I’m behind on my articles for Comic-Con and I’d like to apologize. Time for posting is much more limited than I would like. Today I covered Star Wars almost exclusively, so I’ll try to get at least the big news from that up tonight and the rest tomorrow or the day after.
As for Kick-Ass.
As some of you may know, we’re all great admirers of the Kick-Ass comic book around here. (In fact, a quote of mine managed to find its way printed on the back of issue 4…) We’ve put out extremely positive reviews of every issue because we really like it that much.
I was excited to see this panel but I was also worried. Would they tame it to fit in with mainstream audience? Would Hit Girl even be in the film, really? What if Matthew Vaughn somehow screwed it up?
I was doubting it, but when he came out, he looked like a man defeated. He seemed weary. And before he showed us any footage, he said pretty bluntly that if we didn’t like it, it probably wasn’t going to get a distributor. It sounds grim and dramatic, but the look on his face seemed to scream to me that he meant it.
After the first clip they ran, I was not only reasonably convinced that he’d nailed it, but stood and clapped the moment the scene was over. The first clip was the opening of the comic, with the Condor-man looking kid jumping off the top of the building set to a somber piece of John Williams’ Superman score and narrated by Dave Lizewski. We hear his voice long before we see him and the voice so perfectly matches what I had in my head reading the book that I was shocked. It doesn’t matter who they got to play the character, he WAS Dave Lizewski (the new Peter Parker, in my opinion). After that amazing moment at the bottom of the skyscraper, it cuts to Atomic Comics (www.atomiccomics.com) where Dave and his friends are discussing the question of superheroes and why no one has tried to be one in real life.
It captured the feel of the book perfectly.
Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr. were brought out soon, as well as some of the cast, and then we were treated another clip. This time, we were able to see the first time Kick-Ass puts on the costume. Though it deviated from the book in a few small ways, I still very happy to see it. It’s bloody and shocking, though in different ways than in the book. And watching Dave get hit by that car was… just… wow. I mean, usually that sort of thing is overdone, getting hit by cars and all, but this was shocking, well-done, and hilarious in a brutal way.
Another round of applause and then we were treated to a third clip.
This clip was the clincher for me. It had both Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and Hit Girl in it. I’m always wary of Cage, but he knocked this out of the park. The clip they rolled? A piece of the Secret Origin of Big Daddy and Hit Girl. The part where Big Daddy shoots his little baby doll in the chest with a glock. This scene was both funny and harsh, both tender and brutal. And the wide shot of him blasting his little girl and she flies and down comes out of her jacket is the piece de resistance.
And then they brought this sweet little girl, Chloe Moretz (Hit Girl), and then proceeded to play the clip of her first appearance in the movie. You know? The one where she’s chopping guys up and calling guys “c*nts” and “c*cks”? Yeah, they showed that and it was exactly the spirit of the comic. As I watched this clip, I really did start to tear up. And I was watching with Marcus and there was a moment where we both just looked at each other as if to say, “Did she just…? Did that…? Holy shit…”
The scene was rendered in that same amazing tongue-in-cheek sort of fashion that the book is and it suited it well.
As though that weren’t enough, we were treated to a trailer that gave us a glimpse into the future of both the movie and the book.
Spoiler: It appears as though Dave manages to tell the girl that he’s not gay and they get to make out. And it almost looks like Hit Girl is the star of the show. She has some scenes of gunplay that would rival any of your favorite gun movies and she explodes peoples heads at point blank range. If this footage is any indication, this film is going to be fantastic. Perhaps one of the best of 2010 (Vaughn did say that it will come out in early 2010).
The reaction was excellent. Standing Ovations. But the question is this: Was it enough, will we ever see it?
Vaughn still didn’t seem convinced.
We were all wondering what little bit we could do to help the film out and get it distributed and the best answer we could think of would be to write the distribution companies and to tell them that not only should they pick up Kick-Ass, but they shouldn’t touch a frame of it. Let Vaughn retain final cut and release it with a NR. (Because I can’t imagine them getting less than an NC-17 if they submitted to the MPAA… Seriously.)
The consensus opinion is that we’d all like to see this film handled by the Weinstein Company, so I think we should focus attention on them and urge them to buy it. For a lot of money.
Because this film truly deserves every bit of support we can throw its way.