so...Kick-Ass...

[mustinvestigate]

I didn't enjoy Kick-Ass nearly as much as I thought I would.

(Also, have there officially been enough disingenuous 'real people become costumed vigilantes and wackiness/serious business commences!' works for it to qualify as a separate genre from 'superheroes'? And does this genre have a less unwieldy title?)

I don't know what left the sourness for me...the sexual politics (there are no nerdgirls! and, Nice GuysTM, hot personality-less girls totally owe you a wild sexual relationship when you do nice things for them, even if you've been lying about who you are to get close to them!), or the 11-year-old serial killer...who I kind of liked, as a character and a concept...but it should at least be acknowledged that being fundamentally brainwashed into cold-blooded murder and kept from interacting with the outside, non-murdering, world from a very young age is a Very Bad Thing. Hell, Buffy was only killing demons, and she had entire seasons to mourn her lost potential as someone who didn't spend her nights killing other sentient beings!

And also the adolescent Kick-Ass had no issues with becoming a killer either. But he chose vigilantism for himself and was also sort of a dumbass, so that was more of an irritation with the writing than the gut-deep worry I felt for wee Hit Girl.

And yet I kinda think it's a little worth it if a pre-teen girl distains Bratz in favor of a butterfly knife.

I am conflicted.

And possibly just very old and not getting it.

Comments

[entwinedangels.livejournal.com]

i also had this problem,
i went in expecting to adore it - its a violent movie where people dress in costumes and be violent - the sort of thing i love.
but yeah, i just found it lacking, i kind of hated the main guy (which surprised me because i usually dont mind the 'geek' - if you could call him that) and i just didnt care about any of the story involving him.
(although i had to laugh at the climax of the film being some man beating down on a tiny little girl and my brain was just going YEAH THIS IS SOMETHING THAT IS FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG)
i did adore hitgirl, i wanted to take her home and watch her flip off the walls. (what id really like is a continuation where its her getting used to 'real' life - i mena you certainly dont just 'get over' being like that)

[ladyk-d-azrael.livejournal.com]

No, no, you're right to be suspicious! I enjoyed it in a shallow sort of way, but later, the more I thought about it the more it annoyed me. For instance, the protagonist's sudden switch from 'I'm an innocent civilian who just wants to help people' to 'I'm fine with murder'. I feel like I missed the part where that transition was satisfactorily explained (though apparently this is unique to the movie - the comic explores it at length).

The thing that bothers me most is the sudden switch from wry, deadpan realism to yeehaaaaw swords n' jet packs n' physically impossible fighting moves. I actually found the first ten minutes of the movie really interesting, then it was all a bit 'ho hum, another slickly shot Tarantino-esque thing'. I feel it copped out on it's own key premise!

Hit Girl was fun, but I wonder how much of it is just Mark Millar gleefully cackling over having an eleven year old say 'alright you cunts!'. Hurm. Actually re: Hit Girl and killing, I thought it was interesting that Big D mentioned he made training 'a game' for her. That came across a bit in the penultimate fight scene where strobe effects made it look like a first-person shooter, but I think we could have had more of that and it's frankly disturbing implications – like, what happens when she starts to realise what the heck she's really been doing. Maybe that's being saved for the next comic run.

Here's a thought for you to ponder: is Nick Cage drawing attention to his own inability to act in a slick meta way by having his dialogue be deliberately stilted, or is he doin' his very best actin', child?

[theonlytwin.livejournal.com]

i want piles of really good fic where hit girl deals with the real world. i'd settle for one yuletide story which even tangentally deals with the inherent issues. or one where she is awesome and flipping off walls.