Hacker Cinema
Kick-Ass
2010 · Film · 118 min
Directed by Matthew Vaughn
Dave Lizewski is an unnoticed high school student and comic book fan who one day decides to become a super-hero, even though he has no powers, training or meaningful reason to do so.
3 positive12 neutralfrom 15 commenters
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15 comments on Hacker News
I remember when I was watching Kick-Ass in the theater, there were some teenagers trying to be funny the entire time.
I initially very politely asked them if they could stop talking because we're trying to watch the movie, but they didn't take that very seriously.
After another ten minutes of their commentary I yell very loudly "SHUT THE FUCK UP!". Extremely loud, I suspect everyone in the theater heard me pretty clearly. I'm a pretty big guy and I have a very loud and deep voice, and of course the theater is dark, so they might have assumed I was more threatening than I actually am. The teenagers shut up for the rest of the movie.
The thing is, though, it kind of ruined the rest of the movie for me. The entire time I'm sitting there, kind of worked up and annoyed that I had to yell at some kids and ruin their Friday night.
I've certainly had good times in theaters too, I like movies, but I've grown a bit tired of it. Now generally the only time I go to the theater is the live showings of The Room.
I downloaded it in the UK.
Here, there's not that much high quality TV content on it that isn't available on the free VOD providers (BBC iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4) for the free-to-air TV channels. If I click on to the 'Series Spotlight' and look at the TV series on offer, they're all strange low budget things ('Bad Girls Club', 'Evil Killers', 'Z Nation'...) and I've not heard of the first 19 of them. The 20th one is a 'Gordon Ramsey: Uncharted' National Geographic show that I have access to through Disney+.
For films the picture is much better in that there are popular ones that if not blockbusters were at least things I'd heard of, but it's still mostly older stuff (Donnie Darko, Kick-Ass, Pacific Rim: Uprising, Twilight, Saw, Kill Bill).
Hm.
"My plots are fantastic, while being often based upon truth. They go wildly beyond the probable but not, I think, beyond the possible. . . . Even so, they would stick in the gullet of the reader and make him throw the book angrily aside—for a reader particularly hates feeling he is being hoaxed—but for two further technical devices, if you like to call them that. First of all, the aforesaid speed of the narrative, which hustles the reader quickly beyond each danger point of mockery and, secondly, the constant use of familiar household names and objects which reassure him that he and the writer have still got their feet on the ground."
That's what makes action-adventure movies work. It keeps people from realizing that all someone needed to do was some simple thing, instead of the adventurous thing. That Fleming did this in his writing made the move to the screen easier.
"Above all there must never be those maddening recaps where the hero maunders about his unhappy fate, goes over in his mind a list of suspects, or reflects what he might have done or what he proposes to do next."
Much "great literature", and wannabe great literature, is full of such introspection. Ayn Rand takes it to an extreme. The other big vice for writers is the info-dump, where there's a long description of the setting. Read anything self-published, and you'll probably find both of these problems. "Show, don't tell".
There are major action movies with voice-overs or explicit scene-setting at the very beginning, from Star Wars to Kick-Ass. But if it's in the middle, you're doing it wrong.
If you've ever experienced a group of tv/movie enthusiasts watching something you would believe that laughs happening at awkward times are not just possible, but I would rather see them as a supporting argument for real laughter than a rebuttal.
One of my favorite moments was watching Kick Ass in a sneak preview. No one knew which movie would be shown and Kick Ass starts with a shock moment of a guy shooting a little girl with a revolver. One guy in the back started laughing so hard and it was so inappropriate that the whole theater burst into laughter.
Doing a bit of post production on the real laughter doesn't make it canned laughter.
> So now the film "Kick Ass" opens with a panning shot down a skyscraper to a foyer where my friend and his wife can be seen having an animated argument.
I don't see them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEsNvObIwQg
A friend of mine was on holiday in Toronto and somehow walked accidentally into a film set. He and his other half wound up "pretending" to be extras. So now the film "Kick Ass" opens with a panning shot down a skyscraper to a foyer where my friend and his wife can be seen having an animated argument.
It's one of the primary responsibilities of the movie to set up a universe that is compelling and believable. The fact that it's live action imposes some constraints, but they can be creatively worked around.
Just a few movies that do this well that come to mind:
* Scott Pilgrim vs the World.
* Kick Ass.
* Ella Enchanted.
* Amelie.
* Thor: Ragnarok.
* Space Jam
* The Mask
>That's what Image Comics was (owned by Marvel)
Image comics was never owned by Marvel - it was founded when 7 of the big marvel/DC artists realized they didn't need marvel to publish them and left to do their own thing. Each artist had his own company (like Silvestri's Top Cow, Liefeld's Extreme Studios, Todd Mcfarlane's Todd Mcfarlane Productions, Jim Lee's Wildstorm, etc). Image's job was to act as a publisher that took minimal financial value from the project away from the creators, and didn't own any of the IP.
DC comics did have some smaller publishing houses - Vertigo comics, Wildstorm Comics after they bought it from Jim Lee, etc. Vertigo owned IP so it wasn't creator owned stuff, and I think Wildstorm was a mix. Vertigo imploded after a woke reboot that lasted from 2018-2019, and DC consolidated its adult oriented lines to DC Black Label.
Marvel had Icon Comics with creator owned stuff like Kick Ass (that later got a movie) but it was really about stopping Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Millar (netflix acquired Millarworld Limited in 2017) from shopping those IPs out to other places.
>good literature isn't supposed
99.99% of comic book writers today don't know how to write good comics, let alone good literature. DC has imploded and gone through multiple rounds of layoffs and there are very few of the people who were involved with the comics you remember left there anymore. Marvel is happy to make garbage if it hires people with the right diversity checkboxes (see Vita Ayala, who somehow keeps getting more work while being completely unable to write stories people want to read).
>V for Vendetta
Originally published in the UK, later put out by Vertigo Comics (DC) in its hayday. But Alan Moore is better writer than almost everyone left at either of the big comics houses these days, and he was writing in a time where it was less culturally acceptable to write blunt propaganda into comic books.
>Again, from the 80's /sigh ... it was a freer time, when risks could be taken
This is because our society has switched. In the 80s the left was fighting right wing christian censorship and largely winning. Today we have inverted.
This is a solid answer, but I'd also add - there are very few general music buffs.
Maybe I'd count, with years in pro music performance, degree in Jazz and a lifetime of listing to and performing an insanely wide variety of genres... but not a buff for all styles.
Computer systems are actually not a bad analogy. How many people do you know that have an in-depth knowledge of Assembly in different systems (including the oldest ones), GPUs, ML, Python, JS, Haskell, C++, Rust, ALGOL, Compilers, Hardware development, etc. Then add into the mix having an in-depth knowledge of the creators of those things, what else they did, failures, influences, their mentors.
You always have the choice of breadth versus depth, within your time constraints. I think learning about a single artist or band, looking up the producer, label, members and following up on all those leads to see what else they have done - and see if you like it is a great beginning.
Some genres like jazz might seem difficult to get into, and that's fine. No need to delve in until you find a hook that peaks your interest. And then when you find out about a genre (and jazz is an excellent example) - you'll find sub-genres you like, and don't and maybe you are interested in the evolution - like many people love bebop, but don't listen to "dixieland jazz" or big band swing, or modern fusion.
You will never hear all the music. But depth (in my opinion) breads a lot more passion than breadth just for the sake of it. So rather than listening to all the top 40 singles of the last decades, you'd probably be better off listening to some whole albums, and exploring from there.
Spotify (and similar) make it very easy for breadth, and can help discover new music you like - but you'll need to put work into delving in deep yourself.
As you do have a passion for film I'd suggest this.
For interesting modern music Quentin Tarantino files always deliver.
Danny Elfman has some interesting stuff (like this Simpsons theme which is a great example of the Lydian mode...)
John Williams & Hans Zimmer have made loads of epic soundtracks, and if you like them - look up Holst, Tchaikovsky and Wagner
If you want a weirder launching off point, watch koyaanisqatsi and look up Philip Glass who made the soundtrack - that's an interesting avenue, albeit not very mainstream.
Another epic film score is 28 Days Later, John Murphey - parts of which have been used in loads of other huge features like Kick Ass...
You could also go a different route, and look up how the pre-classical Pachelbel's Canon contains the chord progression that is arguably the most popular of all time and watch this mash up of songs that use it (or the first part) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ
Hahahaha, I could go on forever! I hope you find something you love, and actually want to go deeper into.
I briefly had a review gig, highly amateur, that was even compensated. Ebert had an influence on me in at least two ways which immediately spring to mind.
First, he has biases. Go and read his review of Leon (aka The Professional) and you will know what his gut reaction will be to something like Moretz's role in Kick-Ass. He didn't seem to pay much attention during "genre" flicks and a couple of his review shows that. However, he displayed his biases clearly. You could account for them. He did not dress them up in academic language or try to justify them in a manner that was beyond any reproach. I could mentally just adjust for what I would get out of his reviews of most horror films. Because people have biases, an open reckoning of them is as fair as you can get.
Second, reviews are to be written on multiple levels, each accounting for a different audience. What I call the TV Guide review consists of stars granted, a few actors mentioned, and a very brief subject summary. At another level, he writes for people who want to know, "Given what I care about, would I want to spend my time and money seeing this film?" At a third level, he talks to people who have already seen the movie, people who have the ability to engage with the language of film and debate its merits. Each of these levels is valuable. Each is its own particular craft and requisite skills, not to be evaded no matter what the subject matter.
I sometimes disagreed with his ratings but I rarely found a review which did not add something to my experience of a movie.
Something has to change. Hollywood movies are just so receipt oriented. I kind of like super hero stuff, but I hate most of the super hero movies coming out. I loved kick-ass, and I think the various super hero series on Netflix such as Jessica Jones has been quite good.
Other than that I realize I want to see more movies from other cultures. I am Norwegian myself but have tended to gravitate towards Hollywood, because the production and is higher quality and selection of actors is better.
However I have noticed that some of the stuff that I have enjoyed the most and which has felt most fresh such as Skam, has been from my own country.
There is a lot of foreign films I never get access to because they are not really distributed. I notice when recommending Norwegian series or movies to friends abroad, that they are really hard to get hold of and even harder to get subtitles for.
The teen drama Skam only worked because fans made the subtitles themselves for the foreign audience.
Netflix shows a path forward here in that they are opened up for more diversity and allow more foreign series. E.g. you got Norwegian Viking comedy series "The norsemen" on Netflix.
It was made in a way that I think is a great solution going forward for foreign film/series makers. The creators of the Norsemen filmed every scene in Norwegian and English successively so that the show could be shown easily to both a domestic and foreign audience.
> but it still feels to me like this idea that we will just perpetually invent new words that serve the same exact purpose to be a bit of an unconvincing assumption
We sure do. Check out some of the examples here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism_treadmill
> .. the word "fudge" ... considered a swear word? .. carries significantly less of a 'sting' to it ... feels too arbitrary
Yes, it's a swear word, and it has less of a string. It's exactly the way you write. It's good to have a variety of words to fit different situations. It's not anymore arbitrary than any other word.
> so to try and say anything conclusive about something that seems to be a purely linguistic artifact feels a bit premature.
It's not an artifact. I think it's pretty universal to all cultures. Toddlers will find "swear" words and use them when mad (usually related to bathroom activities). Kids who don't know swear words immediately try to learn some as soon as they hear any. And as far as I know every single culture has taboo words.
Most of the time the swear words stay pretty static. But then you have people who want to "liberate" them (and enjoy shocking people), without realizing they are actually neutering them.
I've seen people say that modern society is more accepting of swears. That's not what's happening, what's happening is the swears are losing their power. And of course then people find, and use, new ones. (Like the kerfuffle about the swear word in the movie Kick-Ass. The regular swears were too mainstream so they went with the strongest one they knew just for the shock value.)
I don't approve of using a swear for the shock value - use it where warranted by the situation, not to try to impress your listener. I will continue to criticize shock usage, and people will continue to scream about censorship.
This story reminds me Hit-Girl and Big Daddy from Kick-Ass movie.
An interesting note about Kick-Ass is that it's pretty widely known* that director Matthew Vaughn is planning to release an extended cut which has over 18 minutes of deleted material. I loved the movie and would definitely purchase an extended cut, but it doesn't make sense to purchase both. So until then, I don't feel too bad about renting it once and then watching a pirated copy.
It seems to me that the people who are likely to know about the upcoming extended cut are both (1) fans of the film and (2) likely to know how to get a movie via torrents. I'm betting that in the case of Kick-Ass, there is a large source of revenue that is currently untapped pending the release of the extended cut. This could certainly be a contributing factor in the abnormally ratio of downloaded copies vs. revenue.
* at least within a more technical demographic. See https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Kick-Ass_%28film%29#Home_media
In an interview Matthew Vaughn said, "There is about 18 minutes of [deleted] footage, which is really good stuff. If the film is a hit, I'll do an extended cut."
I believe this tells us a lot. The torrent crowd does not represent exactly the moviegoers audience. Lots of downloaders would never go to the movies, even if they crave a movie, it represent different age groups, different behaviours
For instance, "Kick Ass" which is largely a film designed for geeks, is #2 even though it only did $98 million at the box office. You've got to wonder why it's ahead of Inception. In the same way, "Alice in Wonderland" did $1.02 billion in 2010 but it's not on the top 10. The torrent demographic is probably the same one that'd jailbreak the iPhone or use Android more than the rest of the society. A demographic immune to marketing, which can sort out good movies from bad perhaps better than the press, but also biased towards a certain type of movies (Kick Ass, action hero etc.)