‘Kick-Ass’ use of superhero satire receives mixed reactions

Caitlin Whittinton

I walked out of Matthew Vaughn’s “Kick-Ass” disgusted.

Was it because the film’s poor use of satire–as the reinvented superhero movie,  full of clichés and predictability–couldn’t decide whether to be serious or comical, you ask?
Was it because of the bloodbath that ensued multiple times at an overwhelmingly-fast pace?

Was it that Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), aka Kick-Ass, the main character really wasn’t the focus of the film?

Yes to all, and let me explain why.

Dave is a high school dweeb who goes unnoticed at school. In his own words, he “just existed.”

Like all stereotypical nerds, Dave happens to be a comic book fan who, one day, decides to become a superhero, even though he has no super powers or significant reason to do so.

And Kick-Ass is born.

Or in my opinion, created as a pawn for the film’s actual protagonist.

As Dave thinks he has an original idea to become a superhero, he doesn’t realize there are two other vigilantes out there on the streets: Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and his brainwashed 11-year-old daughter, Hit-Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz).

My biggest qualm with this film is that, after these two “superheroes” come into the picture, Hit-Girl runs around throwing profanity everywhere,  (and I mean every word in the book) and killing every bad guy who comes her way.

She is literally a hit girl.

Did I mention she’s 11 years old? 

She slices through four guys with a double-ended sword in her first appearance, and her biggest scene wields not only two butterfly knifes but multiple hand guns and an AK-47, killing about 20 guys in 10 seconds with glee.

This is after she enters pretending to be a “school-girl.”

Besides being a Tarantino-esque rip-off, it’s just sick and twisted.

She’s meant to be a role model for young girls.

She’s meant to be cute, as in, “oh look, the piggy-tail wearing little girl is slicing and dicing the bad guys. Cute.”

In any other context, she’d be a brainwashed psychopath.

Add to that the odd underlying “Lolita” notions between Big Daddy and Hit-Girl.

Hollywood, get real. Do you realize what you are doing to our society with a movie about an 11-year-old vigilante murderer who kills everything in sight?

I don’t need to say it, but I will.

There’s nothing “Kick-Ass” about this movie.

Caitlin Whittington is an English graduate student whose life is nothing like the movies. It is magnificently better.

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Travis Cowan
“Kick-Ass” is the logical endpoint of the culmination of the superhero mythos, pop culture and early John Woo action films–and yes, the film well deserves its name.

In “Kick-Ass,” Aaron Johnson plays the hopelessly-idealistic Dave Lizewski, who decides to become the world’s first real-life superhero, Kick-Ass.

Kick-Ass quickly becomes an Internet phenomenon via YouTube and MySpace.

Shortly after Lizewski begins fighting crime, he meets Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz).

Big Daddy and Hit Girl are on their own mission to overthrow crime boss Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong) who framed Big Daddy years ago, sending him to prison.

This dichotomy between Kick-Ass’s naïve desire to do good and Big Daddy and Hit Girl’s brutal actualization of crime fighting is one of the film’s greatest strengths.

But despite this film’s somewhat hokey concept of child superheroes, “Kick-Ass” easily earns its R rating with some of the most elaborate and bloody action sequences of the past decade.

In one such scene, Hit Girl eviscerates a room full of drug dealers as an eccentric cover of The Banana Splits Theme maniacally blares over the bloodshed.

It is in these moments that the film becomes a self-reflexive study of the masked-vigilante character.

Hit Girl is the amoral creation of her father, a man whose idea of justice has twisted both himself and his daughter.

As one character says, “You owe that girl a childhood.”

“Kick-Ass” allows us to see that if you took away Batman’s cape and gadgets, he is little more than a depraved sociopath roaming the streets at night.

However, this thoughtful interpretation of the superhero doesn’t make the film’s action sequences any less spectacular.

The close-range gun and knife combat throughout the film pays furious tribute to Hong Kong action cinema of the 1990s.

The music in “Kick-Ass” ranges from pop hits like Gnarles Barkley to the amazing orchestral pieces of John Murphey.

Two of Murphey’s pieces, which had previously been in “28 Days Later” and “Sunshine,” are used to full effect in some of the film’s most intense scenes.

“Kick-Ass” is a film that both embraces and criticizes comic book superheroes as it stakes its own claim in the overly-saturated genre.

In a time when almost every summer action film is also a comic book adaptation, I am happy to see that at least one team of visionaries has the passion needed to create something as bold as “Kick-Ass.”

Travis Cowan is a junior communication  major who dreams of being a legitimate newspaper man at “The Onion.”