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What always amuses me about Mark Millar is that his greatest strength as a writer is often also my greatest problem with his writing.
Kick-Ass is the only property by Millar where I watched the adaptation before reading the original, and I really should have known what was coming. When you watch a Millar comic brought to another medium, it's almost expected that some of Millar's rough edges will get sandpapered off so as not to make movie-goers uncomfortable.
Lemme give you some forinstances:
- The protagonist doesn't actually get nerve damage that functions as a superpower. He's just a creepy, more or less insane kid who's too stubborn to quit.
- Hit Girl's dad didn't actually have the Frank Castle back story, he was just a nerd who made it up and wanted his daughter to be bad ass.
- When the love interest of the protagonist finds out he was lying about being gay to get closer to her, she reacts with immense disgust and starts treating him horribly.
That's what never makes it to the big screen with Millar, his willingness to make the reader uncomfortable even while entertaining. Sometimes in his stories the characters get the real consequences of their actions. It's weird moments of logic in the otherwise logical world of super heroes.
Because really, if 1% of the population gained superpowers, I can almost guarantee less than 10% of those people would become super heroes. Many might become criminals, but most would really just prefer to go on living their lives.
Kick-Ass points out how insane this behavior is consistently. Because what's portrayed in the world of super heroes isn't really heroic at all. Real heroes step up when a situation presents itself. You don't need to patrol the streets in a costume to help people, and if you really wanted to do that, become a police officer. Otherwise they're less a hero than a power-mad vigilante. That sort of power fantasy gives us people like George Zimmerman.
Which makes me wonder how unhealthy our definition of a hero is.
What keeps Millar at three stars in this case is a combination of the unpleasantness and Romita's artwork. While generally competent, Romita draws anyone under the age of 18 like a fat-headed mutant with spindly limbs. They never look so much young as deformed. It's not a deal-breaker, but it's damn distracting at times.
His art also gives a poor sense of motion. Some of the heavy action scenes featuring Hit-Girl feel incredibly awkward because every image is more of a still frame even in shots where she's leaping across roof tops.
As with most Millar work, Kick-Ass is entertaining, but damn if it doesn't feel like a masochistic enterprise sometimes.
Kick-Ass is the only property by Millar where I watched the adaptation before reading the original, and I really should have known what was coming. When you watch a Millar comic brought to another medium, it's almost expected that some of Millar's rough edges will get sandpapered off so as not to make movie-goers uncomfortable.
Lemme give you some forinstances:
- The protagonist doesn't actually get nerve damage that functions as a superpower. He's just a creepy, more or less insane kid who's too stubborn to quit.
- Hit Girl's dad didn't actually have the Frank Castle back story, he was just a nerd who made it up and wanted his daughter to be bad ass.
- When the love interest of the protagonist finds out he was lying about being gay to get closer to her, she reacts with immense disgust and starts treating him horribly.
That's what never makes it to the big screen with Millar, his willingness to make the reader uncomfortable even while entertaining. Sometimes in his stories the characters get the real consequences of their actions. It's weird moments of logic in the otherwise logical world of super heroes.
Because really, if 1% of the population gained superpowers, I can almost guarantee less than 10% of those people would become super heroes. Many might become criminals, but most would really just prefer to go on living their lives.
Kick-Ass points out how insane this behavior is consistently. Because what's portrayed in the world of super heroes isn't really heroic at all. Real heroes step up when a situation presents itself. You don't need to patrol the streets in a costume to help people, and if you really wanted to do that, become a police officer. Otherwise they're less a hero than a power-mad vigilante. That sort of power fantasy gives us people like George Zimmerman.
Which makes me wonder how unhealthy our definition of a hero is.
What keeps Millar at three stars in this case is a combination of the unpleasantness and Romita's artwork. While generally competent, Romita draws anyone under the age of 18 like a fat-headed mutant with spindly limbs. They never look so much young as deformed. It's not a deal-breaker, but it's damn distracting at times.
His art also gives a poor sense of motion. Some of the heavy action scenes featuring Hit-Girl feel incredibly awkward because every image is more of a still frame even in shots where she's leaping across roof tops.
As with most Millar work, Kick-Ass is entertaining, but damn if it doesn't feel like a masochistic enterprise sometimes.