By Thomas Willett
I will admit that for most of my life, superhero films haven’t resonated with me much. There are the few that manage to impress me, but I didn’t really need to see Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance if it wasn’t for the show. While I feel that the genre should have died with the superb block of the Avengers and the Dark Knight Rises, I am not entirely opposed to what lies ahead. Man of Steel may be made by a director whose work is style over substance, but it is still too early to call. However, there is one upcoming movie that I have been yelling about. I have tried to keep my mouth shut, hoping that it would go away. However, having read the source material, and really digging the previous installment, I really don’t want to see Kick-Ass 2 get made.
More than any other film coming out next year, I look at Kick-Ass 2 and roll my eyes. This is an odd reaction, speaking that I placed the original in my top ten for that year and still consider it a violently fun movie. This is notably thanked to Chloe Moretz, whose young prolific career has made me a fan (or at very least a viewer) of anything she touches. Her Hit Girl persona of dirty words and knife wielding antics has become a hit in the costume department. Even movie polls of tough female characters have acknowledged her. All of this from a film that had moderate success and flew under everyone’s radar.
With that in mind, I wasn’t opposed to giving Mark Millar’s follow-up a chance. Maybe Kick-Ass would have fun adventures. He did, but I felt the spark was gone. The whole makeshift superhero thing has been a guilty pleasure of mine, and the origin of a smartass nerd just was juicy enough to make me overlook the dated nature of using MySpace. In the sequel, he goes about forming a team to take down Red Mist.
I want to warn you that the list I am about to share is very vulgar and is not me fabricating jokes. The team was called Justice Forever and featured: Doctor Gravity, Colonel Stars, Lieutenant Stripes, Battle-Guy, Remembering Tommy, Night-Bitch, Insect-Man, Rocket Man, The All-seeing Eye, Moon-bird, the Enforcer, and Ass Kicker. If anything, these names are less subtle than naming your leads last time around Big Daddy and Hit Girl.
If that wasn’t annoying enough, the villain names are worse. Forming the Toxic Mega-cunts, the team features Red Mist, who is now renamed Motherfucker, and Mother Russia.
My problem right there is that the name Kick-Ass was fitting because it fit the persona. Ass isn’t even that terribly used here. Sure the story featured a lot of swears, but never did they have characters with words like bitch or fucker in the title. That right there was the start of my many problems with the follow-up, which ended up being a “more is better” creation. Personally, the team added nothing but a bigger gimmick and a gallery of one note jokes. Also, the general idea feels like even Kick-Ass is aware that he’s done this before, so he’s making fun of the plot.
I will keep out the concepts of rape, torture, and various poor tastes. This was just not a good story, and when I first heard about this movie getting made, I was skeptic that it would make it past conception stages. It felt like a joke and I would expect people to say “oh it is in development” with a wink and a smile. If you look closely, Kick-Ass is not that big of a hit. It may have done gangbusters on the home video market, but it never was worthy of a sequel.
Sure the comic sold out quickly and the fan base has grown since the theatrical release. However, look at it this way. It feels like they’re trying to sell it as a mainstream superhero flick from the actors you loved the first time. This could work if the movie was, say, PG-13 and they had some unforeseen luck. However, the chances of that are low. Why? You renamed the villain Motherfucker. Two uses of fuck is borderline PG-13 by MPAA standards. This will probably be thrown around way more than to talk about that character. Also, Hit Girl has to swear. It is what we know her for.
However, things continued on and suddenly I am hearing that the entire cast (with exception for the killed off characters) are coming back. No lie, I am excited to see anything Chloe Moretz is in and Aaron Johnson is quickly becoming one to watch, especially after Savages. However, I feel like this movie is below them, if just because the ultraviolent themes are no longer endearing trademarks. Their satire on superheroes is familiar, and the choice to make a Justice Forever team just seemed like a bogus follow-up. And yet, I have read reports that the Justice Forever team has gotten a few good men: John Leguizamo, Donald Faison, and a rumored Jim Carrey. 2/3 may not be that big, but the fact that Carrey is even considered is giving me some skepticism that the studio is expecting some cash off of this.
The departure of Matthew Vaughn as director only worsens my interest in this project. My exposure to his work may be very limited to this and X-Men: First Class, but he had a kinetic energy to the first that made his brief time as the Guy Ritchie protégé so worth it. I don’t doubt that director Jeff Wadlow will do an apt job with the material, but his resume is less impressive, with the most notable one being Never Back Down. If anything, I worry that the studios will tamper with the subject matter and make Motherfucker’s name something friendlier like Mofo to get a PG-13. It may solve the ultraviolent nonsense that made the read tough, but it sacrifices everything that made the first film great.
I think that this all stems from the fact that I didn’t like the comic at all. I stuck it out and the ridiculous conclusion where a makeshift superhero fight takes place in New York is just too grandiose and ridiculous to even seem cool to me. I feel like Mark Millar went over the top and hoped to escalate the energy with it. If he did, I don’t see it and I am predicting that this movie will fail. I just want the people involved to realize that I am not a fan of the progression with this movie, and I was an avid supporter of the original.
It is also a bummer because most recently saw the publication of a solo Hit Girl series. As good of a character as she is, I am just worried about being let down again. I read the first few pages, and seeing her swear lost the appeal. I blame Kick-Ass 2 largely for that. It took the gimmick of excessive cursing and glorified it beyond parody into the realm of annoying language. It made me bored, which was sad as I tried to recall what drew me to the series in the first place.
I can probably best compare this series to Breaking Bad. In the beginning, Walter White is a nebbish man who finds out he has cancer. Season by season, he becomes a greedier and more maniacal meth cook. By the end, he isn’t even close to having a sympathetic edge that he did even in season 2. He is still compelling as he flies by the seat of his pants away from danger, but he is still a very tragic figure. Kick-Ass is kind of like that, except he isn’t supposed to be a tragic hero as much as a clever everyday kid. Throw in rape and death and you have lost what made Kick-Ass so cool early on.
I know that I am probably the black sheep in this discussion, but Kick-Ass 2 has been on my dislike list for a while now. I take every news announcement with a shake of disapproval. Whether it is from a marketing standpoint or a narrative standpoint, I object to the whole thing. I know Aaron Johnson cannot headline movies, but he deserves better material than this. I cannot see this being more than an annoying parody of the first.
Do you disagree? Were ultraviolet themes always the point of Kick-Ass? Should I read the Hit Girl spin-off since it is a solo journey? Should I stop complaining about comic book movies since I have no history with them? Does saying that I liked the Avengers make my previous statement somewhat less whiney? Feel free to write me and let’s get a dialogue going. I just have trouble seeing this being more than a disappointment and my least anticipated movie of 2013, even though I am sure that there will be far worse to come.
You can read Thom’s blog every Wednesday and hear him on Nerd’s Eye View every Tuesday and Thursday at nevpodcast.com. Send your thoughts to nevpodcast@gmail.com. You can also read Thom’s movie reviews for Cinema Beach at cinemabeach.com.
Comments
Post a Comment