Saturday, August 31, 2013
Sunday, August 18, 2013
NERRRRRRRRRD! vol. 41
Patrolling on the brick wall that
separates Spider-Man’s NYC and Hobo with a Shotgun’s Scumtown is Kick-Ass 2, a super-hero film for the
midnight movie faithful, a Tromaville splatter-comedy revenge epic with A-List
backing, the Tick vs. Maniac Cop, the
Super-Friends as re-imagined by the Murder Junkies, playing make believe with
spastics and sociopaths…. Hell, just call it one cocksucker of a
good time at the movies. Remember having those? Before every asbestos-wheezing
gasbag would spoil your fun via lazily ranting through a keyboard, not so much
angry because the entertainment was less-than-stellar as they are infuriated
that they had to leave the house for a few hours and be around people (previous
sentence only done with the faintest hint of self mockery… ok, a lot of it)? or before this new wave of outrage began
punctuating the expression of opinion? I’d say its level has reached parodic,
but the self-righteous indignation is so un-entertainingly callow that it
surpasses spoof and glides comfortably into cryptofacist hate-speech. It’s why
you see insufferable blog posts bemoaning the existence of Robin Thicke’s
“Blurred Lines”, a benign nudie-cutie charmer, densely accusing the song and
its accompanying video of being recruitment tools for misogynistic
objectification, causally promoting the thriving continuity of a pop culture
rape machine through a wink-wink-nudge-nudge-say-no-more mock-dismissal of such
a system’s existence.
It really shouldn’t surprise me at
this point, but I’m still perplexed that here we are, 13 years deep into a new
millennium, and we still have people fainting from appall when faced with
violence or sex being presented in a creative environment. I wonder if its just
an opportunity for certain types to condescend to supposed moral sensitivities,
deluding themselves into the idea that they’re less prone to reptilian impulses
than those of us who dare to find value in what the popular conscious has
deemed objectionable, judging a work that is deliberate in its unpleasantness
for achieving its goal. They call its acts/message “pointless”, when really
it’s their tangential disgust that’s pointless, because while not entirely
without provocation, it’s barren of interpersonal substance beyond the
emotional misnomer that being outraged is synonymous with being humane, that
they’ve achieved some sort of ultra-enlightenment that grants them the wisdom
and the strength to rise above their baser instincts.
Make no mistake; KA2 is a violent film, more than equal to
its predecessor, yet still more than a few pints shy of the blood-drenched
anti-chicanery present in its four-color counterpart. Don’t let the critics
fool you, if you’ve read the comic, you know how much more vicious it could
have been. And for the rest, trust me, you have seen A LOT worse. Other than
that and a few other details, a generous helping of the comic has made it to
the film, with some further character-play and breezy comedy peppered in to
keep the affair a charming thrift shop version of the Masters of Evil
destroying the Avengers’ mansion rather than an Infinity Gauntlet Red Wedding.
Playing off of the
Dark Knight theory of escalation, KA2 ramps up the menace a few hundred
notches, with armies of people in funny costumes with silly names making the world
all their own. It’s the sort of group of heroes vs. conglomerate of villains
war story that never not works in comics, yet somehow never seems to make it to
the cinematic adaptations. How much cooler would Avengers had been if instead
of fighting non-descript alien invaders, the team had fought an
equal-to-greater alliance of their greatest adversaries? All that history,
personality, and character definition as each of them faced off against their
opposite number? Where the “big two” slack, KA2 runs full throttle into the
battle of good vs. evil, making it matter. It also doesn’t forget about the
fundamental absurdity of masked vigilantes/costumed villains or the ruthless
surrealism of their hyper-dramatic clashes. It short, it’s not all grimly
serious and gritty business here. While the chaos of the KA universe (comic and
film) is brutal and not without consequence, it follows that with a message of
“yeah, it’s not always gonna be a slap fight with a bad-guy wrestler, but if
we’re gonna do this, then we’re gonna do it all, because that’s the only way
our cause will truly mean anything… so stop your fucking whining and suit up”.
And isn’t that really what being a super-hero is about?
Perhaps this is no better illustrated than in the character
of Hit-Girl, the closest thing the KA universe has to a conscious. The first
act of the film, drawing from the Hit-Girl
micro-series, makes the same point as its source material without beating
it into your head that its making that point; that Mindy McCready (wondrously
embodied by Chloe Grace Moretz) is everything not only a comic book hero (male
or female, adult or child) should be, but at her essence, her center, she is
perhaps the most positive role model (again, not constrained to gender) to come
along in the medium in a long time. Yes, she kills people. Yes, she has a potty
mouth. Yes, she wouldn’t have voted for President Obama (had she been voting
age), but she is also determined, resilient, loyal, intelligent, fully capable
of taking care of herself, and knows exactly who she is and what she’s about.
Also, unlike some other lady heroes (some of whom appear in this film); her
costume is functional rather than revealingly sexualized…. Not that there’s
anything wrong with the latter AMIRITEDURHUR. Anyway, even when the customs of
tween hierarchy dictate to girls that they’re supposed to value overpriced
accessories, glib vapidness, and their appeal/dependence on boys as a form of
self-validation, Mindy McCready understands that it’s more important to pay
attention the your surroundings, to have a plan, and that, borrowing a line
from Frank Millers the Dark Knight
Returns, the world will only make sense when you force it to do so. Now,
I’m suggesting that the total of one’s morals be taken entirely from comic books
down to minutia (don’t kill people or get behind cowboy conservatives who
haven’t really fought a day in their lives), but the basic essence of that
ideological structure can act as a skeleton for your own moral architecture….
But then again, the series also shows you how fucked-up and dangerous it is to
get your morals from comic books, creating a dystopic atmosphere of reckless
endangerment with an ouroboros of payback; a devour/defecate clockwork orgy
where the battle is owed more to callous routine than sympathetic instigation…
but let’s chill for a minute here.
That a film this colorfully offbeat
and less-than-gun-shy found itself a wide release in 2013 is a success all its
own. we’re in a time right now where it seems like a work that’s daringly eccentric
or even marginally transgressive struggles to make a 2 day go of it at some
run-down art theater on the outskirts of civilization before being dumped
unceremoniously onto various home viewing outlets, because multiplexes are more
preoccupied with showcasing struggling, bloated turkeys like the Lone Ranger than providing a decent
venue for something like Only God
Forgives, a film that might not fit the textbook definition of “crowd
pleaser”, but no doubt packs a more memorable, long lasting punch than Johnny
Depp playing Powderface Funnyhat for the 857th go-round.
I can’t believe this needs to be
said, but KA2 is not what’s wrong with films, let alone society. It’s a satire,
one that works as a candy colored exaggeration of real world violence and as a
sobering reality check for cartoon violence. If choreographed carnage,
ambiguous shifts in morality, and playful profanity will only further bruise
your tenderized soul, take in a screening of the Butler instead. There you can weep along with
the weep-along, placate your white-guilt, assure yourself that everything is
better now, and rock your gentle self to sleep as a compilation of whale songs
hums at low volume, all the while whispering “this too will pass” into the
tummy of your stuffed spirit animal. If your comic habits revolve around the
latest Green Lantern x-over event, if your viewing habits are exclusively
dependent upon the Walt Disney Fantasy Film Monopoly, than KA was never meant
for you. If you love films, comics, and films based on comics, but have grown
tired of all their overwrought symbolism, hackish video game conflicts, murky
humanism, and assembly-line-formulaic structure, than consider KA2 your
consolation prize for trudging through the Wolverines, the Men of Steel, and
any other high-calorie-no-nutrition mid-octane sludge begging for your
entertainment dollar this (or any) summer. It fucking delivers what it fucking
promises.
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Thursday, August 1, 2013
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