KICK ASS

Kick Ass is the story of wannabe superhero Dave Lizewski, a comic book obsessed nerd, who when faced with the question of ‘why don’t people become Superheroes?’ cannot think of a single good enough reason not to nut up and give it a go himself. Not even a near death beating at the hands of some thugs and severe hospitalisation can stack up enough in the ‘negative column’, and so he dons a dark green wetsuit and claims the moniker ‘Kick Ass’.

After his second foray into the world of masked vigilantism, a bystander records his exploits, uploads it to the internet and before he knows it Kick Ass is a phenomenon. But fame also brings infamy, and the attentions of the local mafia boss Frank D’Amico, who doesn’t want costumed heroes horning in on his racket.  Added to this mix are a brutal daughter/father crime fighting team known as Hit Girl and Big Daddy, and a mysterious and equally popular masked hero by the name of Red Mist.

This is of course the movie the Daily Mail threw one of its trademark ‘ban this sick filth’ hissyfits about courtesy of a 10 year old girl getting shot, slicing up bad guys with a ninja sword, and uttering the word ‘cunt’. Watching director Matthew Vaughn sit incredulously on The One Show sofa while Adrian Chiles and that bland woman jabbered on about how it seemed like an amoral film despite only one of them having actually seen it (and admitting to finding it funny to boot), was yet another stunning indictment that the World is heading inescapably toward a reality previously only seen in Mike Judge’s IDIOCRACY.

Kick Ass is additionally, and far more interestingly, based on a toweringly superior comic book. Yes, the movie is fun. Great fun, in point of fact. You simply can’t go wrong with a 10 year old massacring bad guys to the tune of The Dickies ‘Banana Splits’, or Nicholas Cage battering the hell out of a massive cadre of mobsters in one single-take epic beatdown. However, the thing that was most disappointing about the Kick Ass movie is that when you read the comic you can see what it COULD have been. And whilst the movie is good, it could have been so much more! Despite all its coolness the movie struggles to climb out of generic superhero territory. All the brilliant aspects of the comic that took it away from standard origin fare, infusing a healthy dose of reality and elevating it above the obvious or the predictable seem to have been excised from the script.

I really try to roll spoiler free on this blog wherever possible, but there’s no way to make my point about the movie versus the comic here without giving the game away. So before you click the little box below, I urge you strongly to see the film and read the book. But if you’re not one for good advice, then fairly warned be thee, says I - there lie spoilers ahead:

Spoilers:

Kick Ass/Dave never kills anyone in the book. And it’s better this way. This is because Dave is a normal teenage comic nerd. He probably couldn’t kill anyone if he tried. Hit Girl can, and does, because she has been trained most her life to do it and it’s normal to her. There’s no rocket pack sequence. Dave doesn’t suddenly go badass and kill people left right and centre. He can’t do it. And he doesn’t. It’s out of character for him to do so.

The Big Daddy character is not an ex cop like in the film. In the comic this seemingly predictable genre cliché turns out to be a cover story for the fact he is a highly delusional, mentally disturbed comic nerd (like Dave but better prepared) who kidnapped his daughter under the misguided pretext of wanting to give her an exciting life!! Financing their crime fighting via the sale of ultra rare comics, they selected the mob boss at random. The ex-cop story was a front and entirely untrue.

In both book and movie Dave moons after Katie Deauxma, and as she mistakenly assumes he is gay finds himself haplessly playing along and perpetuating the lie that he is her gay best friend. The principal difference is that the movie opts for a schmaltzy, corny, and let’s face it highly unrealistic resolution which sees Katie fall for him after he confesses he has been lying to her. The book handles it far better, with a bitter dose of reality. Having laid his heart on the line to Katie and admitted he’s not really gay she rightly takes umbrage with the fact he has been lying to her for months and tells him to go fuck himself. The hero does not get the girl. The hero gets dumped, thumped and lonely.

To a degree it almost feels like the filmmakers completely missed the point as to what made the comic great.  There was nothing they omitted from the book that could not have worked on the screen, and so therefore I can’t really think of any reason for them to have made those choices other than incomprehension of the source material. And knowing what they had to work with in terms of the book, I felt there was quite a large bit of room for improvement.

Nevertheless, and don’t get me wrong, this film is a lot of fun. Enjoyable, and one of the better movies of 2010 so far. Nicholas Cage, Mark Strong and Chloe Moretz are all riotously good. So in conclusion, it’s funny, violent and entertaining, which are the majority of your bases covered. Despite its flaws Kick Ass still comes recommended and is definitely worth a watch.

IMDB: Kick Ass

IRON MAN 2

It’s fair comment, to say that I was a HUGE fan of the first IRON MAN, is quite the understatement. I utterly LOVED that movie. As a background I like comics, I used to read Marvel as a young lad, I have enjoyed mostly all of the recent spate of comic book movies (EVEN Daredevil and Ghostrider!), and it was totally and completely ‘my cup of tea’. As far as the Marvel adaptations go, in fact as far as the Superhero comic book movies go, the first IRON MAN was the STAR WARS of the genre. The cream of the crop, the bees knees, the icing on the cake. I loved it, you dig?

So on then to IRON MAN 2 which is basically more of the same, and in my book that is a very very very good thing. Now you can wax lyrical about important films, and moving films, and socio political films and as well you should. Cinema should be about that. It should be challenging and should ask questions of you and treat you with intelligence. There are of course other times when cinema should be FUN. And IRON MAN and IRON MAN 2 are just a pure masterclass in enjoyable cinema. It does exactly what you want from an IRON MAN film. It’s no good coming away from this movie and criticising its politics or for being too gung-ho, as I saw one ridiculous local paper do, because you’re missing the point entirely.  It’s about a superhero in a metal suit. It delivers in spades what summer blockbuster after summer blockbuster just cannot seem to manage. It’s cool and it’s fun and it rules. Hard.

The story picks up immediately after the end of the first movie and concerns a three pronged attack on Tony Stark/Iron Man.  Firstly the military trying to commandeer his Iron Man technology, secondly the ruthless Ivan Vanko seeking vengeance on the Stark family, and thirdly the fact that the Arc Reactor that keeps Tony Stark alive and powers the Iron Man suit is very slowly poisoning him.

Tony Stark is as narcissistic as ever. Still a rich dick, but this time motivated by trying to help humanity as a whole. He will still bask in the glory of enforcing World peace though, and is enjoying his IRON MAN fame as if he were a rock star.  There are hints of his recklessness, and nods perhaps toward the famous alcoholism of the comic. But for the time being this Tony Stark is still just about in control.

I had never really been that fond of Robert Downey Jr in the past. Stemming mainly from his performance in the abjectly wretched NATURAL BORN KILLERS.  But with IRON MAN he is a revelation. He IS Tony Stark, and once again he is fantastic in this second film. Likewise Scarlett Johansson’s ubiquity has often left me cold. Whilst I liked her in Ghost World, Lost In Translation and Vicky Christina Barcelona, it often feels like you can’t open a magazine or turn on the telly or even pass a bus shelter without her blank expression vacating out at you from an advertisement for perfume or one of the billion films she’s made – she must work 365 days a year!! That said, I thought she was good in IRON MAN 2, and her fighting was especially convincing.

Don Cheadle was great as Rhodey/Warmachine. Barring his useless English accent in Oceans 11, he is never anything less than excellent and should frankly have been the first choice from the get go. Gwyneth Paltrow was also excellent again as Pepper Potts, and John Favreau gives himself more screen time this time around and it was more enjoyable for it.

For the villans, Mickey Rourke was good, but upstaged by Sam Rockwell who at times could have walked off with the movie. If Rockwell has ever been in a bad film then I’m yet to see it. His addition to the IRON MAN cast was a triumph. If you like nothing else in this film you have got to love his weapons speech – “if this thing was any smarter it would write a book... and then it would read it to you”. Brilliant.

If there is a minor gripe, it’s that both films have essentially relied on a villain in a similarly powered super suit to fight Iron Man at the end. I think a third instalment would benefit from some variety there. But it really is a small gripe. IRON MAN 2 is as thoroughly enjoyable as the first one, and as far as cool, enjoyable, downright entertaining cinema goes, the IRON MAN movies are peerless.

IMDB: IRON MAN 2

Also, check out these incredible posters for IRON MAN 2. The first of which is by the super awesome Tyler Stout (and I wish I had been able to get this before it sold out at light speed) and the second is by the equally awesome Mike Saputo (which I did manage to get my grubby mitts on!)