There’s this eerie sort of meta commentary that Kick-Ass the book offers on comic book adaptations, focusing on Galactus’ depiction in the root canal that was Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer — which, I’ll admit, wasn’t nearly as painful as the bone marrow extraction that was Fantastic Four, but I digress. Would-be Kick-Ass Dave Lizewski explains that comic book movies can’t just be a simple copy and paste of their source material. Though you may think that comics are already screenplays essentially, some edits must be made, and Kick-Ass is no different.
For every comic book or superhero movie, from Howard the Duck to Man of Steel, faithfulness to one’s source material is of the greatest necessity. Fans, the comic book movie producer’s cheddar biscuits in the proverbial Red Lobster that is cinema, will rightfully scrutinize any and every superhero film that comes along their way, asking if the film holds true to its source material, as deviations from the 6-Color Canon has led to many a film’s downfall. From the inexplicable mouthless Merc with a Mouth Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine to the 103 minutes of violation and humiliation based porn that was The Last Airbender, films have failed to hold up to their source material more times than Jean Grey has died. Every once in a while though, the red head stays dead, and a movie exceeds its comic. One such film is Kick-Ass, and here’s why:
5. Kick-Ass is actually a hero.
At the end of the day, Dave’s first bout as Kick-Ass in the comic involves calling three guys homos and beating on them for graffiti. Batman doesn’t bust people for graffiti; last time I checked, he actually asked some kid spray-painting his experimental rocket-car to become his ward, and Spider-man doesn’t call people homos. Oh, he’ll question a villain’s sexuality during a fight, but that’s more about preying off of their insecurities, not disparaging a group of people who are essentially the X-Men but without the powers. I mean Dave is literally reading some of Brian Michael Bendis’ run on The Astonishing X-Men in that exact same issue, probably issue #4 based on what little of the title we see, and it is this issue focuses on “The Cure” storyline, which Joss Whedon has admitted was based on those “pray away the gay” straight camps.
Perhaps I’m over analyzing just one sentence, but consider the fact that this is literally Dave’s origin as Kick-Ass. Trust me, if you’re going to put on a customized wet suit and wail on some people with some Devil-stick looking Billy Clubs, you’re going to remember each and every thing that you did to get to that point. This is just a first entry in your War Journal, so people are going to ask.
Take a look at how Kick-Ass the film handles Kick-Ass’ origins however: same set up, Kick-Ass is brutally overpowered and gets his “ass kicked” by two dudes on his first attempted crime-fighting bout, stabbed in the gut only to wander into traffic. The book is just as brutal as the film, and you feel how close Dave came to death and how much of a bad idea fighting crime is.
What differs between the two media are the thugs. In the film, Dave says a much more PC opening line, but to carjackers – not just any carjackers however, but two carjackers who mugged Dave and his friends right outside of the comic book store. While Dave gets stabbed in Kick-Ass, the comic, it’s technically self-defense on the vandal’s part, as Dave just started wailing on them with his billy clubs without warning, provoking the fight itself. While I’ll admit that a knife is certainly escalation, leaning towards homicide, Dave’s not exactly in the moral right to attack them unprovoked. Graffiti is illegal, in the U.S. at least, but so is vigilantism. You could argue that Dave was still a newbie and learning about exactly who to extract justice to, but Dave is also obsessed with comics: if anyone knows about the ethics of justice and heroics, it’s comic book fans.
Sure enough, in the movie, it is one of the carjackers/muggers that gets the first hit in the fight with Dave, making his actions technically self-defense and removing any doubt from our minds that Kick-Ass is a hero.
The fact that these two once random “criminals” once mugged Dave changes up not only how we view Kick-Ass’ heroics, but also ties into Dave’s motivations for becoming a hero in the first place. In the comic, as Dave said, he was just bored and decided to take up the costume. In the movie, however, right in the mugging scene, there is a bystander, “this asshole,” who just averts his gaze as Dave and his friend are mugged. While Dave had been contemplating why no one had ever become a superhero before, this act of inaction is what pushes him into actually donning the wetsuit and Timberlands. Dave is no longer just bored, but he is trying to solve an inherent social problem.
As Uncle Ben, the Parker patriarch, not the mini-bowl spokesman, once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” While this sentence has motivated Spider-Man and countless superheroes like him, it also in a way allows ordinary individuals to escape their responsibilities, in that everyone feels powerless. Dave however, would argue against this interpretation: “With no power comes no responsibility — except that wasn’t true.” An actual message to the work is instantly created in this line, replacing the flash and substance of the superhero life that appealed to Dave in the comics.
Dave’s ideas for becoming a superhero came out of boredom initially, but it’s his social obligation and desire to not just be another observer that motivates him to action. Corny as it sounds, it doesn’t take an irradiated spider bite or the murder of your parents to be a hero.
If anything, Dave’s failure to adhere to heroic tropes is what gives him a name in super heroics. In the film, Kick-Ass’ first official mission of saving a cat from a billboard tree goes horribly, with Dave falling off of a billboard and tripping a guy, leading into a brutal street brawl that makes Kick-Ass the rising star of YouTube. In a way, Kick-Ass would never even be considered a hero if it weren’t for his ineptitude. He gets his resilience for pain by getting his ass kicked, which coincidentally gives him his name, and he falls out of the sky right into a fight scene.
Having Dave just fall into the fight, trying to save Mr. Bitey from the cyberpunk equivalent of a tree, is perfect, not only because it shows him failing at a superhero trope, but also because if it weren’t for Dave’s desire to play hero, he wouldn’t have been in the perfect place to at the perfect time to prevent the beat down.
“This is none of your business.”
“… Yes, it is.”
The fight is just amazingly over the top, set to The Prodigy’s “Omen” which perfectly embodies the bombastic and raw nature of the brawl. Incidentally, Kick-Ass‘ soundtrack alone is one of the many reasons why it’s a good film in the first place. Anything that includes Ellie Goulding, two Prodigy tracks, and Elvis on a single album, instantly earns a place in the favorites section of my brain.
Mind you, the fight is triggered the same way in the comic, but Dave stumbles into it by being harassed by a group of women who think he is a pedophilic deviant in a wetsuit. It’s just so forced, doesn’t seem like it would happen anywhere, ever, especially in New York City.
Also, the movie features a guy screaming, “Fuck you Mr. Bitey!” at a calico cat. If you can’t enjoy that, you must have all the taste of a parsley-sprinkled length of cardboard with “steak” written on it.
4. Escalation
I get that Dave is ordinary, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t say something with some amount of gravitas to it. While the movie does borrow some great lines from the book including the infamous “Okay you c*nts, let’s see what you can do” Hit Girl quote, the movie recovers the pigskin of awesome that the book fumbled with, and just runs it into the end-zone.
For those unfamiliar with that analogy, the movie just pumps everything with life, phasing over the parts of the book that make Dave into a more washy, uncertain character (I swear he gives up the Kick-Ass mantle at least twice in the book). For example, in the comics, after Dave is the victim of a hit and run, he is found naked on the streets. His rationale was that he must have taken off the suit before he passed out, which given the amount of bodily harm Dave had endured at this point, seems literally physically impossible. In the movie, however, Dave just convinces the medic in the ambulance not to tell Dave’s dad about the costume. We still get the excellent Dave being Katie’s gay BFF storyline, but it actually makes sense here.
Right after Dave’s hit and run, he gives us some idea of the lengthy and painful recovery process required for his injuries, and the guilt he felt for leaving his Dad with medical bills, and some morphine hallucinations of his dead mother telling him not to wear the suit, and an overly dramatic burning of all of his comics etc. etc. These are all good reasons why Dave should drop the costume, and yet, it just makes him look more like an inconsiderate prick when he orders a new wetsuit. Morally, we should be behind Dave’s actions the entire time since his heroic intentions should never falter.
What the movie does instead is phase over nearly all of Dave’s recovery time, reducing the sad-sack role of the Dad all-together in favor of some Cosa Nostra shenanigans. So instead of Dave crying in his Craftmatic adjustable bed, we get to see Mafia capos debate on whether or not Trey was robbed by Batman, or “some guy that looks like Batman,” in addition to an excellent human-sized microwave interrogation scene.
Another excellent example of escalation comes in the torture scene of Kick-Ass and Big Daddy. It’s brutal, sure, but it works. The “mere” testicular electrocution that appears in the comic, is replaced instead with a webcam snuff show. Electric shocks to the balls is just so… overdone, and there really is no way to illustrate it in film correctly, beyond acting notes of “your balls really hurt”. The mafia educational program on how to properly kick someone’s ass however is perfectly executed, from the silent k in knuckle-duster to the grand symphony of blunt-force trauma that it culminates to. For those missing that particular brand of testicular trauma, Dave does take a metal bat to the beanbag, so everybody’s happy.
Dave even breaks the fourth wall in this scene, stating that he may just be another Sin City narrator, telling us a story only for him to die suddenly. This one little line of narration creates dramatic tension that was noticeably absent from the work beforehand.
Incidentally, and I’m pretty sure Kick-Ass scribe Mark Millar received enough flack for this the first time, but why is it so important that Dave emphasizes that the gang he fought is a bunch of Puerto Ricans? It’s as if Millar overcompensates with his PC terms after this issue, referring to Katie’s new boyfriend as “The enormous African American guy,” instead of just “The enormous black guy.” The movie plays it safe, and makes sure that Kick-Ass just kicks ass, regardless of the color of said ass.
Even the grandstanding final fight in the Mafia compound is handled differently in the two works. It’s apples and oranges, honestly. Flamethrowers and jetpack mounted mini guns, an homage to Battle Royale and cocaine ampoules. Now don’t get me wrong, both scenes are epic in their own right. Hit Girl’s super secret chemical compound, condition red, or an eight ball of cocaine, is an excellent exchange in the comic, and the flamethrower mounted in her Hello Kitty backpack is a homicidally adorable accessory, but you can never out-do the gunfight down a hallway and bazooka-filled final fight of the movie. In the comic, Frank (John Genovese is his name in the comics but let’s just stay consistent here) gets his tunk (bangers and mash, a term coined in the comics) shot off, and Hit Girl delivers a coup de grace cleaver to the dome, while the rest of the mobsters inexplicably just look on in horror.
It’s not poorly done, but Kick-Ass the movie features a guy getting propelled out of the window by a rocket-propelled grenade, only to explode like some sort of mobster firework. Little girls on cocaine are cool and all, but the movie is the comic on cocaine. Everything is bigger, better, and filled with better expletives.
Though some would argue that Kick-Ass is supposed to be a less is more, down and dirty work, I believe this line from Mob Boss and primary antagonist Frank D’Amico summarizes the point I’m trying to make perfectly:
“A bazooka? ………… okay.”
3. The Red Mist Twist
Without question, one of the best parts of Kick-Ass the movie was Christopher Mintz-Plasse’s portrayal of Red Mist/Chris D’Amico. The son of the aforementioned high-ranking mob boss, Chris just wanted to make his father proud and prove that he can continue in the family business. Chris creates his Red Mist alter ego in order to serve as a spandex Trojan horse, arguing correctly that Kick-Ass would only trust a fellow crime fighter.
Red Mist is one of my favorite parts of the movie, but my least favorite part of the comic, because the fact that Red Mist/Chris is actually the son of a Mafia boss is actually a “twist” in the comic.
It’s somewhat insulting how they handle it: Oh here’s this random comic book nerd who we are taking the time to point out is the son of the mobster, then in the next scene we make sure to point out that he’s overhearing this mafia boardroom meeting but he doesn’t actually say anything? That’s not foreshadowing, that’s telling us we’re stupid and won’t be able to handle any twists, like the lingering shot of the alternative reality device in Repo Men, or the paw prints in Blues Clues.
In the comics, Red Mist is clearly a phony, a Spandex-y whore who just wants his ten minutes of fame. When Red Mist ultimately betrays Kick-Ass, Mist admits that he has jerked off to the idea of this betrayal beforehand, asking if that’s weird.
It’s not so much as it being weird, rather it just being so forced and “edgy.” Dave is immediately made aware of Red Mist’s false heroics, as during his first team-up with Red Mist rushing into a burning building to save a cat, Red Mist instantly asks if Dave sees a back door, so they could just slip out and wait for the fire brigade.
In the movie however, this scene is flipped. Red Mist is trying to lead Kick-Ass into an ambush, but by the time they both arrive in the Mist-mobile, the Mafia-owned Lumber warehouse is aflame. It is now Kick-Ass who must convince himself to follow his costumed partner into the inferno, as in Kick-Ass’ eyes Red Mist is being extremely heroic, unaware that Red Mist is rushing in because his family and “Family” are in there.
It’s a great scene and leads to one of my favorite gun fights in cinema ever, but it also helps solidify Red Mist as an actual hero in Dave’s eyes. When Dave later agrees to help Red Mist out, it actually makes sense, as Mist has already demonstrated his superhero worth. In the comic Dave really has no reason to trust Red Mist, as he displayed his yellow nature in the house fire, and yet, Dave just walks into the most Wile E. Coyote of traps.
Even comic Red Mist remarks on how unlikely it was for Dave not to realize who he was. Red Mist does a perfect homage to the shifty eyed dog from The Simpsons, and yet Dave asks him to team up with Hit Girl and Big Daddy, which is what Red Mist wanted all along. In the movie, it is Red Mist who convinces Dave to lead him to Big Daddy and Hit Girl, claiming that someone is trying to frame them for the warehouse murders. Dave agrees, as Red Mist inadvertently demonstrated his superhero worth already.
When the betrayal does happen, it occurs in two strikingly similar, yet wholly different ways. In the comic, Mist pulls a gun on Kick-Ass as they open the door to the safe house revealing that the Mafia already got the drop on Big Daddy and Hit Girl, somehow — but more on this later. Hit Girl tries to retaliate, but is taken out the window by a hail of bullets, gunned down by several goombas. In the film, Red Mist gets to actually pull the trigger on the fun-sized assassin, serving as the opening salvo for a Mafioso mob who rushes in afterwards to restrain Kick-Ass and Big Daddy. Chris screams and pleads for them to let Kick-Ass go, as he’s just some comic book dweeb. Even worse, Chris apologizes to Kick-Ass, as the two were actually starting to become friends.
Apologies to a former friend versus “I touch myself to the thought of car batteries hooked up to your junk”: both characters are still antagonists, but the latter is a villain, while the former is the stuff of nemesis. Red Mist planning to betray Dave is evil, sure, but Red Mist being forced to betray Dave to appeal to his father is tragically evil. Much like Lex Luthor and Clark Kent, Dave and Chris could have been the greatest of friends in another world, but in Kick-Ass they are now the antithesis of one another.
Part of the benefit of revealing to us early on that Red Mist is Chris is that we can get a better, more thorough look at the criminal world of Kick-Ass. In the comic, the Mafia is simply a placeholder villain, with little to no personality given to them at all. The Mob Boss is simply the head of the mob. By having one of your main characters be the son of the Mob Boss, however, you’re now forced to humanize your greatest villain.
Well, perhaps not fully humanize, but the movie certainly does make Frank D’Amico hilarious. I don’t know how actor Mark Strong does it, but only he can make me uncontrollably laugh by just ordering an Icee and some tasty cinema treats. The mafia is no longer some evil force to be reckoned with, but rather a group of men who are given personalities, banter, and gallows humor heavy scenes worthy of a Cohen Bros. film. Likewise, there is something grotesquely beautiful about a grown man roundhouse kicking a little girl in the face. While Frank certainly deserves the rocket to the chest at the end of the film, you can’t help but feel some sympathy for Red Mist.
By having these scenes extrapolating on Chris wanting to join the family business and just make his father proud of him, he is seen as a tragic villain as opposed to just some backstabbing spy as his world crumbles around him on account of super-heroics.
Even the little ending warning from Red Mist works better, Chris in a computer chair with weird long-nipple-looking elbow guards just isn’t as intimidating as his orange skull getup.
From the doorman who wishes he had a gun, to Frank breaking out a cocaine activity box straight out of Scarface, the inclusion of these Mafioso scenes are not only entertaining, but also aid in the story’s passing. Someone must have been taking notes, as in the comic sequel to Kick-Ass, Hit Girl, half of the story is devoted to Red Mist purchasing his own Dark Knight training montage straight out of Batman Begins.
2. Katie Deauxma
One of the most controversial changes from Kick-Ass the comic, to Kick-Ass the movie, revolves around Kick-Ass getting some actual ass, Katie Deauxma.
Simply put: in the comics, Kick Ass doesn’t get the girl, but in the film he does. Now I imagine that some of you are already dismissing me, believing that Hollywood just wanted a saccharine ending and couldn’t have Dave just not get the girl, but the differences between film Katie and comic Katie actually help build a more cohesive narrative.
Take for example Kick-Ass’ first meeting with Hit Girl. Kick-Ass has been asked to send a message to gangbanger and drug runner Razul, asking that he leave a particular girl alone, a girl who Dave wouldn’t mind showing his baton to. Anyway, in the comic, this girl is some random lady who asked for Kick-Ass’ help. She had never been introduced in the comic before, Dave just talks about her in exposition, and at the end it is revealed that the lady is now dating Dave’s dad.
They make the massacre at Razul’s place the same in the film, but they connect the girl contracting Kick-Ass back to Katie, as opposed to some expositional ex-girlfriend that we never ever meet until the very end. This change also neatly ties in Katie’s work at the needle exchange. Which reflecting the battered women’s shelter profession of her mother in the comics, this factoid helps expand upon both Katie and the drug lord’s character. Katie being attached to Razul not only gives Dave a reason to keep his secret identity hidden from Katie, but also gives Katie a deeper connection to Kick-Ass, which explains perhaps why she is attracted to him.
Furthermore, Katie is actually somewhat sweet here while in the comics she is essentially just some mean hot girl. For instance, in the comic Katie asks Dave a question about homosexuality that is typically reserved for individuals who have just learned the term five minutes ago: if you’re attracted to penis, do you get hot looking at your own junk? There’s still a level of naïveté present in the film, but Dave plays into Katie’s admission that she’s always wanted a gay best friend.
You still get some painful statements from Katie in the film, but statements that don’t paint her in a negative light. “It so sucks that you’re gay,” she says after a long emotional embrace. Probably the most dreaded line for the teen comedy pretend you’re gay to get close to the girl trope, but it does also help explain Katie’s positive reaction to Dave coming out of the straight equivalent of a closet later (footlocker maybe? I dunno).
The scenes involving her and Dave’s friends are entirely new for the film, and this is actually a good thing as it makes you understand why Dave’s friends are actually his friends. They’re not just some annoying sidekicks, but are depicted by the excellent Clark Duke and Evan Peters who actually make you appreciate Dave being out of the suit, a necessity of any good superhero movie.
In the comics, Dave only yells outside of Katie’s window, so she doesn’t know that Dave is Kick-Ass by the end of the tale. In fact, Dave reveals his manipulative plot to get closer to her, pouring his heart out to her in a high school hallway. By the end of it all, Katie takes a particularly cruel route, sexting Dave a pic of her assisting her enormous ebon beaux with a rather unfortunately placed snake bite. This sudden heel turn makes you realize that Dave has just been pining after a hot mean girl this entire time, albeit yeah, pretending to be gay to get into a girl’s pants is pretty damn sleazy.
It’s messed up yeah, but what’s messed up though is that Katie still remains a potential collateral damage target for Dave in Kick-Ass 2, which given this ending in the comics, really just makes her essentially some random girl.
In the movie, Dave does what every boy who ever read a Superman comic or watched a season one episode of Smallville would do if they were Clark Kent: Tell the girl you want to impress that you’re a superhero.
In fact, the movie definitely plays off of the lackluster love-story wrap-up in the comics, as every Kick-Ass fan expects Katie to break Dave’s heart when he shows up in her room randomly one night. Everyone who has read the comic knows what is coming when Dave reveals that he is Kick-Ass and perhaps most importantly, straight. In addition, Dave tells Katie that she is beautiful and kind, which was an element noticeably absent from the book.
There is still an element of betrayal justifiably felt, as Katie waits until Dave’s practically out the window before she asks him to stay at just the last minute. Dave’s plan ultimately, works, but it’s his admittance of being Kick-Ass that gives him the edge. By having Dave get the girl, it isn’t merely a Hollywood sort of ending tacked on, rather it is giving Dave something worth fighting for, as he understands now why people don’t become superheroes — because they have something to lose.
Also, the way Dave just gingerly touches her boobs to Ellie Goulding’s Starry Eyes is a perfect representation of every guy’s first moment when a girl wants him to touch her front butt… or so I’m told.
It’s a fist pump of a scene, and don’t take that in a perverted way: when Katie shakes her head confirming that it’s not going to be just a sleepover, or proceeds to “fuck Kick-Ass’ brains out” next to the dumpster behind Atomic Comics, you know that you instantly prefer the movie’s version of “the love interest”.
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!