Kick-Ass Review: How Kick-Ass can the sequel be?

Sequels can be pretty difficult to pull off. Take a look at films like Back to the Future, The Matrix or Ginger Snaps and you can see that things don’t always work out. Back to the Future 2 was great, The Matrix Reloaded had its issues, and Gingers Snaps 2: Unleashed did well but was handcuffed by a lot of the things that happened in the original film. Superhero sequels can be even worse. Sometimes the original was great and the sequel just can’t measure up. Other times they surpass the original and that makes it difficult for the third film in what ultimately becomes a trilogy.

All you have to do is look at The Dark Knight, Superman 2 or Iron Man 2 for evidence of how things end up. The Dark Knight and Superman 2 were at least better than the original, whereas Iron Man 2 just didn't have what it takes. Of course, part of the reason why Iron Man 2 wasn't what it should be is because it was the backdrop to start setting up The Avengers, and if you read my review you know how I felt about that film. Then you have a film like Kick-Ass, and with the sequel shooting here in Toronto right now, I thought I would take a look back at the original to see where they could go. Kick-Ass was a good film. In an age where superhero films are coming out of the wordwork, Kick-Ass is a commentary on the superhero genre. As a big fan of the superhero genre, I think it was a necessary commentary as well.

To quote a previous blog about the importance of the superhero genre and what they stand for, superheroes are designed to be updated and reinvented for the times they live in. Most of them are not the same as they were when they were created and there are examples of various updates along the way. Superhero films are much the same. They need to examine the world we live in and speak to that. Kick-Ass is the definition of such a film. If you go looking for them, you can find instances where people dressed as superheroes are going around doing work like a realistic superhero would. I can't imagine they do much in the way of actual crime fighting, but they exist. And that is at the heart of a film like Kick-Ass. An every day guy tries to actually make it as a superhero. Unlike the real world versions that are out there, Kick-Ass does in fact do some real crime fighting. There's even a super-villain for them to face but he's a realistic super-villan for today's world.

They use a lot of the traditional building blocks of the genre to tell a new type of story with a very modern angle. It works perfectly for what they are doing because the people involved understand the superhero genre. Mark Millar after all has written for various comic books in the superhero genre and he has been very well received in everything he has done by the fans. So it's no wonder why he is doing so well with his own property. But where does that leave him to go? Can he succeed where many have failed in the past? In interviews he often talks about how he prefers not to do ongoing stories because he gets bored very quickly with them but with this he can see himself doing multiple stories. The sequel then, must be the continuation of that feeling.

Based on the details which have come out regarding Kick-Ass 2, I think he has a lot of room to grow and he might just pull off the second one as well. But that leaves a potential third film becoming ever more perilous. Will he burn out on the second installment and have nowhere to go with the third? Or is he thinking big and held something back for a trilogy? Let's hope he is because I want to see this go well for him and for the actors involved.

How Kick-Ass can the sequel be? It could be really great, but it could also fall flat much like a certain winged avenger from the first film.

Discuss: Why not superhero movies for our up and coming filmmakers?

A short while ago, I posted an article someone wrote that talked about the idea of new and upcoming filmmakers taking on superhero films as a way of financing smaller projects and whether or not that’s a good thing. Many of the details of the article suggest that having filmmakers, up and coming or not, doing superhero movies is a problem. That they should use their success to fuel more independent projects then superhero films. One of the examples given is Darren Aronofsky going from the success of Black Swan into his ultimately canceled participation in The Wolverine, a loosely based sequel to the film X-men Origins: Wolverine.

But why should that matter? If Aronofsky or any other filmmaker who takes on a superhero project is doing so because they care about the material and want to use their independent success on a superhero film, then shouldn’t we let them? Of course, if the filmmakers are only taking on these projects because of the paycheck and don’t really care about the film then I can understand having a problem with it. But the Hollywood system which is creating all these films isn’t really at fault for letting someone take on a project of that magnitude if they believe the filmmaker can do the characters justice.

After all, a superhero project does have enormous potential for the filmmaker in question, and I am not just talking about the paycheck or the box office boom that comes with it if the filmmakers do it properly. In some of my recent blog posts I have spoken about the idea of superheroes as a modern mythology, the idea that there are all kinds of disparate elements to the superhero story that can cross genres and be relevant to even non superhero fans. This has never been more true than in what I am talking about now. Consider for a moment, the idea of Superman. Some look at a character like that and just see an alien with powers and outdated ideals, but I see the ultimate immigrant story.

Superman is the modern retelling of the story of Moses. A child set among the intergalactic river to live with a new family, who grows up and develops incredible powers to set people free from the pain and suffering they go through every day. Batman is the story of Hamlet, a man struck by tragedy that swears vengeance against the person or people who destroyed his father and ends up consumed by it. Spiderman in some ways is a combination of both. The stories of Moses and Hamlet are considered by many to be universal truths. Why not then their modern equivalents?

Many comic books have dealt with a story similar to that of Black Swan, yet Aronofsky should be praised for one and looked down upon for another? This goes back to the bias or stereotype which some filmmakers have about the potential for superheroes or comic books in modern storytelling, a problem which largely comes out of the fact that these films have to come from Hollywood because they are too big to be played out anywhere else. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. To point this out, I need only to paraphrase a quote from Joss Whedon, a man who not only created one of the biggest films of all time and a monster at the box office, but during his spare time in the filming of which he directed and self-financed a film in 12 days based on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.

“The film industry has become very much about the big budget blockbuster or the small indie film, there isn’t really an in between anymore. There is no real middle ground, and I’m cool with that. I love doing both.”

And so I say, why not superhero movies for our up and coming filmmakers?

In brightest day, in blackest night, where should Green Lantern shine his light next?

I had the occasion to take a look at Green Lantern again recently through my ongoing DVD rentals for this blog and I thought I would do something a little different this time. Part of what I am going to do is review the film itself but I am also going to talk about what I think should be the next step in DC Comics and Warner Brothers attempts to get a cinematic universe off the ground, because I believe that in order to get anywhere, they do have to include Green Lantern in the process.

Recently, Zack Snyder, director of the highly anticipated Man of Steel was asked about the possibility of a bigger plan like what Marvel did with The Avengers stemming from the afore mentioned Superman movie Man of Steel. He said that at the moment Warner Brothers and DC Comics were more interested in getting their cinematic superhero characters in order before looking into something like that but that they were open to it. And with recent reports of attempts to get a Justice League movie off the ground, one can only assume that the idea of where this all might be heading is in the executive minds. But I think he was right to say that they need to get their cinematic superhero house in order first.

This is evident by taking a look at things like Superman Returns and Green Lantern, they may have been really well done but they left much to be desired from both non-fans and fans alike given their general reception. They did well in the theatres but in the world of superhero movies, doing well at the box office just isn’t good enough. You only need to look as far as Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Legend trilogy to see what it’s like to do well at the box office AND be widely praised by anyone who might go to the theatre. Green Lantern had such a problem. I thought very well of it as someone who doesn’t know the character that well but is a big fan of superheroes, but I didn’t love it. As a filmmaker, I could see many of the things that they were trying to do and in some places they succeeded, but overall the story elements just didn’t click as well as they needed to so that they could really shine.

Where I think they ultimately failed is in the use of fear as their primary driving theme. It’s a great theme as many who went to see Batman Begins will attest to, but it’s because of its use in Batman Begins that it ended up falling flat. They wanted to show that fear was not the only element or tactic that you need to use in order to be a hero, but the characters were so often bogged down by fears that were never really articulated well enough that they made a serious impact on the story. Not to mention, fear is not the only emotion that needs to be put forward when doing a Green Lantern movie. Recent years in the comics have introduced numerous other Lantern Corps based on different elements of the emotional spectrum. I am by no means suggesting that you should come out of the gate with all these different Corps in a new movie, but the elements were all there in the previous movie. There was love, hope, courage, greed, anger, compassion, and potentially even life and death.

All of these other elements took a backseat to fear, although there has been some suggestion that the others might make an appearance in future installments, as a way of in some ways seeming to compete with Batman and the powerful themes and ideals that are pervasive in Christopher Nolan’s films even if that wasn’t their intention. This was a mistake, and one they need to rectify if they are going to move beyond their fear of Batman being their only superhero at the box office.

Will power, or the will to act, is often either fueled by or creates a bi-product of emotion. If I have felt the power of love, I find the will to act out of love. If I have felt anger, I find the will to act out of anger. And often doing so leads to other emotions from which to draw strength. All these elements were in the film but were not fully realized in the story itself. So I say...

In brightest day, in blackest night, where should Green Lantern shine his light next? Into a broader emotional spectrum of themes.

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