Amph Kick-Ass & Kick-Ass 2 (Hit-Girl prequel & Kick-Ass 3 in the works?)

Referencing the trope is referencing the trope. No way around it. Add the sexual language and its an open and shut case. Again, there's broad agreement with this among the better critical reviews. I could understand if I were having this discussion with junior high school students. They wouldn't understand the broader cultural context.

 

Meh, if they were trying to sexualise her they failed. That uniform was ugly

 

can't see it myself , personally I don't automatically equate school uniforms with sex .
Just 'cos she's wearing a school uniform doesn't make her Lolita !
in the movie she exploits the school uniform as an image of innocence (it works ) but hey - if you see sex then I don't know what to tell ya .

it's not a satire .

 

Maybe it's because I went to Catholic school for twelve years but when I see a schoolgirl outfit my mind does not immediately think of sex. Saying it's a porn trope means nothing. There are also porn tropes regarding pizza delivery boys but that doesn't mean every time someone orders a pizza in a movie that's what they are referencing. I think this is just a case of people seeing something that just isn't there.

The only time, in the entire movie, that they come even remotely close to sexualizing her is when one of the friends says "I think I'm in love". And even that is acknowledged and shot down by the very next line when the other friend says "Dude, she's like twelve!"

 

Maybe it's because I went to Catholic school for twelve years but when I see a schoolgirl outfit my mind does not immediately think of sex. Saying it's a porn trope means nothing. There are also porn tropes regarding pizza delivery boys but that doesn't mean every time someone orders a pizza in a movie that's what they are referencing. I think this is just a case of people seeing something that just isn't there.

Sure, it's possible to make movies with girls in school uniforms that don't reference the Lolita trope, for example, in a movie that takes place in a school where everyone wears a uniform. It's not possible in a movie where the girl is using scatological/sexual slang, is in scenes that reference Tarantino movies and Leon, and the only time she isn't wearing the schoolgirl outfit or schoolgirl-based crimefighting outfit is at home or when she actually is in school.

I'm not saying Kick-Ass is a bad movie. I enjoyed it. But it lacks the moral center that pulls a movie like Leon back from the brink of the depravity of its violence and sexual subtext. And a satire without a strong moral center is not a great satire.

If it isn't intended to be satirical, then it's even more shallow and morally hollow than I gave it credit for being.

 

You're the one referencing it as a sex trope. When I saw her in a schoolgirl outfit I did not think it sexual.

 

A girl wearing a superhero costume that incorporates the schoolgirl trope refers first to the female reproductive organ, and then, soon after, to the male organ. How is that not inherently sexual in nature? "in the form of a giant ...." isn't maybe definitionally an erect "...." but that's the image it's going to evoke.

To be fair, I don't think sexualizing a prepubescent is as morally awful as turning her into a ninja assassin. Big Daddy would have been taking the moral high road if he had merely pimped her out as an underage prostitute.

 

Can we let this post be the end of this ridiculous topic? It's the most correct thing I've heard all week, and I'm disappointed to see so many people letting something so trivial get in the way of a pretty awesome movie.

 

I lol'd when I drove by the theatre today and "Kick A" was on the marquee.

 

The Art of "Kick-Ass"

 

People complaining about Hit-Girl, I'm willing to bet, have not seen The Bad Seed.

 

Saw the movie tonight, and loved it. SPOILERS ahead, so please don't read on if you want to stay UNspoiled.

Should say that while I am a fan of comic books/superheroes in general, I never read the comics this was based on, so I took what was on screen at face value. I should also say that I was one of those who was really troubled when I saw previews that included the scene of "Big Daddy" and his daughter talking in the bowling alley, and she cut loose with some...er... extremely salty language. To clarify - it wasn't her CHARACTER that bothered me in that clip, it was the idea of some parent out there deciding this was a great part for their daughter. It "broke the plane" for me, took me out of the suspension of disbelief, made me think about some real, actual young girl having her parents say "Sure sweetie, this would be way cool!".

But having seen the movie... have to admit, I really enjoyed it.

It was clever and fun. And yes, over the top. It was manipulative in the way a LOT of genre movies are - it worked the audience in an admittedly heavy handed way to get you wanting to see the "bad guys" get it good, but... for me, it worked. Big Daddy and Hit Girl were great, and I do NOT feel that Hit Girl was sexualized (and trust me... I was LOOKING for that, based on what I had heard going in, and would have been inclined to come down on this movie BIG TIME had they gone that way). Was it rough seeing her take some shots towards the end? Definitely. And it SHOULD be. But overall? A clever, fun, unique take on the superhero genre.

Shadow

 

Kick-Ass is not morally reprehensible

Or is it?

 

I don't want to belabor the point about Hit Girl as an overt reference to a sexual trope, since so many disagree. The movie is morally hollow and repugnant in so many other ways I don't want that to be a distraction.

First, let me say a movie is not required to have a moral message. It's not required to be a parable or cautionary tale or fable or teaching tool of any kind. If it doesn't aspire to any of those things, which is of course fine, it will have a hard time succeeding without characters we can empathize with, appreciate and root for.

Kick-Ass doesn't have any. I hate to be doing this, because Kick-Ass really isn't an interesting enough movie to deserve all the attention it's getting.

Voynar's reference to Taxi Driver only highlights the difference between a movie with a powerful theme and one without. Taxi Driver isn't glorifying child prostitution - Foster is seen as a victim too young and immersed in her crappy environment even to understand exactly how and why she's being victimized.

Hit Girl is as much a victim - exploited by a depraved an insane father as an instrument of revenge, an involuntary agent of an immoral adult's perverse will. But not only does she not see herself as a victim (why should she, she's only 11?) but the movie doesn't recognize it either. It glorifies the violence as integral to everything that is entertaining about the movie. I see that as a serious moral failing.

But Hit Girl is the only tragic figure in Kick-Ass, the one victim in a movie that, like a small child, doesn't acknowledge or seem to understand the moral implications of its own narrative.

Aside from Hit Girl, everyone else is a loser. Kick-Ass himself gets into the business as a two pronged strategy to get laid (the other being lying to the object of his affection about his sexual orientation - good one!). As soon as achieves this important goal, he immediately loses interest in vigilante street brawling, returning only to meekly follow an 11 year old into combat and so avenge an attempt on his own life. I know this is supposed to be his moment of redemption, but it really falls flat, given the circumstances and events that lead up to it. Rarely have I disliked a movie's narrator and protagonist so much.

A movie with characters motivated by some kind of nobility of purpose is a workable substitute for one with real subtext or thematic interest. Instead, Kick-Ass offers up one interesting damaged goods character who is captivating merely because she is such a one-girl circus freak show.

 

All I get out of this is "Whine, whine, whine; it doesn't conform to my opinion of social values; since it's not part of my limited worldview, it is therefore bad."

Your complaints are rather petty, and have taste of an Ebert-like childishness.

Criticism of this film seems to fall into only two categories: Reviews from those that are self-indulgent enough to judge movies by personal standards of social values (who see it as a uniformly bad film) and those that chose to judge movies based upon their cinematic quality and execution (who see it as a very good film).

In effect it's like two restaurant critics reviewing the same establishment: One gives it a good review for the high quality of its food and service; the other gives it a poor review because the color of the walls reminds them of their grumpy second-grade teacher's classroom.

 

I'm pretty flexible on social values, but I'm wondering whose values this movie does represent that I'm forgetting about.

And in terms of cinematic quality, Moretz's acting is pretty much the only thing about Kick-Ass that is worthwhile. I can see people wanting to see the movie to gape at that particular freak show, but the rest of the film is all tired cliches, worn out memes, trite ideas about teen angst and sexuality, suggesting I think convincingly that the movie doesn't have the slightest bit of respect for its audience.

If I could think of a similar kind of movie that really succeeds where Kick-Ass fails it would be Zombieland. Also fairly shallow, without much of a message or purpose beyond entertaining people with lots of gory violence and black humor, it features a gun toting young girl. And it has a moral compass. It fills out its narrative with sympathetic characters who have heart and purpose.

 

This film is no more morally reprehensible than most Tarantino films in my opinion (see Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Death Proof). People are just freaked out because it involves a young girl instead of a young woman. A young girl being a cold, heartless, killing machine is not new. She and Kick-Ass don't seem to hesitate to be violent--kill enough bad guys, and win the game. However, the film never seems to take itself too seriously, which makes for an arguably funny film based around a very cynical outlook on people trying to play the role of a "hero." I felt like the ending was intentionally over-the-top and not intended to encourage anything. Actually, I think the film seems to aim for going from semi-normal to extremely over-the-top i.e. if a normal person did this, it would suck, but this is a movie, so...here's a jetpack.

 

1) Read the comic and you'll see where people such as Quest and myself have issues with the creative liberties the movie took in key areas.

2) You're overlooking several things. Here are the motivations for the characters in the comic vs. the movie


Kick-Ass: Fed up with being a victim of crime and wondering why no one helps others essentially. Wonders why no one has ever tried to be a superhero to right these wrongs. His idea of crime fighting isn't the mob. It's the muggers. And being a hero is more like getting Mr. Bitey and helping people with manageable problems. As awed as he was by Big Daddy and Hit-Girl, he wanted no part in their war. In the comic: Big Daddy essentially threatens to out Kick-Ass if he doesn't help them. Also, getting the girl was never really a part of the plan. But his ego did get a healthy boost to make him think he was better than he was. The primary goal is evident in his video encounter: While everyone else stands and gawks, he takes action to defend the weak. While he may have been inspired by Spider-Man and the other heroes, he wasn't looking to take on large villians. He was happy to leave that to the cops. It was the small things for him. The myspace thing was again ego resulting from his early success.

Big Daddy: Comic: Fantasy role-playing best describes him. He was a comic nerd who, like Kick-Ass, wanted to become a superhero. And he was bored with his life as an accountant So, he kidnapped his daughter from his wife and brainwashed her with a story that he'd

 

Roger Ebert's stance on the movie highly reminds me of his "Fight Club" review -- not that this movie should be compared with "Fight Club" or anything.

Actually I thought the movie was rather satiric; the thing is about most movies on satire is that the satire, almost by necessity, is dropped by the halfway point or 2/3s into the movie. Becuase if you continue the satire then your hero gets tarnished and for a large amount of your audience, that gets less entertaining.

I don't think Hit-Girl was sexualized in the way we generally think of sexualization. I don't think the picture was trying to get it's audience to visualize *ahem* scenarios. I do think there was something going on though, in a sort of idealization of the girl. Not so much that what the girl was going through was good, but that the fact that such a person existed was a 'good thing' if you get my meaning.

Hit-Girl is the ultimate comic-boy reader's dream -- and the movie sort of touches on that with a short comment of one minor character's reaction. But I don't think it's classified so much as sexualization like you'd get from anywhere as extreme as the pages of Playboy to as brief as a scene from the Sopranos at Ton'y nudi-bar. I think this was a form of a sort of virgin-worship. A girl who was dangerous but in the way that's actually NOT THREATENING to young boys. Or heck, maybe even men in general. Yeah, she can slit a throat without a second thought but you're a good person so she'd never slit YOUR THROAT, right? And she's certainly never going to expose however inadequate you may or may not be.

It's almost like the equivalent of girls perferring "safe boys", which I don't think is sexual at its root either. The appeal to the character is minimal risk.

Myself, I couldn't get over thinking what was going on in the reality of the film with her was the equivalent of the Hitler Youth. It just so happened that the victims deserved what they got, I guess. The message though, would have been more relevant 20 years ago when the urban crime rates around 1989 were climbing and climbing with no end in sight. Today I'm not sure anyone actually beleives -- and if they do, they shouldn't -- that we're programming the youth of today into video-game killers.

 

That's probably reading more into Hit Girl than is necessary

I meant more of this as the effect rather than the intention.

 

I was reminded of Ebert's Fight Club review as well.

yodaminch, the differences between the comic and movie you describe suggest there was an opportunity there to make a much harsher, more challenging and interesting film, and that was definitely the road not taken.