Okay, unlike the previous adaptation of Mark Millar’s comic work; Wanted, comic fans can expect a fairly faithful adaptation of his work this time around. For those of you who haven’t read this limited series (and you damn well better get off your butt and pick it up soon!), Kick Ass is about a kid named Dave who decides to put on a wetsuit he bought online and goes out to fight crime. With less than stellar results; since he manages to get stabbed and hit by a car on his first outing. It’s not until he gets into the middle of a fight between one guy and three others that his exploits are put onto youtube and he becomes an overnight sensation.
While the movie is pretty accurate, there are some differences between the comic and movie that we should make mention of.
Getting the Girl:
In the comic, Dave doesn’t get the girl, in fact by the end of it. Since he pretended to be gay to hang out with him, she finds him despicable and gets her new boyfriend to beat his ass and sends photo of herself performing fellatio on him to Dave. In the movie, Dave reveals his identity to her at which point she throws herself at him and they become a couple who do the nasty at every opportunity. This change doesn’t really bother me, I think it works both ways but they probably changed it for the movie audience where everyone wants to see the boy get the girl.
Origins of Hit Daddy and Hit Girl:
Comic origins of this dynamic duo portray the father of Mindy as being some guy who just wanted to have an exciting life and made up his own Punisher-esque backstory while selling his collection of Marvel back issues to fund his Mob killing spree. In the movie, his origins are actually pretty Punisher-esque with Nicholas Cage’s character being a former cop turning down a bribe by the film’s villain played by Mark Strong and as a result has his life ruined by being sent to prison.
The ending sequence:
The climax of the comic book involved Hit-Girl taking a hit of cocaine and going on a drug fuelled rampage, while Kick-Ass took his sticks and pretty much pummel the crap out of Red Mist, of course the movie has to stretch this out a bit and bump up the action a little bit. Though in the movie version they probably thought a little girl doing drugs would be too much for the big screen. Luckily instead, we get an extended hallway gunplay scene of Hit Girl tearing down a corridor dual wielding pistols like John Woo and when pinned down, Kick Ass flies to her rescue literally with a flipping jetpack that contains dual chain-gun action and promptly kills off the remaining soldiers. Oh yeah, that’s different too, unlike the comic; Kick Ass actually kills people!
Personally, I think the differences worked and made the story all the better for it. There was so much to love about this movie. From the over the top killing action sequences of Hit Girl ninja-flipping all over the place to the bad ass killing spree of Big Daddy when he kills an entire warehouse of John Damico’s mobsters while taking them down exactly the way we imagine Batman would. You know…if Batman decided to kill his enemies instead of crippling them. A great accompanying soundtrack, well written dialogue to fill in the blanks and there weren’t really any slow parts to the movie where you just want them to get it over with so you can get to the good stuff (I’m looking at you, Spider-Man 3! Flipping emo-Parker). I hereby give this movie 8 out of 10 on the awesome movie scale. 1 being Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four, 5 being Fantastic Four 2 and 10 being the Dark Knight.
David Diep is a news editor at ComicBookDaily and an assistant manager at Big B Comics in Hamilton, Ontario. By day he works but by night, he dresses up in pajamas and goes to sleep.
