Climbing Higher Pictures

Not many people saw this coming. After the film adaptation of Mark Millar’s violent and vulgar comic book Kick-Ass was turned down by all the major studios, Matthew Vaughn decided to make the movie independently. Then it premiered at Comic-Con to near universal acclaim. “Sure it would play well there” you’re telling yourself. “It’s that crowd’s type of movie.” But what if it wasn’t? What if it was a whole lot more than a movie about superheroes for people who love superheroes? What if it was an actual game-changer, the kind of film that could shake up the established conventions of the genre? Does it have what it takes to tackle the cultural values of the modern day and wrestle them to the ground? Find out below:

Kick-Ass Review

By Ryan Hamelin

Movie Grade: A

Every generation has a collection of films which seek to define them. For reference to past trends, clothing styles, slang terminology, and cultural values, all one has to do is drift past the isles of DVD’s in your local electronics store. The movies that manage to transcend their release dates become classics, while those which wholeheartedly embrace the cultural zeitgeist become cultural icons. Such cult successes seem to have grown fewer and farther between in recent years, as the overwhelming amount of material prevents the usual defining standards of cultural milestones to be applied to a single property.

In order for a film to completely tap into the modern sensibility, a world where a person’s identity is defined by the number of contacts in their cell phone, and a young adult generation raised with their lives played out through social networking websites, a movie has to do something special and different which breaks through the walls of censorship that are blindly maintained by the old guard establishment.

What so many people over a certain age fail to realize, is that this isn’t even close to the world they grew up in. Their attempts to rein in an exponentially growing landscape of global communication and information have been reduced to a self-comforting delusion. Kids are growing older far faster than ever before, and by the time we’ve reached our college years, we’ve already been exposed to a greater wealth of media content than our grandparents were in their entire lives. Calling us the “video game” generation, and slapping labels like ADD onto our heightened awareness and increased need for multitasking is avoiding addressing the fundamental difference between the NOW and the THEN. If nothing else, this could be the movie that finally opens their eyes.

Kick-Ass is based on a comic developed by Mark Millar, the man behind Wanted. In conjunction with the creation of the comic, director Matthew Vaughn (Stardust) was hard to work on the feature script. By the time the film began shooting, only the first few issues of the comic had been released. Now that the film is almost upon us, the comic has completed its run, and awaits the results of one of the most complex dual format conceptual distributions in movie history. That’s not to say the comic and the film are entirely in lockstep. According to the press release, Vaughn was excited to take some liberties with the then-unwritten ending, as well as demonstrate some stylistic changes to the character development. The point is that reading Kick-Ass and seeing the film will be inevitably different experiences. Having not read the comic myself, I can’t comment on the nature of the changes and their validity to the original story. All I can address is the experience I had watching the film, and what an experience it was.

On a surface level, what you will receive from Kick-Ass is an incredibly entertaining and enjoyable superhero story. It’s not a world we’ve ever been privy to before. These superheroes get their inspiration from YouTube videos and other recent film adaptations. They don’t have powers, they don’t even have mind bogglingly sophisticated training in advanced martial arts, and they don’t have billions in funds to construct bat-caves under their mansions. They get their costume components off of Amazon, and walk the streets at night because riding a bike would look too ridiculous. In short, they’re us. Which leads me to the major conservative attacks against the film. The faint of heart may want to stop reading, as I’m about to describe the qualities which make the film realistic, but which also, per our societal standards, earned the movie an R-rating.

If your problem with a normal person trying to stop crime single-handedly while wearing a wetsuit outside of a dimly lit gas-station is that when he gets his ass kicked, he bleeds… you’ve seriously got to wake the hell up. The only reason a film which is said to contain “strong and brutal violence throughout” shows you what happens to the characters when they try to take a stand in the real world, is that if they’re actually getting brutally beat up… well… that’s what’ll be happening on screen. Humans bleed, it’s pretty well documented… like evolution.

If you think people swearing every couple of sentences qualifies as “pervasive language,” then you’re due for a walk down a corridor in any high school in this country for a reality check. That’s how real teenagers talk, and you wonder why all of the Judd Apatow films land R-ratings, even when teenagers are the main characters. They’re not being vulgar, they’re being realistic. Again, stop trying to delude yourselves.

Approximately half of the bile leveled at the film involves the young female cast-member using a word which is apparently so horrifying that it has the power to shred bonnets everywhere with a single utterance. I get that she’s playing a 10 year old, and I also get why I shouldn’t type the word into this review, but assigning the end of the world to a four letter word beginning with “c” only proves how completely out of touch you are. Shock and awe is the name of the game here, and as long as you have an open mind, you’ll realize the true value of what you’re witnessing.

The film itself goes to great lengths to ground the ludicrous nature of its story. Part of that has to do with an inconsistent tone, something I tend to latch onto aggressively as a negative in most of my reviews. Here, it not only ends up being incredibly satisfying, but makes the whole narrative resonate as a series of days in the life of the main character. You never wake up in the same mindset as you went to sleep, and the same is true of the development here. Each sequence is consistent upon itself, but the film doesn’t believe it owes an audience any more than that, and truth be told, it doesn’t. Layer onto that a plot structure which bucks almost every conceivable convention (right up to the very end where you feel it all click into place for the home stretch) and you have a wholly original and energized viewing experience unlike any other… a superhero movie with truly modern sensibilities.

Beyond the incredible visuals, the film easily outperforms the competition on an audio level. By mixing the dialogue levels really low, theaters will be forced to maintain a certain median which will cause the gunshots and other thunderous sound cues to hit with the impact of a freight train. This is a loud movie, and the auditory assault is perfectly in tune with the action happening on screen. The soundtrack, largely comprised of previously written music, is as iconic a blend of styles as the film is, and I for one haven’t managed to stop listening to it since I saw the film. Vaughn has assembled the ultimate cultural touchstone in sound and image of the past decade, and if this is any indication, a possible sequel will easily claim the number one slot on my most anticipated list.

I have a feeling that this will be an incredibly divisive film. Those who will “get” it, mainly 14-24 year olds, will have an uphill battle explaining to their elders why the values demonstrated in the movie aren’t some sub-human writers bringing an end to society as we know it. The age range flares out in either direction for those who will enjoy the film, even if it won’t resonate quite so fully with them. It’s not a timeless picture, it’s a perfectly timed one, and to call it an instant cult classic, while inherently debatable, is also an entirely valid claim. Should it prove a success, it will not only be a triumph for a new perspective on acceptable screenwriting in Hollywood, but also a complex commentary on the nature of the actual values system our nation’s youth operates under, as opposed to the pussyfooted idiocy which pervades the halls of media power. I hope it sends the industry rocking back on its heels from a well needed sucker punch, but what should happen and what will happen are often painfully far removed from one another. One thing’s for certain. If you choose to go see Kick-Ass this weekend, it will be a screening that you won’t soon forget.