This Trailer Kicks Ass

by Jeremy Couturier | Wednesday, August 19, 2009

promotional image from the film adaptation of the comic book KICK-ASS

Hollywood adaptations of comic book series drive me nuts. Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that, now more than ever, comics are a hot item. A bankable item in most cases. However, there is always this meddling element that always sees “fix” what wasn’t broken in the first place. I’m not a hardcore fanboy who needs everything from the comic to be translated onto the screen. I know there have to be compromises, changes that will hopefully make the transition from page to screen possible. One thing that can’t be changed is the essence of what made the comic great. You can’t screw with that, it’s an unspoken rule. Hollywood can’t help do that, no matter how many times they get a hand slap from the movie goer. So every time I hear a new comic book movie project announced, no matter the talent of the stars or director I get that feeling in the pit of my stomach. It’s like, oh no what are they doing now? I got that feeling when I heard that Mark Millar and John Romita Jr’s creator owned Kick Ass was being made into a movie. I could feel the meddling begin.

The cover to issue 3 of KICK-ASS

Kick-Ass is about an ordinary New York City high school kid named Dave Lizewski. He is, for the lack of better words, a comic book geek. Inspired the comics he and his friends collect, Dave decides to become a super hero himself. Not because he has the skills or resources to be a hero, but because he wants to be somebody. Somebody other than a geeky comic collector who is probably stalking his longtime crush and lives a quiet life with his single dad. So after some misadventures Dave is filmed saving a man from a savage beating, and getting beat up himself winds up a YouTube overnight sensation. The cult of Kick-Ass is born, and Dave even starts a MySpace page for people who might need his help. He also finds he has inspired other people to don costumes and fight crime with mixed results. On one occasion Dave helps a MySpace follower with a problem with a dangerous drug dealer boyfriend. Here he runs into Big Daddy and Hit Girl, two costumed heroes who are as highly adept as Dave is hopelessly over his head. They ask him to join them in taking down a powerful local drug kingpin. Dave suddenly finds himself a real superhero in a an all too violent and real world.

Millar and Romita really hit a nerve here.They even started a viral marketing campaign of their own. They created a YouTube video depicting a heroic Dave, and created an actual MySpace page that was supposedly maintained by Lizewski, and announced that Millar and Romita Jr. were doing a comic book about “him”. The book itself is violent, funny and honest about the motivations of Dave and his subculture of “heroes”. There isn’t any great power comes with great responsibility theme here. This really struck me as new and refreshing and I thought the on the whole this was something special. Kick-ass even.

Well, the movie was announced and details trickled down. Nicolas Cage was in it, groan. Matt Vaughn, a producer of many of Guy Ritchie’s films, was set to direct. McLovin, the Irish R and B singer is in it. I didn’t know what to think of any of this. That is until I saw this. This being the trailer that was shown at the Chicago Comic Con. Forgive the quality, as it’s a bootleg, but that in itself is awesome.

I could smell it. I could smell the essence of Kick-Ass. The casting is dead on. We have weird Nic Cage as the ex-cop Big Daddy and his daughter, played by Chloe Moretz, he has trained to be the deadly Hit Girl. This Aaron Johnson kid looks like he nailed Dave Lizewski. McLovin is playing Red Mist, another make believe superhero who befriends Dave. What really struck me was the humor and the balls to the wall action. I haven’t been this giddy about on screen action since The Killer. The scene where Moretz/Hit Girl reloads the clips in her pistols in mid stride had me cheering just like the audience. I think this kid is going to be a star, and that final line in the trailer! Oh my, kids say the darnedest things. I don’t know when this will be hitting the theaters but I suggest you read the comic in the mean time. I think this comic book adaptation will indeed Kick Ass.