Will Kick-Ass 2 stay offbeat as our self-made superheroes polish their act?
Trailer shows more crazed crimefighting in violent comic-book sequel that may be in danger of becoming too slick
Kick-Ass
Production year: 2010
Countries: UK, USA
Cert (UK): 15
Runtime: 117 mins
Directors: Matthew Vaughn
Cast: Aaron Johnson, Chloe
Production year: 2010
Countries: UK, USA
Cert (UK): 15
Runtime: 117 mins
Directors: Matthew Vaughn
Cast: Aaron Johnson, Chloe
Moretz,Christopher Mintz-Plasse,
Mark Strong, Nicolas Cage,
Tamer Hassan, Xander Berkeley
Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass may not have been as majestically portentous as Zack Snyder's similarly themed Watchmen,
but it satirised its subject with equal intelligence and a hipper sense
of humour. Arriving three years ago with perfect timing to offset the
slow descent into blandness of Hollywood superhero flicks, it also
avoided slipping into spoof territory. Finally, it succeeded in really
annoying Daily Mail readers, who got all Mary Whitehouse over
12-year-old Chloë Moretz's turn as a potty-mouthed, frighteningly lethal crime fighter.
With Vaughn stepping back to a producer's role, little-known film-maker Jeff Wadlow takes on writing and directing duties for Kick-Ass
2, the first trailer for which has just hit the web. Moretz returns as
purple-tressed, pint-sized killer Hit Girl, with Britain's Aaron Taylor-Johnson also
stepping back into Kick-Ass's distinctive homemade costume. Those who
have read Mark Millar's comic book will know that in the sequel
Christopher Mintz-Plasse graduates from scheming crimefighter Red Mist
to the world's first real supervillain, The Motherfucker, following the
death of his gangster dad Frank D'Amico at the hands of Kick-Ass. With
Nicolas Cage's Batman-like Big Daddy also consigned to superhero heaven
in the first film, Jim Carrey
takes the role of unhinged crimefighter as Colonel Stars and Stripes.
Fittingly for the post-Avengers zeitgeist, he's the leader of superhero
ensemble Justice Forever.
The original film stood out for its
Quentin Tarantino-like penchant for graphic violence, in stark contrast
to the more restrained Sam Raimi Spider-Man films
from which it borrowed much of its tone. An amusing segue, in which
Stars and Stripes (in what could be a bravura Carrey performance,
consigning all memories of his terrible Riddler to history) encourages a pitbull to gnaw on a bad guy's nether regions, hints there will no let-up this time around.
Gratifyingly,
there's no graduation to sharper costumes: Kick-Ass and Hit Girl still
look like last-minute invitees to a superhero-themed fancy dress party,
while The Motherfucker resembles the awkward detritus of amateur night
at fetish club Torture Garden. Yet by the looks of the trailer, Kick-Ass
2 will have to tread carefully to avoid aping the films it riffs on too
closely. Taylor-Johnson, in particular, has buffed up so much that Dave
Lizewski's geeky-teen-out-to-take-on-the-bad-guys schtick might just
have a little less resonance this time around, while Moretz is a lot
less shocking as a 15-year-old baby-faced killer. Might Wadlow, without
the guiding hands of Vaughn and Kick-Ass co-screenwriter Jane Goldman,
have given us a movie that is less a coy, postmodern riff on the
current fascination for superheroes than … well, just an extremely
violent comic-book film?
Millar's genius in the comic was to work
out that Watchmen creator Alan Moore got it all wrong: if superheroes
existed in the real world, they would not be evil geniuses, god-like
freaks of nature or rich men channelling their fortunes into heroic
deeds – but hapless teenage fanboys desperate to succeed with the
opposite sex. The problem for Kick-Ass 2 is that the slicker it becomes,
the more it risks losing the joyous veneer of half-baked heroism that
helped make the first film so singularly, enjoyably offbeat.
We'll
have to wait until 19 July in the UK and 16 August in the US to find
out if Wadlow has avoided that particular trap. Do you expect Kick-Ass 2
to shake things up as radically as its predecessor? Or should the
sequel have come out two years ago when Moretz was still cute as a
button and Taylor-Johnson didn't look ripped enough to take out Batman,
Superman and Wonder Woman with one arm tied behind his back?
sara.g
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