Edward Nygma
Posts: 711
Joined: 28/12/2005
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quote:
ORIGINAL: jobloffski
Like Edward Nygma, I've seen this film twice. I'm not having a go, just trying to offer answers to the questions...
quote:
ORIGINAL: Edward Nygma
Ugh...I hate to do this to you guys. I really do.
Ok, so I saw Kick Ass a second time in order to really figure out if I was crazy or if that film was really really not that good. As people all around me buzz around that film with a twisted perception that it is amazing and right up there with The Dark Knight (gasp), I'm just gonna lay out my reasons for not liking it and you can tell me if I'm crazy or not. Or if I've missed something.
Here are a few questions I really need answers to:
SPOILERS (possibly)
1/ Where did Kick Ass's girlfriend meet a crook like Razul? I mean it's not like he could have hidden his lifestyle from her if they were going out...I don't know it just doesn't seem convincing this whole Razul thing.
She met him via volunteer work The more she found about him, the more she wanted to get away, he wouldn't let her get away. And probably the whole Razul thing was about the main concept: if a kid who wanted to be a hero did something about it, he'd be fucked if he met the kind of people he wanted to defeat. As indeed he was
2/ The first guy killed by the mob, who says he saw a guy dressed up like Batman (although he didn't say Batman  ), why did he not just tell the mob he had a picture of Big Daddy on his phone before they killed him? If the whole reason they killed him was because they didn't believe him...he could have given it a shot.
My recollection is that that was on someone elses phone, and the picture had been taken just before the owner of said phone was killed by Big Daddy.
3/ And why do the mob guys think its Kick Ass on the picture when its clearly not? It's not like they don't know what Kick Ass looks like! Everyone knows!
'Poetic licence' the only costumed hero they've heard of in their town is kick-ass. He could easily have more than one look
4/ If Big Daddy is mild mannered in real life, how come he's taught his daughter to swear like a maniac? Unless he pushed it on her as some kind of badass superhero persona...which seems a bit stupid.
'poetic licence' and he is also teaching her to be a vengeful murderer (parody of the Robin situation where Batman is taking a child out with him to teach him crimefighting?) so the swearing, seems a moot point, but it is also one more layer of characterisation: totally belying her appearance, she will kill you AND call you a cunt.
5/ Why is Big Daddy's room so easy to get into and peppered with evidence?
It's a secret hidden room/secret lair, so you'd have to find the location of the room before you could get in, and the only people who got in were Hit Girl and Big Daddy's former cop partner (who is asked how he found the place, and replies with 'one of us is still a cop). It's peppered with evidence because it would be, being the secret lair.
6/ Why would the mob boss agree to a "Mist Mobile" (pricy and pointless!) and why didn't he see it outside the lumber place when they all pull up there as it burns to the ground? Wouldn't they have tried to save Red Mist and/or kill Kick Ass?
Comic parody, heroes have vehicles a whatever-mobile and unlike Kick-Ass, Red mist had someone who could afford to pay for him to live the comic book fantasy in more luxury. The also needed to be able to drive around from one story point to another, and a rich kid who gives rich daddy a list of what he wants (while rich daddy has taken drugs and is ashamed of it and has just tried to hide it from his son) probably gets what he wants,
As for the rest of the question, my semi-photographic memory is on the blink so, er, I cant say .
7/ Why does Red Mist shoot Hit Girl when he enters their lair with Kick Ass? I guess he's technically a bad guy but...if the mob were gonna barge in anyway...whatever. Up to this point RM wasn't so much a vilain as a pre-vilain anti-hero, like Harry Osborne before his dad turns into the Green Goblin (kinda).
He is motivated by revenge, wants to be a bad man like his father, and it is only after meeting Kick-Ass that he is friendly to anyone. He was gutted when the baddies he liked got killed, and can't shoot Big Daddy, cos, his own Daddy wants to be there for that. Action reveals character: Red Mist is a cunt, while also being a confused lonely teen. If he hadn't shot Hot Girl his character development at the end would have been less set up, so he has already been shown to be willing to kill a child.Also, BD killed people he cared about (which was why he was setting BD up), so he was returning the favour, no?
8/ Did the mafia guys hire a net designer to set up the whole Kick Ass unmasked online thing? It looks pretty professional. And if so...Why? Who cares if people see Kick Ass unmasked or not, isn't it just risky and ridiculously unnecessary to show themselves online killing these two guys? I really don't get that whole thing. Just kill 'em! WTF???
Pimped up RedmistMobile, gotta have a pimped up website too (so Kickass and his Myspace page look shite by comparison to Dave/Kickass, who gets jealous when people are wowed by Red Mist) The online broadcast thing didn't begin until after the bad guys put on their masks, after the countdown ended. What we saw before that wasn't being boradcast online. And they said in the dialogue that they were showing the viewers why it was a bad idea to be a hero, and that was why the events were being broadcast.
9/ Why doesn't Hit Girl try to help her dad first when he's on fire? Sure she needs to kill the guys around but it's dark anyway. Just save your dad quickly, then take out the dudes...seems like the logical thing to do. Plus she's been badass the whole time up to this point so why does she suck at the most critical moment! And by saving her dad first, he could have helped her take out the rest of the guys! No?
There were several armed men around her father (who shouted 'TAKE COVER CHILD' ie told her to forget about what she was about to do, which was try and save him). Also, though it was dark in the location of the scene, it wasn't dark around her on fire Daddy!
10/ How did they know the jetpack would even be helpful at all? I mean sure it's got machine guns but...seems like a retarded purchase for Big Daddy to make. Plus, Jetpacks don't really exist do they? So doesn't that defy the whole point of Kick Ass being a "realistic" hero? ... Like they knew Hit Girl would be hiding in that room specifically and that someone would show up with a bazooka...whatever.
Big Daddy and Hit Girl were suckers for the whole hero gadget thing just like the other comic book fantasists, and the most 'real' thing the story showed about such characters was that if you were to try and fight crime, you would need to do so with violence, and without remorse, which they did. Things like Jet Packs, are just candy, appropriate to the kind of scenarios being parodied, but in context, for Kick-Ass to be able to do what he fantasised about, he had to become a killer too, and he needed a grand entrance when saving the day. He couldn't just follow Hit Girl up the stairs. Jetpacks aren't so far removed from reality as that. They can't be made to work as well as in the film, but people have used them to fly.
Ok now for a list of things I just didn't like:
The Score: Some of the music feels like it's been ripped off from The Dark Knight OST directly. Hans Zimmer must have spinned in his gr...bed.
if you're spoofing/exploring/homaging/parodying established themes from a genre storywise, riffing on the musical themes from other famous movies in the genre is not so much ripping off the music as just part of 'the gag' of using lines lines almost word for word from spiderman, word for word from Burton's Batman, and the Adam West Batman Routine Cage did (they all take insoiration from THEIR hero, and it's pretty possible Hit-Girl liked Leon (the other cinematic telling of a tale of a young girl with an unnaturally brightly coloured longish bob haircut being taught how to kill, )
The Soundtrack: Awful, just awful. it's like someone just started playing a generic Best Of 2004 compilation. The whole "Crazy" bit in the car is cringeworthy.
Some of these criticisms make it sound like the film ground your gears from beginning to end! Yes, a bit cringeworthy, but neither of these two characters felt cool or liked, and in this scene they both did
The Love
Interest: Kick Ass's girlfriend is soooooo annoying. Nothing she says rings true, she's just really really bland and...such a bad actress.
She's pretty one dimensional, but then so is Katie Holmes in Batman Begins, and this character (Called KATIE) looks almost exactly like her. So, part of the joke. perhaps?
Red Mist: C. Mintz Plasse is not very good in this. He feels miscast and, again, nothing he says feels convincing. And this HURTS saying that about McLovin, trust me!
He's crap, he's useless, a bit desperate, eager to please his father, and he's got a slight speech impediment, rendering what I felt to be a deliberately one dimensional spoilt kid character slight more geeky, also deliberately. He's as shite as the Guy who becomes Kick-Ass, despite the wealth, and becomes best friends with Kick-Ass and then his nemesis. There's a lot of necessary parody combined into what the character was there to do storywise, and the actor seemd to me to fit the role.
The Bedroom Scene: When KA and his GF finally get together. It's just horrendously acted. The whole thing had me reaching for the shit bucket.
Thought it was okay, sweet and geeky-real. But then I wasn't asking as many questions as you!
The References: Hate all the references like Lost, Family Guy, Sin City etc its so obvious and on the nose. Feels like an old man is trying to relate to young people by just naming popular things they THINK everyone who watches Kick Ass will know. Hohoho those young people and their World Wide Interwebs...
Can't parody a genre on an 'ifi it happenend in the real world' way as a starting point for the story without mentioning things that do exist in real world/popular culture. Also, the use of the net and media in the film CRITICISED these things implicitly by having people so divorced from the notion of helping others, or even calling the police the help kick ass, they filmed the violence and put it on line.If people wanted the meat on the bones of this story, that's probably it. In the moment where Kick ass says he would rather die than watch three guys beat someone else up while other people stand around watching he gets his most heroic moment, and reveals the heart of the film
The Dark Fight Scene: The fight scene with Hit Girl in the dark is so overdramatic and the strobe-like flashes are just irritating. Reminds me of Alone in the Dark! That's not a good thing.
Liked the technique when I saw it in Equilibrium (rather shite really) and liked it here.
End Line: The Joker reference at the end is just cringeworthy...oh man...way to turn a cool line from a cool movie into jizz.
It's a character point: Red Mist is such a shit Nemesis, he has to nick a line from another Nemesis. The Goody Guy/Bad Guy pairing take their inspiration from comic books they've read or films they've seen.Though not stated, Red Mist's Dad was basically Kingpin too, if you note the way he stands at the window and, well, everything else about who he is and what he does!
Oh and how does the jetpack fit into ANYTHING? lol
See above
Alright, I'm done. I apologize in advance for pissing people off but yeah, I'm reopening the debate on Kick Ass, I'm still not happy about that 5 star review. Don't get me wrong though, I'd give this film a solid-(ish) 3 stars, it's ok. So I don't hate it! Parts of it are funny and Nic Cage is great but beyond that...I don't get the adoration. So many plotholes...
lol Ah finally a worthy answers man!
Ok lets see.
1/ Alright, I'll buy the volunteer work thing but my criticism was that they didn't really make all of this clear and convincing. Felt like a weird, maybe too direct link for Kick Ass to have with that world I think.
2/ Are you sure? lol Maybe you're right. I guess I need to double check that...
3/ Well, I'm not sure about this still. I think a lot of Kick Ass's plot is told in kind of a rushed way. Like I know what they're trying to get accross in terms of the story but the way they've done it just doesn't click. Had the picture on the phone been a blurry close up maybe but an in focus picture of a 40 year old man in a Batman costume? Hm.
4/ That's fair enough. I guess he's not meant to be a good dad anyway lol He's like the worst father ever. With or without the marshmallow hot chocolates...
5/ Sure I guess, it never feels like that much of a secret lair though. Although you could argue Big Daddy is more of a nerdy comic book obsessed mad man who turned his living room into a secret lair however he could so in that sense, fine.
6/ I mean I know they wanted to do a Batmobile parody, that's pretty clear, but looking at it as a film, these are probably THE worst, least discreet, drug dealers ever lol But then again that's probably the point. That their lair is a Lumber place does suck. BUT here's what doesn't work for me. If Kick Ass is indeed meant to be a parody, why does it take itself so seriously sometimes? And, you know, it's just not sharp or funny enough to be a real convincing spoof IMO. Maybe it's the writing, I don't know.
7/ Again, I know what they were trying to do character development wise but the way CM Plasse played it did not feel convincing and I still don't think his character, at this point, would kill a child. Pissed off or not. A quick flashback of Red Mist thinking back to the mob guys killed in the fire, then giving a vengeful look at Big Daddy, then Hit Girl and THEN shooting her would have been clearer. That's what I mean, the plot just flies by with no regards for the audience which is left to accept a story that's already pretty out there. Plus there's almost no suspense throughout. You need to take time to build up certain things, not just show it to us, you know? Comic book movies usually pride themselves on setting up everything dramatically then having the action explode in an action sequence. If you have no build up or suspense you end up with...well...Fantastic Four! lol
8/ Ok, I guess this goes back to them being shitty mob guys. And I guess they could have used Red Mist's website etc. So fine. As for the showing people that being a hero is bad for you. Hm, ok. Having the mob as vilains is pretty cliched, I think we can all agree. So I guess the point of having the mob there was to set comic book vilains in the real world. Fine. But I think the film betrays that idea by making them so bloody Joker-like and having them become these lecturing, out in the open "agents of chaos"! Maybe have one creepy bad guy and make him do that in a comic book parody, by all means. But the mob?
9/ Take cover chiiiiiild! Lol That was so funny. Nic Cage man. I dunno, he did tell her to take cover but his death still feels really unecessary. Like maybe he could have become horribly scarred and then become even more bitter, finally letting go of his every day nice-guy persona and conflicting with his own daughter eventually etc...Like Harvey becoming Two Face.
10/ lol Again I know where the plot was coming from character development wise etc. But had we seen Big Daddy build some kind of jetpack himself and then Kick Ass found it at the end in a box in a corner THEN used it...that might have worked. I dunno. A reel missing again I guess.
Ok, bonus question lol if the film is indeed a straight comic book parody. The scene where Big Daddy dies, are we meant to laugh or not? I genuinely didn't know how to respond at this point.
SCORE: So you've got Hans Zimmer-style music then punk music, then the best of 2004, then a more teen movie style score...I know they're parodying stuff but they're making things up as they go along it seems like. It's just not consistent. They're essentially parodying very different types of comic book movies: Dark Knight and Spiderman are completely different so you end up with a film that's all over the place. Had they stuck with Spiderman or Dark Knight as a template for a parody maybe it would have worked out better.
THE GIRL: Please don't compare her to Katie Holmes in Begins. I mean I don't like Holmes but that is harsh!  She wasn't particularly charismatic in Batman Begins but that was kind of the point of her character: a normal girl trying to ground Bruce back to the real world, knock some sense into him. Plus Holmes is an ok actress, this one is awful.
MCLOVIN: I wasn't really referring to his character more to CM Plasse's performance. He can play nerds amazingly well but Red Mist is a far more complex character than just...a guy with glasses. I just think he was let down by an uneven tone (and script) which made it hard for him to understand his character and therefore feel uncomfortable playing him.
BEDROOM SCENE: No no no no no! You've made some good points previously but NO! lol It was sooooo bad! Just...the whole thing...ARGH! The pain of it all...such bad acting. 
Otherwise, yeah I think you're maybe looking a bit too deeply at the media quotes thing. I don' t think they thought it through that much. They just wanted to sell Apple laptops and spoon with Youtube in a comfy bed of matrimonial lust.
And the last line, again I know what they were going for but it's not clear he's meant to be a shit vilain at this specific point. They just wanted to wink at the audience who remember Batman and expect us to find it cute and cosy. It just comes across as awkward...
lol I know you might think i hate Kick Ass, I don't! I really don't! I'm just trying to put what annoyed me about this film into words but it's not too easy to pinpoint because I think its flaws are more tone and writing based so harder to show up. Plus it's trying to be a million things at the same time so...Argh PLUS Empire gave it 5 stars and everyone thinks it's the cat's pyjamas...
I applaud you for answering my questions though, you made a lot of genuinely good points and answered without making douchy sarcastic jokes...unlike SOME people...lol I'm gonna get shot aren't I? Thanks for accepting the debate dude :) Who knows, maybe you'll change my mind about the film...nah lol
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