Kick-Ass has been getting a lot of marketing and promotion or maybe I’m just in their target market. I missed the screening and panel for Kick-Ass at South By Southwest but luckily Lionsgate presented another one at WonderCon. All of the stars, Nicolas Cage (Big Daddy), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Red Mist), Clark Duke (Marty), Aaron Johnson (Kick-Ass), Chloe Moretz (Hit-Girl) were in attendance to talk about the movie and answer some questions from the audience. Kick-Ass is about a regular kid with no real problems or challenges in his life who one day decides to become a superhero even though he has no super powers or training at all. It looks hilarious and violent…what more can you ask for?
So why Kick-Ass? When there are so many comic books and graphic novels out there, why did they choose a relatively new story to make a movie? Screenwriter, Jane Goldman, said that it takes the whole idea of the superhero genre from a different angle. Most of the other comics are old so all of the characters have been around for ages. All of the characters from Kick-Ass are brand new and quite groundbreaking. The idea of being a regular kid and wanting to become a costumed super hero resonates in a lot of people. Co-producer, John Romita Jr., said that Mark Miller claims that Kick-Ass is exactly what he wanted to do. He worked out, took martial arts, and planned to buy a costume.
When asked why he chose this movie, Nicolas Cage said that he tries to find scripts that give him a challenge, something he can’t really do in real life. When he saw that he would be shooting a twelve year-old girl in the chest, it made him uncomfortable…so he had to do it. He also likes to stay relevant to the current generation so seeing this script and knowing it would be casted by mostly younger people and target the younger market, he wanted to get in on it.
The most controversial part of this movie will inevitably be Hit-Girl played by Chloe Moretz. In the movie, she’s a bad ass twelve year-old girl who’s violent and vulgar. Jane Goldman said that she really saw Hit-Girl as a strong female character. It’s not very often when you can get a strong female character that isn’t a sex symbol or looked at in a sexist way. Chloe, on the other hand seems like your typical innocent girl. She almost spit out the water she was drinking when a scene of hers played on the big screen where she mentioned a certain male body part. An audience member asked her what her parents thought of the role and she answered that her mother read the script before she did and told her to read it and let her know what she thought. She thought it was an awesome role and the rest was herstory.
I didn’t get to go to the WonderCon screening of the film either, but I will be attending a screening tonight and can’t wait. We’ll have a full review for you guys tomorrow!
Kick-Ass starts kicking some ass on April 16, 2010.
WonderCon is one of the country’s best comics conventions featuring guests and events for comics, movies, video games, and other popular media. This year, WonderCon had presentations by such Hollywood studios as Disney, Warner Bros., Sony, and Lionsgate.Visit WonderCon’s Official Website
