Jim Carrey got all tweet happy on Sunday and tweeted out some thoughts to the effect of: “I did Kick-Ass 2 a month [before] Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence. My apologies to others involve[d] with the film. I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart.”
Carrey stars in the ultra-violent comic book sequel as the vigilante known as Colonel Stars and Stripes who apparently takes on the film’s bad guys with a baseball bat and points a gun at some character as evidenced in the pic above.
The film is based on the comic by Mark Millar who also serves as executive producer. Millar took to his blog to tap out a response, which went a little something like this:
“[I’m] baffled by this sudden announcement as nothing seen in this picture wasn’t in the screenplay eighteen months ago. Yes, the body-count is very high, but a movie called Kick-Ass 2 really has to do what it says on the tin.
“A sequel to the picture that gave us HIT-GIRL was always going to have some blood on the floor and this should have been no shock to a guy who enjoyed the first movie so much. My books are very hardcore, but the movies are adapted for a more mainstream audience and if you loved the tone of the first picture you’re going to eat this up with a big, giant spoon.
“Like Jim, I’m horrified by real-life violence (even though I’m Scottish), but Kick-Ass 2 isn’t a documentary. No actors were harmed in the making of this production! This is fiction and like Tarantino and Peckinpah, Scorcese and Eastwood, John Boorman, Oliver Stone and Chan-Wook Park, Kick-Ass avoids the usual bloodless body-count of most big summer pictures and focuses instead of the CONSEQUENCES of violence, whether it’s the ramifications for friends and family or, as we saw in the first movie, Kick-Ass spending six months in hospital after his first street altercation.
“Ironically, Jim’s character in Kick-Ass 2 is a Born-Again Christian and the big deal we made of the fact that he refuses to fire a gun is something he told us attracted him to the role in the first place.”
I want to respond to this, but I just don’t care that an actor has decided, for whatever reason, to not support a film. Yes, it’s admirable Carrey is taking the opportunity to stand up against senseless violence and the horror that went down at Sandy Hook, but I don’t know much more about him. I looked around the Internet and found the video below of him talking about his “spiritual awakening” from 2009 and three years later he made a movie about little kids taking violent justice into their own hands which features a character named The Mother Fucker (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). A few months later he “cannot support that level of violence”. Okay, I assume the check cleared though… right?
It’s fine to have a change of heart, but did he watch the first film? As I wrote in my review of the first one, “The morality of the whole thing is a mess… Which is fine with me, I just want to watch Hit Girl slice some more bad guys up anyway. I’d prefer to forget about the film’s inability to decide if it wants to be a real world morality tale or a fantasy world bloodbath, because its indecision to be one or the other is a storytelling flaw to be sure.”
I can’t say I’m looking forward to Kick-Ass 2 anyway, but the one thing I am (and always have been) interested in seeing is Carrey’s character and as far as I can tell he’s still in the movie. So good on him for standing up what he believes is right and cashing in the millions he was paid to make what he now denounces as wrong.
