If that sort of thing appeals to you, I think you’ll love this movie.

OK, I’m sold.

Haven’t seen this one yet, but you make it sound a lot more interesting than the trailers do.

Re: Rorshach, I saw the movie before reading the graphic novel, but in the book Rorshach comes off much more as the only “moral” member of the Watchmen. He may be a psychopath, but he still demands justice. I assume his initial voice over about whispering “no” to a humanity that begs him to save it was meant semi-ironically in conjunction with his later refusal to become an agent of mass murder as a means of uniting the planet.

Wow. That sounds NOTHING like the movie the trailers are promising. The trailers have convinced me not to bother, unless I totally want a popcorn movie to pay no attention to or laugh at with friends.  I might even consider seeing this film now.

And Egnu, I think Rorshachs ambiguity as more true to fixed morality while still being an appalling character is definitely more effective in the book than the movie.

So regarding Hit Girl, it’s as if Lubna were Ranxerox?

European comics were waaaay ahead of the American curve on this.

Geek snobbery is so cute. 

I don’t think Rorshach is supposed to be an admirable character.  I don’t really think there’s a hero in “Watchmen”, so looking for one misses the point.

Oh, geek snobbery is adorable.

But seriously, the false mirror of reality that supers classically represented is what turned me off of them after childhood. Watchmen is more powerful if you were still emotionally invested in Spider-Man when you first encountered it. I didn’t stay interested past the Silver Age, and so only experienced Alan Moore and Grant Morrison in retrospect. I spent the ‘70s discovering Tolkien, Le Guin and Asimov instead.

There is a Thai movie from a couple of years ago called “Chocolate”, which sounds similar (young hit-girl takes out the bad guys).  The main character is a 14-year-old autistic girl, her parents are former gang members, and she’s out to get the money the bad guys owe so her mom can get cancer treatments.  If “Kick-Ass” is your kind of movie and you don’t mind subtitles, check it out.  Martial arts heaven with no special effects.

What you say about the young-girl-as-killer theme holds true with “Chocolate” as well.  On one hand, she literally kicks serious ass.  On the other, she’s supposed to be giggling with her friends, not killing people.

I wonder what it says about me that I didn’t even blink at the notion that an 11-year-old girl would be slicing her way through a whole lot of bad guys while swearing a lot. (Possibly because that’s the kind of thing my 11-year-old self dreamed of being able to do.) It didn’t occur to me that it would bother some reviewers until I saw Roger Ebert tweeting about it.

I wasn’t trying to be a snob, I was just asking for opinions from people who had more experience in the genre. I wasn’t trying to say that Rorshach was a “hero”, just that he came off better and more complex in the book, whereas the movie mostly treated him as a nut. The book (I htink this was left out of the movie) seemed to make a direct comparison between the Nixon admin’s acceptance of collateral damage and the Watchmen’s actual creation of that destruction, whereas to Rorshach, it was all unjustified murder. The watchmen seemed detached (and consider themselves superior to) humanity, but Rorshcah actually acknowledges the vuilence he inflicts and (in his own way) takes responsibility for it.

Or, what Llelldorin said.

being a combination of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Rorschach from “Watchmen”.

This is possibly the most convincing movie recommendation I have ever seen.

I loved this movie.  Going in, I was worried that Hit Girl was going to be played strictly for laughs, but I found myself, as you described, alternately cheering her on and wishing she could have a normal childhood.  Likewise, I found myself rooting for Big Daddy, then horrified at what this obviously insane man was doing to his child. 

Without being too spoilery, I appreciated all the real moments in the movie:  Kickass curling up into a fetal position after meeting Hit Girl and Big Daddy, the way Hit Girl could deal out death and carnage and then hit a snag and get this look on her face like she was searching for some parental guidance.

I also enjoyed how Kick Ass, even though he wasn’t the most effective of superheroes, TRIED and showed a very real sense of his limits.  Sometimes there’s a lot of power in giving a damn, in realizing that you do have the power to make a difference.  The way he not once, but twice, tried to call the authorities instead of wanting to stop the crime all by himself and then the way he handled getting his ass kicked, which was to work harder at what he wanted.  Even that brief scene of him trying to do sit-ups made me smile, because it shows a guy who yes, was clearly living in his own fantasy world, but was willing to work hard to achieve that fantasy.

Yeah,  I disagree with her read on Hit Girl.  She picked up that they’re riffing on “Watchmen”, so why not then apply that lens to the girl?  I think what the writers were doing was reminding the audience of how much of a fantasy the superhero is, by making that person the person our society deems the weakest among us: little girls.  And by doing so, they remind us that the distance between grown man and superhero and the distance between little girl and superhero is actually equidistant—-neither will ever really be a badass killing machine who can fly or whatever.  It’s something that superhero fantasies usually obscure by casting the people commonly understood as powerful—-grown men—-into the role.  Or equating power discovery with puberty and coming of age for men.

i guess because race isn’t mentioned in most of the critiques i’ve seen for this movie, the film manages to erase the problematic racial stuff like the movie adaption of ‘wanted’ did.

I hated the comic with the fire of a thousand suns, and the movie doesn’t sound any better.

I also have to say that once the word “distasteful” comes up, I recoil.  That something is distasteful doesn’t tell you anything about its artistic value one way or another.  Distasteful can and often is used in service of art.  It’s funny to me that when you put distasteful in an art museum, most people get it, but in the movies, it’s still considered a damnable offense.

The big difference to the comic (based on a few key scenes I saw on a flip-through of the collection—I’m not a Millar fan) seems to be that the film treats its characters, especially the lead, with a lot more sympathy.

Well, I’ve read the comic book series, and the book seems to emphasis the kooky crazy loserness of the guy who wanted to be a superhero.  Sort of an anti-Tyler Durden.  The little girl in the comic book is a perepheral character that’s supposed to highlight, in the Watchman sense, how fucked up the main character was.  If the girl was the main character in the movie, then it’s pretty darn different.

Foxling @16 gave out enough spoilers for me to know I’ll never want to see it.  Like V for Vendetta, it sounds like the movie people subverted the book’s message.

Maybe.  But I think it’s interesting she buys into the idea that there’s something not-distasteful about presenting a grown man in that fantasy.

I saw this last night, and while I understand why people would (with some justification) use the word “distasteful,” I think that the movie was simply lazy, and I disliked it on that basis.  Without picking apart and giving spoilers for the entire film, I will just say that I am not impressed when a movie rips off its romantic plot from Three to Tango (or, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry although I didn’t see that), I am unimpressed.  I also couldn’t really cheer for Hit Girl because at the end of every fight, she ended up a bit of a damsel in distress.  If she is just (or mainly) supposed to be an 11-year-old girl, then those endings make sense, but IMO that doesn’t really fit well with the rest of the film.  A lot of the movie seemed to be edgy for the sake of being edgy, which I don’t find enjoyable.  When a high school girl volunteers at a needle exchange and the worst thing that has ever happened to her is a jackass ex-bf, then the universe - corrupt cops, voyeuristic bystanders and all - is probably either a pretty nice place or pretty poorly (lazily) thought out. 

Finally (after being more nitpicky than I originally intended), what the hell happened to Red Mist’s mom?  Since none of the other characters in the movie still have mothers, did the movie makers just forget she existed?

Other than better stars and production values, I am not sure Kick-Ass offered much more/different than the ______ Movie films.

Damn, I previewed and still missed the duplicated unimpressed.  It works though, I was majorly unimpressed.

I’m was pretty excited for the movie, so I read the comic today. It’s ... well, let’s just say I hope that the movie takes a lot of the ideological arguments out of the story. (Like, for example, the part where Hit-Girl describes democrats as people who celebrate killing babies, and react to the death of a “serial killer” [implied to be a doctor who does abortions] with a candlelight vigil.) Some very pro-anarchy stuff, not to mention some incidental racism and homophobia thrown on in.

Of course, it’s “helped” by the fact that (SPOILERS) at the end, everything that’s happened up to that point is condemned. The girl’s father (who taught her everything she knew, about both democrats and becoming a real serial killer herself) is proven to be fucking crazy and not a good source of truth or wisdom, and the girl learns how to lead a “normal” life (while still being a bad-ass). So, that’s a good lesson, but it’s ... not really emphasized. It sounds like the film emphasizes the fucked-up-ness of the girl’s former life more, and that’s good. The comic almost makes it too cartoonish ... yes, there’s a shitload of blood, but it’s still just a drawing, and the art style isn’t as photo-realistic as some (and obviously not as photo-realistic as a movie).

(END SPOILERS)

I still enjoyed the comic because ... well, it was a great story, and I didn’t see the ending coming in advance, so it definitely kept me interested. I could have done without the problematic ideological messages, though, and they didn’t add very much to the story. I’m guessing the movie does away with them entirely if Amanda enjoyed it so much, and that’s good. Thanks, Hollywood, for actually improving something in the adaptation ...

The big difference to the comic (based on a few key scenes I saw on a flip-through of the collection—I’m not a Millar fan) seems to be that the film treats its characters, especially the lead, with a lot more sympathy.

The big difference I’ve seen from the comics based off the previews is that in the movie the characters are
portrayed by actors, instead of douchey androids whose only emotional settings are “smug” and “sneer”.

Still not enough to make me actually pay to see it, but probably worth a watch once I can do so knowing Mark Millar won’t get a thin dime out of my doing so.

Yeah, like Dan the only thing holding me back at this point is the fact that Millar might find all this encouraging (when it sounds like it’s enjoyable because he didn’t have a direct hand in it.) I don’t mind John Romita Jr. getting rich, though, so I probably will at least get the eventual blu-ray. Plus one of my favorite critics, Walter Chaw, loved it.

Swearing’s not a problem. Child in violent situations a bit of an issue. One thing that pissed me off in the Harry Potter books is how none of the adults really *did* anything about kids being in potentially fatal situations. (Quidditch: a fun game with hardly any fatalities lately!)
But I am usually put off by ultra-violence, and, sadly(?), I want my heroes to be good.

Haven’t seen this one yet, but you make it sound a lot more interesting than the trailers do.

The trailers do not do it justice - it’s not a kiddy movie, and Hit-Girl is a fucked up little sociopath. This was quite clear when you consider who she kills in her first encounter with Kick Ass.

Then again, I’m a fan of Ennis’s “The Boys”, so fucked up litle sociopaths are what I’ve come to expect from my superheroes.

Just saw the movie and really liked it. Obviously, of course, in any movie it’s hard to simultaneously mock the super hero conventions of violence and portray the “heroic” perpetrators as violent vigilantes without also glorifying it. You can’t watch Hit Girl fight without thinking, “hey, she can really kick ass!” You can see Nicolas Cage as a crazy guy messing up his daughter or a charmingly eccentric father whose family life is just a bit off the beaten track.

You can see Nicolas Cage as a crazy guy messing up his daughter or a charmingly eccentric father whose family life is just a bit off the beaten track.

Generally, slicing up hookers is considered a Bad Thing.  Teaching your kid to slice up hookers should also be considered a Bad Thing, don’t you think?

I avoided The Watchmen for a long time.  Even though there a lot of good graphic novels out there, the fact that it ended up on Time magazines 100 novels of the century list convinced me that it must be mostly hype. Couldn’t possibly be that good.  But after the movie came out, I decided to check out the graphic novel first before I saw the movie.  The graphic novel is quite good but I wouldn’t classify it as a classic.  And for me, like most viewers, I thought it lost steam in the second half.  But I think the movie did as good as job as possible.  The Tales of the Black Freighter part would been have impossible to integrate into a movie version and most likely would have just been more gruesome than most people would want to see while eating popcorn.  And once you get rid of the Tales of the Black Freighter, then you lose part of the set up for the phony alien attack, which for whatever reason, seemed more plausible to me in the graphic novel than it ever would be in a movie.

I always thought of The Watchmen as sort of a novel of ideas, in graphic novel format.  Each character, in addition to being a realistic character, was also intended to be a spokesperson for a certain set of philosophical or political ideas.  The Comedian was sort of a Hobbesian who believed that mankind is inherently violent and power hungry, and needs a Leviathan to keep things in check (and of course, Leviathan is not subject to the rules of the system—if Leviathan were subject to constraints, then we are right back at the state of nature in the Hobbesian view).  Night Owl and Ozymandias represented two different kinds of liberalism (not portrayed in a flattering light in accordance with Alan Moore’s anarchism).  Night Owl was an empathetic character who wanted to do good but was hobbled by his own insecurities, doubts, and empathy, even for those who would not extend the same to him.  Ozymandias was portrayed as a sort of behavioralist control freak who wanted to make a better world, but the price of that would be manipulating people and denying them the freedom to make their own choices, whether that be for good or ill, as well as having to break a lot of eggs to make his omelette.  Basically, the typical right wing stereotype of liberals as people who desire power and control as an end in itself.

Not agreeing with this depiction of liberals as either Alan Colmes (Nite Owl) trying to empathize with Hannity or B. H. Skinner (Ozymandias).  Just saying that’s what they were intended to be in the novel.  And part of the that has to do with the fact that Moore only allows us to see these characters, as they are seen through each other’s eyes. Rorschach narrates most of the story.  And his viewpoint affects the whole story.

Egnu,

Ok, now back to Rohrschach.  He’s definitely not a hero, or even a moral character, in the traditional sense of that word.  He’s a deeply screwed up character who has somehow managed to make his own deep screwed upness work in a deeply screwed up world.  Rohrschach’s main virtue is that he is not apathetic (he is not Doc Manhattan as everyone else, except Ozymandias, perceives him to be, nor the Comedian who simply regards the entire human race as sort of elaborate cosmic practical joke).  The novel, as opposed to the movie, gave a background to his mask that involved the Kitty Genovese murder.  The reason why Rorschach isn’t a hero is that he does what he does almost a matter of compulsion, without empathy for the people he helps or any empathy for the people he hurts. Oh, and I forgot about his lawyer.  His lawyer is a good man.  But Rorschach views him with contempt because he views him as psychologically weak.

Oops, goofed.  That was Rorcschach’s psychiatrist, not his lawyer.  But I’m sure he would have liked his lawyer even less.

I’m just trying to wrap my head around plotholes (SPOILER) like the mob boss having a website set up to stream the murders (with his goons hamming it up for the camera) of BD and KA live. Which is also simultaneously broadcast on major news networks. Seriously? That only makes sense if he WANTS to be caught and his crime empire to collapse.

If he wanted to send a message, why not impale them on a flagpole for people to find in the morning? Or make them sleep with the fishes?

There’s a huge, huge difference between moral and admirable. Rorschach remains true to his internal (and completely insane) moral code throughout the book, and is the only character than can be said to have done so.

Erm, Dr. Manhattan? He represents dispassionate science, and he does not change his mind in any significant way.

He also slips in the only explicit line about Moore’s own left-anarchist philosophy (as an anarchist myself I appreciated that line but it’s a bit cheeky for Moore to put it in the mouth of the one character that is basically a stand-in for the omniscient objective observer). When Adrian asks him to vindicate him by saying the end was worth it, he says that nothing ever ends (the lack of distinction between means and ends, as revolution is perpetual, and thus the subsequent necessity of means being themselves always in line with our philosophy, is a basic left-anarchist point).

99.998% of the time, Rorshach is a psychotic monster. At the very end of the story, though, when confronted with Ozymandias’s plan, precisely the same traits make him the one character who reacts even vaguely heroically.

Rorschach is *pathetic*. He agrees with the necessity of preserving the secret of Adrian’s plan but his slavish adherence to his black & white objectivist philosophy means he is *forced* to denounce it to the world. That’s why he snivels and begs for John to kill him. Because he *wants to die*. It’s the only solution he found to his dilemna in which he preserves humanity from apocalypse while not breaking his own moral code. He’s a *coward*, unable to deal with the complexity of reality outside his Manichean view. This interpretation is in fact even more apparent in the way it is played in the movie.

I have not seen it yet, but with people bringing up the watchmen I had to interject.  The watchmen is 20 years out of touch and unless you’re around 40 most of the deeper cultural dealings are missed.  I read it in my early 20s.  I liked Rorschach, he represents “good” in the purest sense.  But the reality is that Night Owl & Silk Spectre represent the realistic good.  The movie never can deal with the realities the book deals in.  Instead it strips it to simply the stereotypes.  I’ll have to catch kick-ass this week sometime.

Yeah, some things take to comics better and some to movies better.  Because this movie didn’t get to lavish attention on how misogynistic and fucked up Hit Girl was - the comic was really too long, honestly, and at some point you just can’t go on reading it anymore.  But the movie is shorter, and gets to be over in two hours.

Yeah, my earlier post was incorrect because apparently I stopped reading before the end.  Without regret, I might add.

Samus, there’s not a lot of political ranting, but nor is it hard to grasp that Big Daddy is a right wing extremist.  The one thing the culture wars have done is create a whole bunch of easy signifiers about political identification.  The second you see the proud weapons cache that dad and daughter have, you realize they’re whiny wingnut types who think the government is soft on crime and probably have spent time with Blackwater.

I’m just trying to wrap my head around plotholes (SPOILER) like the mob boss having a website set up to stream the murders (with his goons hamming it up for the camera) of BD and KA live. Which is also simultaneously broadcast on major news networks. Seriously? That only makes sense if he WANTS to be caught and his crime empire to collapse.

It may have been too subtle for a lot of people, but this I took to be more evidence of the fundamental right wingnuttery of the vigilantes.  Think of the war bloggers who watch every video Al Qaeda or related guerrilla or terrorist organizations puts out of killing or torturing captured prisoners, in order to feel brave and manly for not liking people who would do that. 

So when Hit Girl comes in and kills all the bad guys and saves the day, we’re getting a visual echo of what every war blogger dreams about himself doing at night—-the video, the torture, the saving with high grade weapons technology.

Or is it awesome BECAUSE it is fucked up?

Haven’t read the comic, but I’ll probably go see the movie.

Thom, I’ve also always been baffled. My best explanation is that Rorschach is a fascinating and compelling character, so for many people, he is their favorite Watchman. Perhaps some people can’t handle their favorite character also being a psychopath, so they try to “rewrite” him back into being Batman.

There’s an excellent interview with Alan Moore where he talks about how they created Rorschach: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKebCtCTbCA&feature=related

On the topic of “butthurt,” as guessed it actually is homophobic; see for example
NOT WORK SAFE http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Butthurt NOT WORK SAFE. Also, “It was invented at least 100 years ago by Vlad the Impaler when he went crazy from living in a time without the internets,” for those of you who were curious about the term’s origin.

Aaaand that last part was supposed to go on the previous post. My apologies for the non sequitur.

I think that we, the viewers, tend to accept that there is a sort of “comic book morality” going on whenever we consume a comic book/movie. In that moral universe, having a single-minded focus on bashing bad guys is considered “good.” Raising your child to be a superhero, even if that kid is a fanatical killer on closer inspection, ends up seeming pretty exciting (don’t you wish your childhood was like that?). Big Daddy’s arsenal comes across as something that’s pretty cool rather than the sort of thing you would expect to find in the HQ of the Hutaree militia. And it’s hard to break out of that moral universe when you watch that kind of movie, despite the fact that the narrator is trying to stress that the world is “just like ours.”

That’s why Rorschach comes across as admirable rather than that asshole right-wing psychopath you can’t stand being around.

  But because Rorschach adhere so rigidly to such wicked values, he is an illustration of why that sort of rigidity is, in itself, not heroic.

Hm. In a certain sense, it would have been better to portray that where Rorschach more explicitly kills an innocent person or lets someone die because that’s what his value system demands. Certainly he probably would have been better off lying to Ozymandias about his willingness to keep his mouth shut about the squid/S.Q.U.I.D. and then tell the truth later, but that comes across more as tragic rather than disgusting.

Kick-Ass is a simple story about a question that gets answered in two ways.  The question is “Why doesn’t anyone become a superhero?”  The answers are the two friends’ response that he’d get killed and the fact that it can make someone insane (or more insane.)

Loved that Nicholas Cage channeled Adam West as he did this.  Loved the violence.  Loved the hapless goons, the teddy bear, Spirit 3, overt and covert John Woo references, the brief use of the Christian Bale Batman voice, that the gay stuff to be handled in a decent way, and the fact that a good R-rated movie gets made now and then.  Loved the use of “cunt” in the British sense (which is a very rude “dude”.)

The vigilante question can be argued over and over: is police-like power in the hands of those who are willing to use it a good thing or a bad thing?  The answer will always be “Yes.”  People want to be safe, and following the rules can’t always work.  It’s the old argument about Safety versus Freedom, Order and Chaos, and Patience against Right Now!  Superheroes take that to extremes, and extreme superheroes (11-year-old ninjas, faceless and unwielding moralists) take that further.

Just had to say, I enjoyed Watchmen, for about the fist half; then it was okay a bit longer, but totally blew the last 20-30 minutes. Sigh.

#51 stogoe,

The bad guys are like a Benneton ad of ethnic badguys, but most of their thuggery is about business suits and handguns rather than Italian accents and so forth.  I kind of thought of Kick-Ass himself as pretty ethnic for his glasses and curly hair and name that ends in ski, so it doesn’t seem like he or the movie would get a racist seal of approval.  Probably the most stereotypical portrayal is that of the people in the waiting room of the needle-exchange program, and most of those guys looked white.  Stereotypical junkies, but white.

It features many stereotypes: a nerd, a girlfriend, a man done wrong, a corrupt cop, a good cop, a son who wants to please his father, nerdy friends, a girl forced to do things no girl should do, gun-toting goombahs, street thugs, a clueless media, Batman, a bazooka, a cool car, betrayal, redemption, and a big-ass clue that are plans for a sequel.  It’s certainly not about some white dude putting on a hood and beating up ethnic stereotypes, but it’s in there if you look for it.

Well, having read the comic and seen the film, I thought the film was an entertaining popcorn flick nothing more nothing less. There certainly wasn’t the slightest bit of depth or meaning to it and it would be pointless looking for it. As for the book, well I’m not much of a Millar fan (Wanted, especially was rancid whether or not it was sincere) but I preferred it. The characters felt more like real people, and were all portrayed as deeply screwed up individuals which actually made a lot more sense in terms of the story. As with Wanted, a lot of the darker ambiguities were flattened out for the movie so the audience wouldn’t have to ask themselves any difficult questions, eg. movie Big Daddy was an ex-cop who wanted revenge against the mob for killing his wife, as opposed to an ex-accountant who used the whole thing as a quest for meaning after his wife’s death and funded the whole farrago from rare comic books. The characters are simultaneously more well-rounded and damaged and that feeds into the concept of their vigilantism as a natural next step from fantasy to wish fulfillment.

As for Watchmen, I loved the book and thought the film was underrated. I could write an essay but won’t bother boring everyone, suffice to say Rorshach always struck me as part of Moore’s motley crew of frustrated sexual deviants. Someone who associated crime with sex as part of a greater consequence of free expression, and so was a prime candidate for the small-scale practice of freelance fascism while simultaneously respecting the law enough not to try and circumvent it wholescale. Someone like Adrian Veidt on the other hand, saw the crimefighting element as more of an expression of his own genius. The fact that he’d operated on a greater level inevitably led to his trying to cure the world’s ills in one fell, fatal swoop. Rorschach, and Nite Owl for that matter, is someone caught up in a situation too big for him, and in a world where those with power are responsible for deaths or potential deaths on such a mass scale, it’s easier to see his brand of justice as the more heroic, probably because it fits into the black and white ideas with which we approach comics and these kinds of stories in general.

Okay, reporting back after having seen Kick-ass. It is a beautifully done movie, and I would recommend you see it unless you are Zack Snyder, because in that case it would make you sob at your directorial inadequacies.

I read a review that said Hit Girl is the actual protagonist of the movie, and Kick Ass just provides the incident that sparks the beginning of her story.

Once I read that, I decided that ok, maybe I would watch this after all.

Oh, and as for the end of Watchmen, it’s not that Rorshach accepts Adrian’s arguments about why nobody should tell the world about what really happened; it’s that, when Dr. Manhattan makes it clear that he won’t be allowed to tell people, he rips off his mask to make sure that before Jon kills him, he’ll have to look him in the eyes.

And Rorshach always struck me as being based as much on Ditko creation Mr. A as his more familiar character The Question.