I finally got around to watching Kick-Ass and, having had the opportunity to read the comic not long ago, the movie was an enlightening experience¹. Spoilers for the movie and the comic follow.

Tonally, this movie took a lot of the more cynical moments of the comic and softened them. I don’t know if the movie needed to remove all of those little touches, but there are some that probably had to be made. For example, in the comic Big Daddy and Hit Girl’s mob crusade is a total sham; Hit Girl’s mother is not dead, Big Daddy wasn’t a cop or a hit man or anything like that, Big Daddy was an accountant-by-day comic nerd-by-night who used his comic collection to fund his crusade and essentially brainwashed his kid into becoming a ruthless assassin in order to have fun. It’s an interesting deconstruction of the superhero mythos, but a tad depressing and almost anti-comics in sentiment for a comic book movie.

Another thing the movie brightened up was Dave’s romance. In the movie, as in the comic, Dave pretends to be gay to get close to this girl, Katie, who wants a gay best friend. The movie differs broadly here as well. In the comic, Katie is more explicitly using Dave and never demonstrates much interest in him; when he reveals that he’s not gay and in fact is basically in love with her, she beats the shit out of him and then gets her boyfriend to beat more shit out of him.

The movie fleshes Katie out more, she becomes interested in Dave over time expressing regret that he’s gay, and even becomes a comic book fan; when he reveals to her that he’s not gay — he also reveals that he’s Kick-Ass to her, which makes the way she takes it somewhat more realistic, and also heightens the drama during the later action pieces — she’s briefly pissed but quickly warms to him, both emotionally and physically. Basically, they fuck a lot², and though the ease with which she takes his confession doesn’t read as believably as I’d like, the relationship works in the big picture.

Basically, what Matthew Vaughn did when writing the screenplay was extract large chunks of Mark Millar’s misogyny, nihilism, and misanthropy. Obviously, there’s a degree to which this was done to make the movie more marketable, but I think even more than that the plot changes were done because the original comic lacked heart. The movie, much more than the comic, wants to be about more than just being a super-hero because it’s cool. Maybe it should’ve been uncompromising and brutal and accused the audience of being sociopaths for ever dreaming about being a super-hero but that movie almost certainly would’ve sucked.

Beyond the changes that occurred in the general plot, one thing that changed pretty drastically in terms of the way the story was told was the lack of flashbacks. Comic books operate similar to serialized television in most ways, and one aspect in particular is the cliffhanger ending; when a comic ends on a cliffhanger — like, say, Hit Girl and Big Daddy demolishing a bunch of drug dealers and running off into the night — the next issue can be devoted to explaining these new characters, their back story, and why they’re doing what they’re doing. The big reveal of the new amazing character, emerging complete from the shadows, it’s one of the cornerstones of comics and so it’s not surprising that Kick-Ass used it a couple times.

In Kick-Ass, it’s used first to fill in the back story of Hit Girl and Big Daddy³ and then later on to reveal that Red Mist was working with the Mob to set a trap for Hit Girl and Big Daddy. This style is great because it lets certain events come at you unexpectedly; in the film both of these things are integrated into the linear plot⁴ and so they feel slightly deflated. Granted, a good story should stay a good story regardless of any storytelling temporal tricks you plan, but that doesn’t mean those tricks can’t enhance the story.

The compressed story lines required for film are at times a crucible from which a tighter story is extracted, but in the process it’s easy to lose something.

Seeing as I’m here, I’ll write a brief paragraph about the fight scenes in Kick-Ass⁵. Hit Girl killing countless mob goons was a sight to behold, but I think that the best fight scene in the movie, hands down, is the one where Big Daddy destroys that group of goons at the lumber factory and then sets it all on fire. Every movement in that scene feels so visceral, the way Big Daddy trundles relentlessly through the gunfire felt so much more genuine than the highly choreographed (albeit impressive) fights with Hit Girl.

Ultimately, I think the film is stronger than the comic, both because of the changes to the basic plot and in spite of the loss of certain comic book storytelling traits. You should go see it if you haven’t already, though if you’ve read this entire post but haven’t seen the movie, well I kinda fucked that plan up for you, didn’t I?

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Footnotes

1. It was also a very entertaining movie, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to resort to that lame pun everyone seems to be bandying about. And no, the title of this post is not an example of said pun it’s— oh look over there, a squirrel! [↩]
2. And I’m totally willing to admit I giggled with glee when she said she wanted to fuck Kick-Ass and then promptly made up an excuse to go fuck Dave. [↩]
3. Well, the first version of the back story, the ending reveals that the first version was a fiction thought up by Big Daddy. [↩]
4. Aside from a comic book animation sequence that gives a little more history to Big Daddy. [↩]
5. I’m still not going to use that pun, though [↩]

That photo’s not the best shot I’ve ever taken, but it gives you a good idea of what a Louis CK show will be. He doesn’t like the showy things that other comedians do, his stage will have him, a microphone, and not much else. I first learned about Louis CK through his short lived HBO multi-camera sitcom Lucky Louis, a show inspired like all his stand up material by his own life. After that show was cancelled, he returned to the stand up tour circuit.

When Seinfeld did his I’m Telling You for the Last Time tour, the last time he would ever use any of the material he’d developed over the preceding two decades, it was a big deal. The documentary, Comedian, followed Seinfeld as he rebuilt a set from scratch relying on none of his old material. The ultimate test of the stand up comic. Louis CK has done this three times in the last three years.

Every year he tours, building a set, culminating with a recorded special of the material after which he drops it all and starts anew. I went to see Louis CK perform the other night — hence the photo I took above, which might have been better framed had I not been on the mezzanine level; he didn’t seem used to delivering he material to multi-level audiences so most of his attention was cast on the lower level — and I had heard none of the jokes he delivered in his hour-plus set. His material always comes from the same basic world; he’s still a middle-aged divorced comic and he’s still the same essential person, but each year he manages to find a new perspective. Often his jokes are tantalizingly close to old ones, and hearing the set up you’ll find yourself convinced of the punch line only to be redirected into a new avenue of unexpected hilarity.

If you ever get the chance to see Louis CK live, take it. He’s one of the sharpest comics out there right now.

I’ve been known to complain about Heroes’ lack of consistency, lazy storytelling, poor use of quality character actors, and all-around suckery, but I’m more than willing to admit that this new season isn’t terrible.

Some of the storylines are terrible, of course. Hiro and his kin continue to squander in the arrested development of the comedic subplot limited by the writers’ inability and/or unwillingness to grow them beyond mere punchlines. Tracy continues to be a complete waste of a character and of airtime. The only saving grace of Claire’s storyline is the inevitable lesbianic adventures. Nathan Petrelli still sucks as much as ever. HRG continues to… do whatever it is he does when he’s not on screen, because he does nothing of consequence when he’s visible.

I know what you’re thinking. There aren’t really any characters left. Well, you’re either thinking that or you’re thinking the only remaining substantial characters are Matt Parkman and Peter Petrelli, both of whom are shitty shitty characters. Well you’re mostly right.

Matt Parkman is in many ways the epitome of Heroes. He is the barometer for the rest of the show. He started off as one of the most appealing characters, but has degraded apace with the show. He’s easily the most disappointing character right now. And I’m certainly not saying he’s a good character, but he’s no longer a bad character; there are moments now when Parkman is almost a realistic character.

And Peter Petrelli, though I’ve found his story for the past two seasons to be terrible, had a pretty good first season. In fact, rethinking the ending of the first season, it makes sense that Peter’s emotional empathy, not his supernatural empathy, would be the final factor in who would win between him and Sylar. Of course, that’s a minor adjustment, because the tone of the build-up of the season was counter to that, and in the end it wasn’t Peter’s empathy that beat Sylar but his punch. So, really, all my complaints about season one of Heroes remain valid, but in retrospect I think I was overly hard on the emotional empathy angle the writers attempted for unrelated reasons.

So while Peter has been middling at best as of late, he was pretty good this most recent episode. Unlike Parkman’s idiotic aversion to his powers, he’s using his to actually help people. Almost as if he were a hero or something. And the plot this week with him being sued for his overzealous rescuing of people in danger was a great shout out to the comic world and the reason superheroes maintain a secret identity: so they can’t get sued.

And finally, the reason I decided to write this post in the first place, the influx of new characters managed to work this time. The carnival folk, led by Robert Knepper, are interesting in a way no villain has since early-first season Sylar, and what’s more they manage to make these characters interesting and mysterious without the crutch of anonymity. I attribute much of this to Robert Knepper, who as far as I can tell can do no wrong.

In addition, the deaf woman introduced in this episode reminded me of early Heroes, when the characters first experienced their powers. Seeing sound isn’t a particularly awesome power, but the moments we spent with that character were interesting to me. It makes we wonder how much better the show might have been at this point had the writers stuck with their initial plan to rotate out the cast every season, introducing new characters, new conflicts while retaining the same basic structure.

All that said, Heroes is still not a very good show. The last couple episodes were more watchable than last year but the show remains subpar with miles of room for improvement. But, at this point, if you’re like me and still watching Heroes despite the slow crawl towards increasing inadequacy and certainty of cancellation, me telling you the show has improved marginally isn’t really shifting your view. And anybody who gave up watching long ago shouldn’t take this post as an endorsement that you pick up the habit again. It’s not. I just thought I should acknowledge that it improved, if only for a little while, if only by a little bit.

Chuck is a great show, one that hasn’t found a strong audience but is more than deserving. While maintaining the high caliber action scenes a spy-drama needs, the show manages to develop personalities for their characters, keeps up an ongoing will-they-won’t-they-of-course-they-will-but-not-for-another-couple-seasons relationship without cockteasing the audience too badly, and also have really sharp dialogue and stories packed with geek references. There’s a lot to like about Chuck and the minor annoyances that any given episode offer up are just that: minor.

Of course, I wouldn’t title this post “The Death Spiral Continues” if I were extolling the wonders of a show. I merely take the time to discuss Chuck to contrast it with the increasingly dreaful show that follows it Monday nights on NBC. This week’s episode of Heroes continued to disappoint and downright offend as Parkman’s inexplicable prophetic painting continues to repeat a story that was overplayed and poorly executed when they did it the first five times. And when Rebel gives them useful intel, Matt and Peter finally start thinking and they double up on the mind powers to help them get past security. A smart idea and they got a couple good scenes out of it. Of course, why they wouldn’t at least cover the security camera in the room — leaving the others wondering who it could be — is one of many questions that are aroused by the idiotic behaviour in this episode.

Indeed, while in “Building 26″, Matt and Peter get ahold of video surveillance and Matt’s first plan is to leverage that information to get Daphne back. “One life at a time” he says, as though that makes sense. If your plan is to chip away at the problem until it’s been fixed and then suddenly you’re given material capable of destroying the very foundation of the bricks you’re chipping at, a change in stratagem might be in order. And then, when Peter escapes with that information, instead of bringing the information immediately to all the news outlets and uploading it to Youtube and posting to dailykos under the username LoveIsTheAnswer about the abuses of the Executive Branch and how horrifying the rounding up of these superpowered-Americans is for the freedoms of all Americans, he calls up his totally trustworthy brother who’s never betrayed him before and makes a deal to exchange all the incriminating evidence he has for Matt and Daphne. Even Nathan is astounded! It’s the stupidest deal ever. If you release the information to the public, Matt and Daphne would be ultimately freed, along with everyone else they’d illegally imprisoned. That’s what TNC would call “stepping over dollars to snatch up nickels.”

Oh but the stupid is strong with this episode. That’s just one of three equally stupid and repetitive stories. Claire is protecting Aquaman and, while he’s less annoying than West from last year, the story comes across virtually identical. They’re on the run and the guy saves her with his power somehow. Meanwhile, they discover that they’re not alone, that they have someone to share this part of themselves with. It’s just boring and Claire’s ongoing self-assuredness in the face of her obvious inadequacies is exasperating. And Sylar rediscovers his dad. Turns out his dad sold him to his uncle. Who knew?! The scene where Sylar relives that memory was played as though it were new astonishing information when it’s been known for at least a couple episodes now. The closest thing the scene has to a twist is when Sylar’s dad kills Sylar’s mom via some good old fashioned head-slicing telekenesis. Which, much like last week’s reveal of Mohinder’s pseudo-complicity, doesn’t make sense. Sylar obtained his telekinesis through his real power, the ability to understand complex systems intuitively and “fix” them, so to give telekinetic powers to his dad makes negative sense.

I’m feeling more and more angry with Heroes each new episode. I truly want the show to be good. I don’t like abandoning shows, especially not shows with sci-fi and comic book trappings, but Heroes is not entertaining for me anymore. Other shows are much better. Chuck, for example. Watch them instead.

This post has gone through a number of revisions. First I discussed why the actors in the upcoming film Watchmen need to really understand and embrace the atypical nature of Watchmen the comic to ensure the film doesn’t fall into the trap of becoming a “comic book movie” but with the recent announcement of (most of) the cast I’m relatively at ease regarding that. Then this post was to be a rant on Zack Snyder, the director of the film, his lack of experience, and his dogmatic relience on the original comic for visual details. Then Comic-Con came around and Zack Snyder represented himself as someone who knew what the fuck he was talking about and that eased. (He still seems to have some issues with deviating from vision of the text for the purpose of retaining the message of the text, but at least he’s shown that he’s a real fan of the comic and understands why it’s great.) So I figured I’d discuss the reason I began to write this post in the first place.

Watchmen is a great comic. It’s a zeitgeist for a time which our world managed to avoid, filled with mounting conflicts on a global scale and the constant fear of mutually assured destruction. Watchmen is set in a world where superheroes really fight crime through vigilante justice; most of them are good-hearted people who want to make a difference in their city. The key difference from the classic superheroes is that they have no mythic origins, they have no extraordinary powers. They saw this terrifying world and decided to make any difference they could. These are people who took on a battle larger than themselves not because they thought they could win but because it had to be done.

All except for one. Doctor Manhattan is a God among men. His powers seem limitless and we are to him little more than particles of dust flitting about in Brownian motion. He has all the trappings of superheroism but because he is inherently inhuman he becomes a complex compelling character whose decisions sometimes impress and often horrify. But the story of Watchmen isn’t about Doctor Manhattan. It is the story of the people who didn’t wake up one day with superpowers and then decide they should fight crime. They didn’t need a convoluted catastrophic event like an uncle being killed by the robber they could’ve stopped earlier to make them take the leap into the selfless, unforgiving, and sometimes overpowering, world of crimefighting. These people walked down a street one day, saw a mugging that everyone else ignored, and stepped in.

Watchmen is quite probably the greatest comic ever made. Because the characters feel real, and because the questions of morality and power are substantive and have a real, though ambiguous, contribution to make. And for reasons which are intrinsic to the paper; it must be read to be understood. So when I heard about a Watchmen movie I first felt elation. The idea of it happening was fantastic. Of course then I realised it’s the implementation that would destroy it. The odds of the film doing justice to its source material are so mindbogglingly high that anyone genuinely and purely excited without a hint of doubt or hesitation isn’t a true fan of Watchmen.