Kick-Ass – Designed for the big screen from day one?

Dave Lizewski isn’t the class jock, he isn’t the class geek either.  He’s just your average inbetweener.  He has good taste in movies and music, the class babe thinks he’s a dawk and he wishes his Dad could get over his mother’s death when he was fourteen.  His biggest escape in life is through comic books.  Then as exam pressure mounts he gets to thinking about what he wants to do with his life…

Kick Ass

“Why train for years to do a job you bitched about all day?  Didn’t it make sense to follow your dreams and maybe do a little good at the same time?”

When his Dad has left for the night shift Dave puts on a wet suit and mask and gets a feel for the streets.  To start with he just walks on the ledges of buildings and wears his ‘costume’ under his school clothes.

“But, like a murderer, simply fantasizing would only cut it for so long.  After a while, I had to engage…”

Dave ends up in intensive care.  But the next time he puts on the costume he saves a man’s life.

Of all the comics on my pull list ‘Kick-Ass’ is the one that never fails to amuse.  Mark Millar’s writing is fast paced, to the point and well realised.  And unlike a lot of the story lines I read each month, I never need to refer back to previous issues to remind myself what’s going on – this from a comic that’s been nearly as infrequent as ‘Fell.’  Well, maybe not that bad – but six issues since April 2008 is pretty slim pickings.

Then there’s the artwork by John Romita Jr.  When he was working on ’World War Hulk’ and even ‘The Eternals’ to an extent, I didn’t think his style suited, simply because the world’s he was drawing were based on somebody else’s idea.  In ‘Kick-Ass’ it’s his vision and it’s faultless.   Trying to establish why is difficult - perhaps its the balance of childlike anger/innocence his imagery conjures up.  Even when the bad guys are getting carved up with samurai swords the pictures still have a certain purity about them.

Sadly a movie version will be released soon.  Already pictures are in circulation on the internet and my initial reaction is the direct opposite of what I thought about the comic.  It fills me with dread.  Obviously I realise it’s impossible for a film-maker to compete with a reader’s imagination on the big screen, but why do so many keep trying to?  Have there been any good comic adaptations?

Writing in ‘The Sunday Times‘ Alan Moore explains that his comic books were never designed to be films. “This is what I’ve been trying to explain to these stupid bastards for the past 20 years,” he says. “They were designed to exploit all the things that comic books can do and no other medium can.”

However, pause for thought comes in the blogosphere over suggestions that creators Mark Millar/John Romita Jr  may have been designing ‘Kick-Ass’ as a multi-platform event right from day one.

According to Wikipedia a viral campaign featuring a short video of  Kick-Ass, being “caught on tape” performing a heroic act was uploaded to YouTube and spread around the Internet:

Then, a MySpace page was created, supposedly maintained by the character, that stated ”Mark Millar is doing a comic-book about me with John Romita Jr.”  It even suggests a charity auction was held to name the main character.

However, when it came to casting the powers that be decided Nicholas Cage should headline as Damon MacReady!

Here’s an actor who’s been miscast in just about every film he’s ever been in with the exception of ‘Raising Arizona’ and ‘Leaving Las Vegas.’  And ‘Kick-Ass’ is clearly no exception with Cage playing Hit Girl’s father, a man he doesn’t share a single character trait with.

Fortunately, the other main roles have gone to relative unknowns with the exception of Mark Strong as Frank D’Amico.  Aaron Johnson plays ‘Kick Ass,’ Christopher Mintz-Plasse is ‘The Red Mist’ and Chloe Moretz is ‘Hit Girl.’  Then there’s the eye-candy:  Lyndsy Fonseca as ‘Katie Deauxma,’ best remembered as Catherine’s daughter Dylan in ‘Desperate Housewives.’

Suited Up

What is interesting is that apparently the film went into production before the first issue of the comic came out.  In an interview with ‘Newsarama‘ Millar says:

“We did this deal before Christmas – I wrote the thing mostly last year (2007), so this was all set up before the comic came out. Since then, I’ve been to every meeting, seen everyone who’s been cast. If you’re an executive producer, it’s usually just a small courtesy, but this level of involvement is really rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty in the screen story and in the comic book, too. So it’s very, very close to the material, which makes it slightly different than Wanted – Wanted is probably 70% of the book, but this is 110%.”

So if it’s 110% comic material we’re going to see on screen, why didn’t creators Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. write the script instead of leaving it to director Michael Vaughn (and Jane Goldman)?  It’s worth reading the article just to see the forum comments at the end – the overriding opinion appears to be that Millar talks a lot of nonsense, a sentiment I agree with.

Whether ‘Kick-Ass’ was designed for the big screen from day one I don’t know.  But when you look at the superb writing in the comic, it seems glaringly obvious that the dialogue will have had major changes for it to work on celluloid.  Then there’s the fact that if ‘Kick-Ass’ was being designed for a multi-platform audience, why didn’t the comics creators write the script instead of leaving it to director Michael Vaughn (and Jane Goldman).  And how on earth are they going to get a distribution deal?  After all this is an extremely violent comic shows children as young as 9-years-old dicing and slicing villains in every issue, yet Millar talks about the film adaptation being 110% like the comic.

“One side of my brain just wants to cry, but the other is having a multiple nerdgasm.”