Kick Ass would celebrate and honour the mayhem and dark humour of Millar’s comic book creations while tearing up the on-screen superhero rule book. If it had any slogan, it was “With no power comes no responsibility.” Kick-Ass is available to rent, buy, and stream.
The opening ten minutes of Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass may well be one of my favourite movie openings in film history. Vaughn’s adaptation of Mark Miller’s brilliant comic book series is rooted in Miller’s original vision and, in my opinion, one of the best anti-hero movies ever made – its blaze of colour, violence, and creativity spawning dozens of copycat film and TV outings in the years since its release.
Scottish writer Mark Millar began his career with DC Comics in 1994, working on titles such as “Swamp Thing” and “The Flash” before reaching new heights of attention with “Superman: Red Son”. In 2021, Millar moved to Marvel, working on “Ultimate X-Men”, “Civil War” and “The Ultimates”. Then, in 2004, Millar surprised everyone by leaving Marvel and DC behind to create his own universe of characters.
Millar’s new indie studio would dovetail his passion for the comic book superhero with a more urban, edgy and violent world, in turn giving birth to “Kingsman”, “Nemesis”, “Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl”, to name just a few. In creating “Kick-Ass” (also known as Dave Lizewski), Millar seized on an eternal truth of the male condition: men never really grow up, their inner boy pulling the strings all their lives in one way or another. Right up to old age, a man’s mind is a playground of boyhood desires and ideas, and Dave Lizewski is a reflection of this truth as a teenage boy longs to live out his fantasies through a mix of hormones and naive stupidity.
Bringing Millar’s unique vision to the screen would not be easy; after all, how many studios would allow Dave Lizewski’s hormonal, painful and violent journey against organised crime to fly free from censorship? The answer appeared to be none until Matthew Vaughn and Marv Films took one of the biggest self-funded gambles in modern movie history with the assistance of Brad Pitt’s Plan B.
However, the project would remain a knife’s edge away from disaster for Vaughn throughout filming, and there was still the question of who would distribute it! Thankfully, Lionsgate and Universal stepped in, despite concerns over the character of Hit Girl and the level of violence on display in Kick-Ass, and this decision to back Vaughn undoubtedly contributed to the genius casting. Aaron Taylor-Johnson delivered just the right mix of outsider charm, innocence and misplaced bravery as Dave Lizewski, while Chloë Grace Moretz‘s spit-and-sawdust energy as Hit Girl was utterly enthralling. Add Mark Strong, Nicholas Cage and Superbad’s Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and Kick-Ass literally “kicked ass” from the minute the casting was announced.
Kick Ass would celebrate and honour the mayhem and dark humour of Millar’s comic book creations while tearing up the on-screen superhero rule book. If it had any slogan, it was “with no power comes no responsibility” However, for all its comic book violence and visual beauty, Millar and Vaughn also weave their tale of anti-heroes with moments of stunning emotional depth as a teenager with dreams of grandeur and a damaged young girl with a killer smile take on a violent underworld of crime.
Kick-Ass is a colourful commentary on the power of one person to make a difference, even if they have no special abilities and run around in a Scuba diving suit at weekends. Whatever your take on the comic book carnage at play, one thing is undeniable: Kick-Ass would change the superhero world forever and inspire a whole host of new anti-hero on-screen visions. So, thank you, Mark Miller, Merci, Matthew Vaughn, and Danke, Aaron and Chloe, for one of the best anti-hero films ever made.
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