Apparently, one of the toughest kind of movies to sequelize are ones specifically directed by Matthew Vaughn that are based from comics penned by Scottish Scottish scribe Mark Millar. Don’t believe me? Well, even Vaughn himself had problems matching the good natured anarchy of his own Kingsman: The Secret Service, but back in 2013 we got our first example in the form of Jeff Wadlow’s Kick-Ass 2.
The first Kick-Ass was a hand grenade of irreverence hurled into the midst of the comic book movie with perfect timing that took the cynical brutality of Millar’s impressively vicious story and then mixed it with the vibrant, optimism of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, filing down those oh-so-rough edges to find a perfect balance of black comedy and day-glow heroics. However, for his comic sequel, Millar went even darker, ruthlessly pushing the boundaries of good taste leaving the inevitable movie adaptation with something of a quandary – how far into Millar’s bloody nihilism could the film go and still retain that sense of cheeky innocence that the first film had, even when a prebubesent was using the c-word and carving up monsters with a spear.
Four years after the events of Kick-Ass, we find Dave Lizewski bored after retiring as barely competent hero Kick-Ass after blowing up New York crime boss Frank D’Amico with a bazooka. Yearning to pull on his green wetsuit and get back on the streets, he approaches the similarly retired Hit-Girl – aka. now fifteen year old ex-vigilante Mindy Macready – to train him to be a far more imposing do-gooder and Mindy, still in the thrall of her father, the deceased crime fighter Big Daddy, agrees.
However, Mindy’s new guardian, Marcus figures out that she’s back on the verge of slaughtering criminals in the name of good and manages to put a stop to it which also causes Dave’s secret life to cause him to split up with his girlfriend. Desperate to get back to his old ways as Kick-Ass, Dave casts a wide net and subsequently finds himself joining ragtag super group, Justice Forever, which is run by the grizzled Colonal Stars And Stripes and features such homemade heroes such as Dr. Gravity, Night Bitch and Battle Guy.
However, as Kick-Ass’ social circle grows while Mindy starts trying to live a normal life as a fifteen year old school girl, a threat, long since brewing finally rears its head in the form of an embittered Chris D’Amico who, after the fatal tanning accident of his mother, vows to avenge his father by adopting the persona of villainous The Motherfucker and vows to become the first ever actual super villain. Amassing a gang of similarly colourful criminals, he not only wants to bring the city down for no other reason than that’s what super villains are supposed to do, he desperately wants Kick-Ass well and truly murdered. With Mindy out of the game, can Dave and his new cronies possibly hope to stand against the evil force known as…. the Toxic Mega Cunts?
Balance and tone are vital for any comic book adaptation – let alone one that sees a loving father shoot his own daughter in the chest with a handgun in order for her to experience what it feels like to take a hit while wearing kevlar – but as Kick-Ass went through its deranged tale, director Matthew Vaughn managed to forge an incredibly delicate path that not only kept Miller’s malevolent sense of humour intact, but presented it in a way that was oddly palatable and surprisingly warm. However, when it came to Kick-Ass 2, it seemed that even Vaughn himself was too savvy to try and tackle it, instead side-stepping to concentrate of filming Miller’s similarly outlandish Kingsman and leaving the near insurmountable task of wrestling the story into presentable shape to Jeff Wardlow instrad. Needless to say, he failed.
The first stumbling block is that now we’re out of origin story territory, its main character, the put upon every-teen Dave Lizewski, basically has nothing to do except be our bland surrogate in a world that’s way more interesting than he is. With nowhere for his character to go – save to obtain a slightly larger sense of responsibility – he is immediately eclipsed by virtually every other arc the movie has, even ones that are rudely cut short long before the end credits roll.
Despite Chloë Grace Moretz’s Hit-Girl being the first movie’s show stopping scene stealer, the movie stubbonly refuses to put her entirely front and centre, sidelining her with a comeing of age plot that plays like Mean Girls but with involuntary spurts of liquid shit. While the story does it’s best to keep her retired until the final reel, that means the real fun is handed over to Christopher-Mintz Plasse’s Chris D’Amico, who gets to chew the scenery as the utterly over the top Motherfucker, but even though he’s consistently responsible for some of the films most noticable moments, it’s also here where the film struggles to maintain that delicate balance the first movie managed to hold so well. In the comic, the Motherfucker consecrated his supervillain status by raping Dave’s girlfriend with the chilling line “Time to see what evil dick tastes like.”. However, while the movie mercifully stops short of recreating this (Chris’ advances are halted by a handy spot of impotence), it doesn’t change the fact that the film is attempting to score a big laugh out of an attempt of sexual assault. Elsewhere, other serious moments simply don’t have anything close to the impact of the death of Nic Cage’s Big Daddy with the doomed good guys simply not being well written enough to earn it.
There’s good moments here to be sure. Jim Carrey’s Colonal Stars & Stripes is a fun – if random – distraction, even if he famously removed his support from the film due to its level of violence. Elsewhere, the Motherfucker’s insistence on naming his underlings with the most racially insensitive names he can (Black Death, Genghis Carnage), raises many a questionable chuckle, but for the most part, Kick-Ass 2 remains something of a massively uneven mess. Neither funny enough to overcome its nastier moments, nor edgy enough to be truly funny, it’s kind of stuck in an obnoxious, noisy limbo that tries to buy laughs with random bouts of random gore or scatological set pieces.
In the comic series, Millar’s smash mouth odyssey continued over multiple arcs, but thanks to this movie’s non-performance, the movie adventures of Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl ended right here. It’s a shame because I truly believe the first film is a legitimate jewel in the crown of the comic book movie, however, due to the frankly impossible task of wrangling the more extreme elements of Millar’s universe, Kick-Ass 2 got its ass well and truly kicked.
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