1. Big Daddy
Of course, the biggest difference between Kick-Ass the comic, and Kick-Ass the movie, comes in the form of Big Daddy.
Here’s the thing that I’m starting to learn about twists in media: no one likes them. Either everyone expects the twist so they see it coming a mile away, or you shoe-horn in a twist so dumb that it retroactively bores holes into your plot. In Kick-Ass the comic, Red Mist’s true identity is the former, but Big Daddy’s true identity is the latter.
In the comics, Hit Girl tells Kick-Ass, and us, her and Big Daddy’s origin story. Her dad was a cop who was too good for his own good, so the mob kills his family, except for the cop and his newborn baby girl who he managed to escape with. As Dave remarks, it’s a very Punisher-eque tale, but it totally explains how Hit Girl is able to be such a purple-haired menace on the battlefield.
Here’s the thing though: none of that happened. Big Daddy is just an accountant who got bored with his life and didn’t want his little girl growing up being deeply superficial and watching American Idol. Seriously. Why the vendetta against the Mafia, the individuals who coined the term vendetta? They needed a villain. Kick-Ass merely inspired Big Daddy, so he decided to be a hero just like him. It’s American Beauty but with Berettas, and Mark Millar’s go-to twist in comics it seems.
Seriously, I loved the art, feel and idea of Nemesis, but god, was that a lame twist he pulled in that one.
Here’s why I hate this sort of twist: it’s lazy. It’s like you’re just including a twist for the sake of it. I can see the writer’s room now — oh, we need a villain for our story. How about the mafia? Great. Now why does Big Daddy fight the mafia? Because the mafia is the villain of our story. PERFECT!
Anyway, Big Daddy has been funding his campaign with Mindy by seeking old Silver Age comics on eBay, but she has no idea that he is just some guy. I absolutely hated this specific twist for Big Daddy because it just doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t explain how successful and combat-trained Big Daddy was. If he merely read about gunplay or watched a lot of action movies, Mindy would have been killed on her very first mission, without a second’s hesitation, because her entire combat knowledge is what her Daddy learned from John Woo films.
Furthermore, it doesn’t make sense that Big Daddy was inspired by Kick-Ass.
Essentially, Big Daddy controls whatever information and entertainment that Hit Girl experiences. He doesn’t want her to watch American Idol, but he also gives her comic books and such, an extensive enough selection at the very least to be aware of the pacifist nature of Silver Age comics.
Now, Big Daddy grabbed Mindy for his campaign against the mob when she was just a baby. So he is training her to take on the mob like an action movie, but only gets the idea for the superhero angle when Kick-Ass emerges? That’s a question because the time line doesn’t really make sense for Big Daddy in the comic. He and Hit Girl had been moving from town to town for years of training, they would’ve had to have at least a few missions before Hit Girl became Yoda with a plaid skirt.
It’s just that under this logic, Kick-Ass didn’t so much as inspire Big Daddy, so much as just giving him the idea to wear a costume, but even then Big Daddy is a pretty avid comic collector, so it’s not like the idea never crossed his mind. The costumes are of a more minimalistic design in the comic, sure, but the two wield a cache of ordinance so large they could appear in Cable.
Let’s look at Big Daddy in the movie. In the movie, Big Daddy is established early on as a superhero who existed before Kick-Ass, a myth amongst the mob that no one can believe, like an actual Batman, hence the “I never said it was Batman!” scene.
It’s just, no other actor could shoot a little girl in the chest out of genuine love, other than Nick “My Name is Based on Power Man” Cage. In the Big Daddy costume, Cage abandons the comics knee-jerk conservative Daddy in favor of his best Adam West impression. Let that — soak — into the insanity lobe in your brain for a sec. This is like Johnny Depp doing his best Gary Busey impression.
Literally every line that Nicolas Cage says here is gold, and makes you understand why the subreddit /r/onetruegod is about him. Maybe I’m just the type of guy who believes that the addition of Nicolas Cage makes everything better, but this film also features Nicolas Cage screaming, “Now switch to kryptonite!”
Also, how about the fact that Big Daddy is actually an ex-cop here? Removing that facet of his character, as well as his right-wing nature, makes it just a bit more natural, and makes him into an actual tragic hero. A straight-laced, lawful good hero cop is thrown into the chaotic evil jungle that is Rikers? Yeah, he is definitely going to become a vigilante after that experience.
The movie also incorporates the police officer Marcus, who would later adopt Mindy much earlier into the story, no longer just some random investigator. Marcus was Mindy’s legal guardian since her birth, making him into a sort of father figure for Mindy and serving as Big Daddy’s moral conscience for bringing Hit Girl into this world. In the comic, Mrs. McCready is still alive and has married the investigator for her case, Marcus. That’s it, and he doesn’t get a line until Hit Girl the comic.
Perhaps most importantly however, in the comic we don’t see Big Daddy do more than provide sniper support for Hit Girl. In a way, this may explain why the Mafia could get the drop on him so easily, as we never see Big Daddy in action. In Kick-Ass the movie, this is not the case. Big Daddy is the feature attraction of one of my favorite action scenes in any movie ever with Big Daddy taking out an entire lumber yard’s worth of henchmen with a plethora of killing devices from knife to shotgun in a hypnotic panoramic view to the tune of the theme from 28 Weeks Later.
With Big Daddy properly shamed in front of Kick-Ass and the Mafia, the Mafia grimly kills Big Daddy execution style. No scene where Nicolas Cage screams for her to use a strobe light Kryptonite. If you honestly think Big Daddy training Hit Girl just so she doesn’t have to watch American Idol only to get shot in the back of the face is better than an immolated Nick Cage screaming “TAKE COVER, CHILD!” then you are literally the opposite of Batman.
Man, I wish my life featured Nick Cage screaming advice and addressing me as “Child.”
Now don’t get me wrong, the only reason that Kick-Ass the movie was able to do so well and be so amazingly awesome is because it built off of the foundations that Kick-Ass the comic laid out. Just as Dave told us, some things that work on the page won’t work for film, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that what works for film won’t work on page.
Overall, the Kick-Ass movie seems to have done some good for the franchise ultimately, as Kick-Ass 2, the book, is *substantially* better than its six-color predecessor. Kick-Ass 2 is not just a mere Empire Strikes Back to the A New Hope that was Kick-Ass, rather the sequel that makes the original look like The Star Wars Holiday Special. Likewise, if the trailer is any indication, Kick-Ass 2 the movie will axe-kick our doubts into a doped-up ragdoll lost in a Jim Carrey-coated ecstasy.
What do you think though? Did the changes in the Kick-Ass movie betray the comic? Should Big Daddy have remained an accountant? Is it unrealistic that Dave gets Katie? Let us know what you think in the comments!
