Kick-Ass and the Future of Superhero Movies

Superhero movies have been so popular in the last decade it’s almost difficult to imagine what our summer blockbusters were about before they seemingly all became about caped crusaders. There were, of course, hits made from superheroes before 2000 – Richard Donner’s Superman (1978) and Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) were both huge – but it was Bryan Singer’s X-Men (2000) along with Sam Raimi’s Spiderman (2002) that confirmed what had already been proven by those earlier films. Superheroes are ingrained deep enough into our pop culture consciousness that even the so-so ones have a decent shot at scoring a profit in their big screen adventures.
 

In 2010, superhero films are still going strong, but for how much longer? When will a lot become too many? Are superheroes headed for overexposure? Next summer, there will be three big ones. Thor comes out in May, followed closely by Captain America: The First Avenger in July, and sandwiched in between them will be Green Lantern in June. Thor and Captain America will both set up characters for the super-sized Marvel crossover, The Avengers, to be released the following summer. All of the aforementioned films will be released in 3D, which means studios anticipate audience members spending up to $45 on superheroes at the cinema next summer, not counting repeat viewings.
 

And those are just the summer offerings. There will be The Green Hornet in January and an X-Men prequel titled, X-Men: First Class to be released sometime in 2011. In the following year, there will be Christopher Nolan’s third and final Batman movie, as well as a Spiderman reboot from Mark Webb, the director of (500) Days of Summer.

With all these movies still before us and many more behind us, it’s no wonder there have been some less conventional takes on the superhero genre. I’m tempted to label them “post-superhero” movies if it weren’t for the fact that they don’t offer much that’s truly contrary to the more traditional superhero tales.

The long-awaited adaptation of Alan Moore’s cult classic Watchmen (2009) had potential to give us something new, but under 300 helmer Zach Snyder’s direction, the film was underwhelming and confirmed many fans’ suspicions that the book was unfilmable.

The ads for Hancock (2008), an original story, suggested that Will Smith’s title character would be a change-of-pace from the typical, morally upstanding heroes. A film portraying a superhero as a drunk suffering from a poor public image was intriguing, but a sloppy script gave the film a muddled tone. As it turned out, even this supposedly tongue-in-cheek superhero movie succumbed to having a big-budget action finale.

Then there’s Kick-Ass, which I missed when it came out earlier this year but recently had the opportunity to watch on DVD. Kick-Ass is directed by Matthew Vaughn (who also directed the excellent pre-Bond Daniel Craig vehicle, Layer Cake) and based on a graphic novel that creator Mark Millar always intended to become a movie.

Kick-Ass begins as a satirical take on the genre, introducing Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) as a high-school nobody obsessed with comic books. He wonders why anybody hasn’t tried to be a real-life superhero yet and wants to be the first. He dismisses the way comics always give Joe Shmoe superpowers as a result of some freak accident, or how Bruce Wayne is able to afford all that cool equipment that doesn’t exist in reality. So he takes a DIY attitude to crime fighting, buys a wet suit and some nunchucks online and practices badass one-liners in the mirror. Like a true teenager, he calls himself Kick-Ass.

These scenes are wonderful as are the high school scenes, which take more than a few cues from Superbad (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, a.k.a. McLovin, is even here as the son of a wealthy mobster). There’s some funny stuff about how Dave unwittingly becomes the pseudo-gay friend of the girl he has a crush on, and some smart jokes about what a society populated with superheroes would really be like in the age of camera phones and online social networking. When Dave’s first successful scuffle with a couple of street thugs becomes a YouTube sensation, he wastes no time in creating a MySpace page for his alter ego and revels in the glory of the friend requests that come pouring in.

But Kick-Ass quickly breaks its own rules. After getting struck by a car, most of Dave’s bones are replaced with metal, and a lack of nerve endings allows him to get punched without feeling a thing. Maybe this twist is part of the film’s self-awareness and there’s a bit of irony in the fact that this miracle occurs after an embarrassing first attempt at heroism, but mostly it just takes the wind out of a clever premise. Then there is Damon Macready (Nicholas Cage) who goes by the alias Big Daddy and his daughter Mindy a.k.a. Hit Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz). Much like Bruce Wayne, whom the film pokes fun at earlier, Macready sinks countless dollars into buying heavy artillery and trains his daughter in martial arts. Early in the film, there’s a joke that mocks the way superheroes are always given cheesy motives of vengeance, but Kick-Ass doesn’t hesitate to turn around a few scenes later and give Macready just that. He seeks to avenge the death of his wife, for which he blames the mobster, Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong).

Hit Girl is another source of problems for the film. I realize, yes, that the character is supposed to be provocative and controversial, but she’s all shock. Her father has trained her to be the perfect killer, which explains the violence, but why all the vulgarity? Macready notably avoids such language in her presence, giving her cutesy pet names even while he trains her to take bullets as she wears a Kevlar vest. That scene gets some laughs because of the disparity between Macready’s words and actions. Wouldn’t Hit Girl have been funnier if amidst all the carnage she paused every once in while and acted like the little girl she is? Then there might have been a dash of irony added to a character whose actions are just gratuitous. We watch as Hit Girl pumps lead into bad guy’s heads and slashes them up with knives bigger than she is, and the film expects us to laugh simply because it’s a little girl doing all this.

The performances are mostly good. Aaron Johnson brings the right mix of everyman qualities and teen perviness to the role, Nicholas Cage strikes a balance between understatement as the father and pure camp when he dons his mask, and Chloë Grace Moretz, for what it’s worth, has a lot of onscreen charisma.

Still, once we reach the blood-splattered finale, the movie is no different than the superhero films it parodies in the earlier scenes. Everyday characters achieve great physical feats in the name of awesome fight choreography and a complex plot is resolved with simple action. The movie wants to have its cake and blow it up too.

Kick-Ass was relatively cheap to make and did well enough at the box office to spawn a forthcoming sequel in graphic novel and movie form, but are movies like this the future of superheroes? I’m still waiting for someone to make a true anti-superhero movie, one that really skewers the conventions of the genre and commits to its satire.

In the mean time, there is a host of traditional superheroes lining up to receive our money in the form of ticket sales. My prediction though? After The Avengers and the third Batman movie come out in 2012, the Golden Age of superhero movies will end. They’ll still exist for sure, but will no longer be dependable megahits for studios. That day will be a bittersweet one. Fresh, new stories will hopefully find their way to multiplexes, and our favorite costumed heroes and heroines will return to the pages from whence they came. Before that happens, movies like Kick-Ass will no doubt try to change the direction of the tide, but will effectively only push us further into a superhero overload.

- Steve Avigliano, 8/19/10

BEST OF THE DECADE - #1: Adaptation

Adaptation (2003): Dir. Spike Jonze. Written by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman, based on the book The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean. Starring: Nicholas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Brian Cox. Rated R (language, sexuality, some drug use and violent images). Running time: 114 minutes.

**NOTE: This review freely discusses the ending of the film, so be forewarned of spoilers.

The first time I saw Adaptation, I sat in a daze, staring blankly at the credits scrolling up the screen, trying to grapple with the film’s ending. The opening scenes had me hooked early, and the insecurities of neurotic screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman (Nicholas Cage), in both his personal and professional life had struck a chord with me. That the real-life screenwriter Charlie Kaufman had written Adaptation’s screenplay made the film wonderfully self-deprecating. I appreciated the character Charlie’s mockery of Hollywood clichés, his witty banter with his less cerebral twin brother, Donald (also Nicholas Cage), and the smart and biting jabs at the movie takes at the film industry. However, as the film follows Charlie’s struggle to adapt a seemingly un-adaptable book called The Orchid Thief, something strange happens. Kaufman the character writes himself into his screenplay and it becomes apparent that the script he is writing is the film we are watching. Now I was positively delighted by the film’s unabashed self-reference, but soon found the film had at least one more trick up its sleeves. The real-life Charlie Kaufman wisely avoids self-reference simply for the sake of it, and ends the film by throwing in every Hollywood convention in the book, leaving the film on an odd note of uncertainty. Why would a film so deliberately cop out in the final scenes? After many more viewings of the film, the true goals of Adaptation begin to reveal themselves. Though the film has much to say about the film industry and Hollywood clichés, it is ultimately about how we live our lives and how our expectations for the way our lives should be affect the way we live.

Charlie Kaufman, as depicted in Adaptation, is socially inept and desperate for female affection, but terrified of making of the first move. He drops a woman off at her house after a date, neglecting to kiss her when he had the chance. Idling in the car, he kicks himself for missing the opportunity and wonders what would happen if he just got out of the car, knocked on her door and kissed her. “It would be romantic,” he says in a voice-over, “Something we could someday tell our kids.” These are the expectations he gained from a lifetime of watching romantic movies and, lacking the courage to play the part of a romantic, he drives away dejected. Magazine writer Susan Orlean (Merryl Streep), in scenes that loosely dramatize The Orchid Thief, is a spiritual partner to Charlie, also wishing she had the courage to make a major change in her life. She wants to feel passionate about something in the same way her subject, the eccentric John Laroche (Chris Cooper), feels about orchids. Both Charlie and Orlean have dramatic foils that show them a seemingly better way of living. Charlie’s foil is Donald, who has no trouble writing successful screenplays or flirting with women. Meanwhile, Orlean envies Laroche for being able to detach himself so easily from something and move on.

On one level, the film’s ending is an extension of these themes. Let’s assume for a moment that the ending, which includes everything Charlie claims to despise in Hollywood movies (drugs, sex, guns, car chases, characters learning profound life lessons), actually happens within the reality of the film. The final shot in particular, featuring The Turtles’ “Happy Together,” is strangely upbeat considering Donald has just died in a car accident, Laroche was eaten by alligators, and Orlean’s life is in shambles. Kaufman seemingly betrays everything that has come before by tacking on a fluff ending that provides no real dramatic or emotional closure. This “fluff ending” might, however, be viewed as a satirical look at the ways in which individuals try to live their lives like a Hollywood film. After attending a screenwriting seminar by Robert McKee (Brian Cox), Charlie tells McKee that the seminar hit him deeper than his screenwriting choices. McKee’s advice that things must happen in a screenplay reflects poignantly on Charlie’s “choices as a human being.” Following the seminar, Charlie decides to find Susan in Florida, and in his spying escapade, he finds life as Hollywood sees it: secret affairs, exotic drugs and an exhilarating encounter with death. Little has changed about Charlie by the final scene, and yet he smiles after he learns the woman he loves will never be with him. Despite the sadness that has entered his life, he seems content with the Hollywood ending.

Adaptation also functions, perhaps more obviously, as a criticism of Hollywood movies and the advice of story seminars such as McKee’s. Throughout the film, Donald is a comic figure and his script pitches to his brother are some of the film’s funniest moments, poking fun at cookie-cutter scripts and genre films. At one point, Donald describes a chase scene in his movie where the protagonist rides a motorcycle in pursuit of a serial killer on horseback. “It’s like a battle between motors and horses,” he explains, “Like technology versus horse.” The McKee seminar is similarly mocked. “A last act makes a film,” says McKee, “Wow them in the end, you got a hit.” Charlie does just that. He deliberately packs the final forty minutes with all the contrived drama he can in an effort to show how absurd McKee’s philosophy is.

Despite its many contrivances, however, the last act of Adaptation genuinely works. Kaufman wisely makes the “Hollywood” ending compelling enough that its deliberate artifice does not call attention to itself until the final scenes. Adaptation works on a first viewing, and not until revisiting the film is it clear just how early Kaufman begins his detour into the realm of Hollywood intrigue. The characters are still convincingly played even as they carry out clichés, and the film retains the humor of earlier scenes. By identifying the third act as contrived, Kaufman is able to get away with his forced ending, even creating some heartfelt moments, most notably between the two brothers. Kaufman mocks Hollywood conventions by inserting all of the movie vices Charlie the character scorns in an earlier scene, all the while showing how these films can actually be rather effective when executed well enough.

Long before the ending, however, Adaptation identifies itself as self-aware, making many playful self-references. The title itself refers to Charlie’s adaptation of Orlean’s book, the theory of evolution (Darwin is referenced several times throughout the film), and the more basic theme of adapting to the changes that occur in everyday life. When Charlie asks his brother how an outlandish script idea could ever make logistical sense, Donald shrugs and replies, “Trick photography,” a device that very scene uses to allow Nicholas Cage to talk to himself. Later, McKee interrupts Charlie mid-voice-over to shout, “God help you if you use voice-over narration in your work! It’s flaccid, sloppy writing.” Even as Kaufman skewers the clichés of Hollywood scripts, he can’t help but make fun of himself too, a strategy that is as modest as it is self-deprecating.

With all the layers Kaufman gives his screenplay, its easy to take for granted the work of director Spike Jonze here. Jonze, who also directed Kaufman’s Being John Malkovich, presents the complexities of Kaufman’s script in a digestible way, moving between Charlie’s scenes and Orlean’s storyline with clever transitions. Jonze seamlessly moves from Florida “Three Years Earlier” to Charlie’s bedroom in the present by turning Orlean’s voice-over into the narration of her book as Charlie reads it. Other small touches, such as a book jacket photo of Orlean that changes poses as Charlie plays out a conversation with it, are part of Jonze’s style and visual inventiveness. Jonze succeeds in not only making Kaufman’s script understandable, but enjoyable as well, a difficult task to be sure.

I couldn’t tell you how much of Adaptation is based in truth, but the true story is rendered irrelevant by the reality of the film. The real-life Kaufman does not have a twin brother, but that didn’t stop Donald Kaufman from getting an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay – though perhaps Charlie and Donald are just two halves of the same screenwriter. Did Kaufman really try to adapt Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief before finally writing this film? No doubt one could read interviews with Kaufman and Jonze to find out, but what would be the point? In one scene, Charlie reads aloud a book review of The Orchid Thief that explains how since there wasn’t enough story to fill up a book, Orlean adds “that sprawling New Yorker shit” about her hopes, her desires and her own life to fill the pages. It seems impossible to Charlie to adapt something so personal and intimate. What Kaufman does to remain spiritually faithful to the book is replace Orlean’s sprawling reflections on life with his own, and in doing so, he writes a film that sheds insight into a more universal concept. In order to live our lives, we must search for meaning, for purpose. These purposes differ from person to person, but the search itself is shared by all.

- Steve Avigliano, 2/13/10