I finally got a chance to see Kick Ass in a tiny, alternative movie theater in an upscale department store in Kyoto. I don't have many deep thoughts on it. I liked it. Natsuki's comment was, "I liked it. It was pretty shallow." I am not sure if those two quotes are connected by anything. What I did like about the movie was that it began with an interesting question and then answered it in a very real and understandable way.
The question was, "If super heroes are so popular, why don't more people try and be a super hero." The question was later answered by saying, and showing, that people don't because they find that they have people they care about and who care about them. That all of us have a responsibility to those people that would generally preclude running around and inviting death. It was no great coincidence that once the hero figured out that he like shagging his (insanely hot) girlfriend that he quickly lost the super hero bug. I thought where the movie succeeded was in showing the desire for super heroes not as a stupid fantasy, or a comical fantasy but, at its very heart, as a juvenile fantasy.
2 comments:
This s David D. The other thing that the movie exposes is the stupidity of the fantasy that when you become involved in violence, you can control the level to which it escalates unilaterally. In the classic superhero fantasy, the villains are left bound with a note stuck to them for the police, in this movie, we are left with a pile of bloody corpses.
Which also reminds me I recently re-read my favorite book about vigilantism, "The Ox-Bow Incident" and I recommend it to you if you havent read it.
Yes. That is a good point too. SOmething makes me think I had "The Ox-Bow Incident" but I can't remember now. By the way, due to our prior conversation, my sister sent me a copy of Grendel. He really was a superb writer.
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