Kick-Ass Directed by Matthew Vaughn

Matthew Vaughn directed and co-wrote the movie Kick-Ass, which opens this week. His past work is why I’m interested in seeing this, despite the fact that the ordinary life superhero comedy has been done so wretchedly badly recently e.g. Superhero Movie. Matthew Vaughn directed the excellent modern noir Layer Cake, which starred a pre-James Bond Daniel Craig as a drug dealer on the brink of retirement, and Matthew Vaughn both directed and co-wrote the modern-feeling-if-not-technically-present-day fairytale Stardust. So I feel like this is a creative talent who could take a genre of many ingrained tropes, such as the superhero genre, and actually do something interesting with it.

Alan Moore’s Watchmen (the graphic novel, not the movie) and Austin Grossman’s Soon I Will Be Invincible are the two best examples of the superheroes-as-relatable-human-beings sub-genre. I’m looking forward to checking out the dark humor of how Kick-Ass approaches the superhero in society.

Hey, the MPAA rated Kick-Ass “R for strong brutal violence throughout, pervasive language, sexual content, nudity and some drug use – some involving children.” Presumably, when the MPAA references “children” using drugs, they mean teenagers and a bunch of folks are apparently up in arms over the profanity. So, while the director’s track record of doing interesting things with genre bodes well, lots of creative use of four letter words is a plus for Kick-Ass too.

PS Seriously, Superhero Movie is so bad that, not only did I turn it off during the fart scene which would not end, but I watched it on On-Demand . . . and I get Premium On-Demand free with my HBO and Showtime . . . and I seriously considered canceling both HBO and Showtime, after viewing the first half of Superhero Movie because free-with-existing-service was too high a price for that flick.

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Posted by Amelia G on April 14, 2010. Filed under Blue Blood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry