Martyn Pedler

When I heard that a movie of Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.’s comic Kick-Ass was on its way, I decided that – for once – I’d avoid reading the source material until I’d seen the film.

I had a theory that Mark Millar’s stories would benefit enormously from quick edits and pop music. That cinema would maybe boost the good qualities of his writing (great concepts, snappy one-liners, black comedy) and cover some of its flaws (the sometimes shoddy execution of those concepts, or the way he can seem to get bored halfway through his own stories).

My review? Well, you might have heard that Kick-Ass is the story of what happens when a powerless nobody decides to become a superhero in the real world. Matthew Vaughn’s adaptation of Kick-Ass, however, isn’t. It’s actually about what happens when a powerless nobody decides to become a superhero… and then meets some real superheroes already out there.

The movie’s definitely a success – certainly more than Vaughn’s only fitfully charming version of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust. The action scenes are smart and inventive, especially considering the film’s semi-limited budget; they recreate the sense of John Romita Jr.’s art without being slavishly faithful to it like Zack Snyder’s Watchmen worship. Bursts of violence wrung at least three bursts of spontaneous applause from my audience.

Having actual humans step into these roles gives them new life, too. Both Aaron Johnson’s Kick-Ass and Christopher Mintz-Plasse’s Red Mist are better characters than they are on the page, and a hilarious Nicolas Cage as Big Daddy proves – yet again – that he’s developing a new alien form of acting that might only be properly appreciated by future generations.

The movie, though, is entirely stolen by Chloe Moretz as the tween assassin Hit Girl – and that’s part of the problem. Mortez is perfect in the role, oozing charisma, and I can see her becoming a cult figure for young girls everywhere. I’m not the only one, either. Read the half-excited, half-concerned “Hit Girl Could Be Your New Favorite Tween”.

Her relationship with her Big Daddy is the best part of the film that, and one of the only parts that doesn’t feel like empty calories. I’m a sucker for proud parents in fiction, and Big Daddy just seems so damn giddy to watch her in action; their bond has the best parts of Father Knows Best and Lone Wolf and Cub. Thankfully, the movie ditches Millar’s more painful Republican-versus-Democrat zingers, too.

But in order to make Kick-Ass an over-the-top action movie, Vaughn makes Hit Girl a pint-size John Woo-style killer. She ends up undercutting the supposed point of Millar’s comic. Millar said that the story originally began with Big Daddy and Hit Girl, and Kick-Ass was later added to reframe it into something more human, more real. You can tell. Kick-Ass himself never suddenly develops super-ninja-moves (as tempting as that must’ve been for this big screen version) but Big Daddy and Hit Girl would be entirely comfortable in the Marvel Universe alongside Elektra, Hawkeye, and whoever else suits the movie’s tagline: “I can’t fly. But I can kick your ass.”

Kick-Ass’ high-school-loser realism and Hit Girl’s tween-ninja antics and angst never quite mesh together. It’s sometimes more like two movies sitting together side-by-side and occasionally intersecting, or, better still, two comic books that periodically cross over to boost sales. The movie’s hyped ‘realism’ is just an opening hook, not a high concept.

With my experiment in not reading the source material for once finally over, I came home from the screening and read them in a single sitting. I discovered that there’s a twist to Big Daddy’s character in the comics that didn’t make it into the film. It might’ve singlehanded short-circuited this logic glitch, and it’s a real shame the Kick-Ass movie decided not to keep it.

And you know what? The pop music did help. Everything’s better with The Banana Splits.