cruel to his characters, and their experiences are equally as mean-spirited. (I went on a small, related jag of this nature about Wanted on a WMOAT posting).
In the comic Dave gets his balls electrocuted in a torture scene that spans the book (which is all told in flashback), when Dave tells the girl he likes he isn’t gay, she gets her boyfriend to beat Dave up. Red Mist is never apologetic for Kick-Ass getting targeted by the mafia. In fact, Red Mist relishes the torturing of Kick-Ass and criticizes him for being such a stupid jack-off. Big Daddy straight up, 100% brainwashes his daughter into a killing machine to live out a twisted fantasy based off a lie. Her life’s a huge fucking joke. At the end she’s returned to her mom, whom Hit Girl thought was dead. (I just realized that Hit Girl sounds a lot like “hit girls,” with “hit” being a verb).
ANYWAY. I felt that although the comic kept everyone as grounded as it could in its own, semi-realistic reality (there’s no jetpack in the comic book, just a flamethrower), the movie’s tone was lightened and the characters’ motivations were tweaked and explored in a more digestible manner. Kick-Ass the comic book wasn’t really that good. But really, it was developed simultaneously as the film. Millar has the Hollywood bug these days, and almost dare-I-say writes his books specifically for movie-pitching.
In the instance of tonality, although the “realistic” tone of the Kick-Ass film gets nearly abandoned by the end, it’s rate of inclination is acceptably fluid, and as a whole the characters’ arcs all play out pretty entertainingly (unlike Watchmen, whose tone was consistent but completely exaggerated and wrong from the start).
Kind of am writing about everything now, but I hope I at least provided some further info on Big Daddy!
See, I think that kind of makes him less of a joke, and provides some serious twists for Hit Girl’s story arc. She would have had to deal with her dad’s fantasy as opposed to her reality after his *spoiler*. She would have had to look back on it all and decide which way she wants to live, knowing that it was all Big Daddy’s creation. And Big Daddy would be a lot more like what he is supposed to be – a kinda messed up fanboy who has both resources and psychoses in excess.
And the film would be a commentary on the ‘reality’ of superheroes – if this was in real life, wouldn’t a masked vigilante have to be a deranged psychopath? It would lessen the glorification of the violence. Like in Kick-Ass’ early battle scenes where he gets beaten to a pulp, it would follow through with the questions the movie asks – if you actually wanted to be a crime-fighting superhero, and mete out your own skewed version of justice, would it be as awesome as you think? Or would the price you pay make it not worth it?
I would have liked that side of it to be shown, because it would have changed the tone of the rest of the movie’s violence. Making it less about the fun and frivolity of Hit Girl’s rampages, and giving them a darker twist, because we would get to see her Daddy’s issues.
Blah, blah, blah, I’m sure everyone gets it.
At the very least, I guess the movie made some of us think. And also YouTube was in it! And semi-naked girls getting massages!! And exploding men in microwaves!!!
Also, Gabe. “Fuller, go easy on the bullets” is my favourite caption of yours, ever.
I loved the movie. I even found Nicholas Cage to be (somewhat) bearable.
I’m still weeping for the little black boy from Role Models. Gosh, remember all the outcry over him going on and on about titties? I’m surprised Kick-Ass’s makers went ahead with the project after all that controversy!
I got my very Mormon aunts to take me to see it. They laughed (shrieked) SO LOUD the entire time that other people got angry.
Another successful project starring Nicholas Cage as Nicholas Cage.
lots of fun all around! re: Kickass (the film)
& i basically always hate the graphic novel based movies, ghostworld, of course, being the exceptio-whoops i just puked on myself for being a snob.