Kicking Comic Movies in the Ass
Comic book movie season has officially kicked off! To start the festivities, Kick Ass was released on Friday, April 16th – last week. As I’ve touched upon previously, these movies come packaged with a sort of comic book police. Their sworn duty? To make certain that the movie does the source literature justice. These comic cops would not be 100% happy with Kick Ass.
First, a quick synopsis: Kick Ass (both the comic and the movie) is about a high school kid who is so bored with his less-than-stellar life, that he decides to get into the super hero business. Armed with nothing more than a couple of batons, a taser, teal tights and good intentions, Kick Ass hits the streets – and boy, are they ready to hit back.
Where was I? Oh yeah, comic cops. The creators of the movie took some serious liberties with how a lot of the story goes; from heavily modified plot points, to minor differences like how a fight progresses. It’s clear to me that this movie was not aimed to please the traditionalists. Being a sort of traditionalist myself, I have to tell you that I didn’t mind any of these divergences from the source material. When actively comparing the two, most of the plot remains unchanged – it’s how things happen that really got modified. It was like watching an alternate universe version of Kick Ass, so I had a great time with it. I was totally content with having the same characters do some different things in their cinematic outing.
Without ruining the original feel of the comic; the creators of the Kick Ass movie have achieved what I believe to be one of the best comic book movies to date. Let’s be real, who wants to see the same story over and over again? Do you have a problem when the creator of a movie that originates from literature take heavy liberties?
