Superheroes vs. Slashers
When we think of comic-book superheroes, most of us who grew up in
the last century think of mild-mannered reporters, or perhaps urbane
millionaires with a secret identity, who fight crime heroically. They
collar the bad guys and deliver them to justice. Even the supervillains
they'd fight always seemed to escape so they could resurface in a later
issue, and the struggle of Good vs. Evil continues.
That is not what a customer will find if he
makes the mistake of taking in the new movie crudely titled "Kick-Ass."
The concept seems innocent enough - teenage comic-book devotee with
absolutely no powers puts on a goofy wetsuit and tries to be a hero.
But that's just the first few minutes.
What follows next is an entirely different movie,
a gory slasher film, except the vigilante mass murderer is an
11-year-old girl in a costume that included a purple wig and a plaid
private-school skirt. This little "Hit Girl" doesn't play by any moral
rules, however. In her first mass-murder scene, she even double-spears
a prostitute armed with only a broken booze bottle.
Is it any wonder that Hollywood and their cynical
media surrogates loved this film and openly cheered for its success?
Los Angeles Times writer Steve Zeitchik foresaw a massive sensation in
this grotesque and wildly implausible sixth-grade Lizzie Borden
scenario: "We rarely get in the business of predicting sensations, but
it's hard not to feel that something is in the air...Something bigger,
that is, then even some of the pre-release hype suggests. And not just
in the fanboy world, where it's of course already huge." So confident
was he of his views that he predicted the "stylishly bloody" romp would
spur a big opening weekend, and the film "would keep the cultural heat
on long after."
Times film critic Kenneth Turan agreed. "This
shrewd mixture of slick comic-book mayhem, unmistakable sweetness and
ear-splitting profanity is poised to be a popular culture phenomenon
because of its exact sense of the fantasies of the young male fanboy
population."
But
that's not what happened at the box office. The "shrewd" people took a
super-beating. The shock merchants ended up shocked. On the first
weekend, it finished barely ahead of the family cartoon "How to Train
Your Dragon," and then by the second weekend, it finished a distant
fifth, behind the smash-hit dragon cartoon.
John Q. Public's reaction? The movie is pure junk.
How is it that allegedly intelligent people in
Hollywood's shoe-shining circle, people who must have passed
grade-school mathematics, haven't figured out that a gory R-rated movie
featuring an 11-year-old doesn't have great odds of becoming a
blockbuster? The movie about the dragons is currently grossing more
than $180 million, which amounts to five times more than "Kick-Ass."
The L.A. Times was not alone. The Lionsgate film
studio also clearly expected a blockbuster, since the film ends its
ridiculous festival of death (including one bloody implosion in a
human-size microwave oven) with the bold suggestion of a sequel.
Embarrassed by the movie's failure to bring the
"cultural heat," Zeitchik of the Times tried to defend his bold
proclamations and ridiculous predictions. The movie wasn't really a
failure, he claimed. It was a "genuine success story" because the movie
was produced and financed independently when no studio would touch it,
and it would eventually turn a profit. This is like predicting the
Dodgers would win the World Series, and when they don't, they're still
successful because they didn't finish in last place.
Much of Zeitchik's self-defense sounded like he
was disappointed that a culture war didn't break out. Parents groups
weren't painted as cardboard villains to spur ticket sales. Middle
America was still too backward, he found. Theater owners in western
North Carolina wouldn't even spell out the A-word in the title on the
marquee. He seemed disappointed that the 16-and-under crowd didn't lie
about their ages in droves to see the R-rated movie. Sadly for him, "it
turns out that large swaths of the country may not crave the
shock-worthy, at least not the overt kind."
Yep. Junk is junk is junk.
Zeitchik also discovered that movie audiences
weren't ready for the superhero movie to be "subverted" for laughs. In
other words, he discovered that people want heroes who fight with some
sense of honor, not merely a dead-eyed taste for revenge and "slick
mayhem." Most people aren't sick enough to think it's red-faced funny
to see a hallway of people get slaughtered by a little girl to a cheeky
teen punk anthem.
We still want out heroes to be heroic.
Even if that's so yesterday.
