Audiences who had their wits about them could see from the evidence on the screen that 'Kick-Ass' was never going to be the pop-art milestone that "redefines the superhero movie genre." Time magazine made that "redefines the genre" claim in a piece that came out Saturday, when the picture had already registered disappointing returns at the box-office -- insuring that it wouldn't redefine the genre's business model, either.
"Kick-Ass" actually never redefined anything. It merely took the base appeals of a certain kind of superhero movie -- a violent fantasy of potency, a bloody revenge of the nerd -- and pushed the dial to 11, with the help of an 11-year-old girl. (Now-13-year-old Chloe Grace Moretz plays Kick-Ass' unlikely mentor, Hit Girl -- that's Moretz posing next to her "Kick-Ass" character, left).
The core audience of comic-book readers did embrace the movie at advance screenings. But they didn't love it because its stripped-down, burlesque, teen/tween tale of an ordinary kid who determines to become a "real world" superhero was different from parts of "Watchmen" or even "Spider-Man." They loved it because it was more of the same -- much more, with what Alex in "A Clockwork Orange" would have called "a touch of the ultra-violence, real savage."
I think broader audiences discerned the strain to be important behind all the promotion.
The comic-book's creator, Mark Millar, makes an odd, revealing admission in his "making-of" book. Because he'd heard that novelist Ian McEwan supposedly "went soft after his kid was born," Millar, after his daughter was born a dozen years ago, started "purposely making my stuff more bad taste," so that people couldn't accuse him of losing his edge.
I loved filmmaker Matthew Vaughn's Neil Gaiman adaptation "Stardust," but here he works in the same spirit as Millar. Director Vaughn's rare ability to adapt his style to his subject matter has led him wrong with "Kick-Ass." He force-feeds you the gags that make you gag.
He believed in the project enough to raise the $30 million cost himself. Is that why, in his interviews, he kept bringing up the controversies about using a young girl as a no-holds-barred action star, even though the reviews here and abroad were largely positive? Did he want to make the movie a cause celebre? I hope he makes his money back and picks better material next time.
What do you think?
AP photo by Chris Pizzello