If I was thinking about a Kick-Ass sequel, I had to get serious.

Kick-Ass 2: Balls to the Wall

(2013)

I groaned inwardly when the Kick-Ass sequel was announced; a completely unnecessary follow-up to an original that didn’t demand continuation. That Matthew Vaughn wasn’t returning as director reconfirmed this response; he brought a sense of fun and heart to a movie that could otherwise have been wholly misconceived (like the way no one else seems to have been quite able to make a great X-Men movie lately; First Class had personality, whereas the other entries since X2 has been going through the motions). Balls to the Wall, written and directed by Jeff Wadlow, isn’t actually as terrible as I’d feared, but it’s wholly redundant, roundly failing to justify revisiting these characters.

The first movie was crude, vulgar and revelled in the shock value of having a young girl mouthing obscenities while inflicting ultra-violence on unsuspecting bad guys. Now that girl is at school, attempting to fit in, and this is the plot thread of Balls to the Wall that kind of works; Mindy/Hit-Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz), having forsaken the superhero lifestyle, is thrown into a sub-Heathers inferno of teenage cruelty, while also discovering she’s attracted to boys. It isn’t terribly original, but neither is Kick-Ass/Dave (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) joining up with a gang of fellow super-heroes/vigilantes (why Dave needs to learn how to fight all over again here – twice! – is anyone’s guess) while Chris/the Motherfucker (Christopher Mintz-Plasse; only actors with three-word names take the leads in this series) decides to reinvent himself as a super villain. The result is replete with the kind of lazy comic book sequel referencing the Scream sequels supplied for horror movies (but more successfully). The pervading air is of “how can we make a sequel work?” rather than “We’ve got a great reason for continuing this story”.

Everything that was fresh now feels tired. What was shocking now seems like cheap repetition. Just the name Motherfucker evidences the level of wit on display. The dodgy superhero/villain names (Night Bitch, The Tumor etc) were more amusing in Mystery Men fifteen years ago, and Mystery Men wasn’t really very good. Wadlow (working from Mark Millar’s source material, which apparently revels in its capacity to shock the readser) finds himself laying on even the half-decent gags too thick (“You’ve got to quit with the racist stereotypes, Chris”, John Leguizamo’s Javier tells the Mother Fucker; “Archetypes” he responds). Occasionally there’s a flash of the first movie’s successful contrasts between comic book and “real” world; the Motherfucker’s insulted reaction when it is suggested he kills the dog belonging to Captain Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey). But Wadlow’s idea of a theme is to repeat ad infinitum that there aren’t superheroes in the real world, all the while informing the viewer with the choreography, fight moves, set pieces and a generically stylised visual palette that this is a superhero world.

The violence of the first picture, where Kick-Ass takes a beating or where Hit-Girl goes to work to the accompaniment of the Banana Splits theme, is delivered dutifully but without motive, and so has an unpleasant edge. It can’t shock because it could only shock the first time. So now these scenes feature because they’re what the audience expects of a Kick-Ass movie (this isn’t as bloody as the original, but I’m still not sure how it gets away with a 15; God knows what the BBFC are thinking). Tellingly, the most effective Hit-Girl scene here isn’t one where she kicks ass but instead induces a trio of mean girls to vomit. There’s also the small factor that Hit-Girl’s language has little impact delivered by a 15-year old; four years makes all the difference. And when the best she can come up with as an insult is “Puke face” you start to wonder. The coarse language between schoolgirls is more effective, but indicative of an unpleasant undercurrent in respect of the depiction of women in the film, with references to snatch-kicking, muff munching and a would-be rape that is played for laughs on account of the assailant’s inadequacy (considerably toned down from Millar’s original scenario, but no more acceptable as a result). For a movie as schematic and manipulative as this one (Dave’s emotional journey includes an especially under-cooked development that never sufficiently pays off; we’re presumably expected to think the mere fact of its occurrence is weighty enough), such material doesn’t translate as daring or edgy; it’s merely evidencing how lucky the first effort was to have Vaughn.

Johnson, Moretz and Mintz-Plasse return to their characters fairly effortlessly, but the latter is utterly typecast as the nerd du jour at this point; I’m slightly surprised he’s gone on as long as he has (what, eight years?) Jim Carrey, who famously disassociated himself from the movie, is solid if unspectacular as Stars and Stripes; his physical transformation is impressive, and he never drops the character to indulge in his usual schtick, but the Captain isn’t a terribly interesting character. Barely anything is made of his Born Again disposition, for example. Lindy Booth is memorable as Night Bitch, and a smattering of British thesps appear in small roles; Benedict Wong, Iain Glen, Steven Mackintosh, Monica Dolan.

Balls to the Wall is very cheap looking. Tim Maurice-Jones cinematography is unpersuasive, and there’s a pretty awful fight sequence atop a speeding van complete with horribly obvious green screen work. In general, the tone is one of straight-to-video cash-in whose stars should have known better. Even the score sounds recycled, the really rather great four composer-led work on the original now limited to Henry Jackman redoing the (admittedly great) main theme from the first with Matthew Margeson.

I don’t think anyone really expected there to be a Kick-Ass sequel apart from the reliably self -promoting Mark Millar. Kick-Ass didn’t make enough ($96m worldwide) for it to be a forgone conclusion, so someone obviously did a sum based on the home entertainment market. Since this one cost about the same but made a third less, and wasn’t very well received I expect there’ll be even less clamour for another. I’ll be happy to forget about it, while holding up the first movie as a genuinely great little surprise. Maybe in 20 years, when studios are dusting off old properties that have a lot of nostalgia value (as they always are), a return of Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl might have some merit, but for now they should just leave it alone. No matter how much Millar talks them up.

**1/2

Abandon selective targeting. Shoot everything.

28 Weeks Later (2007) (SPOILERS) The first five minutes of 28 Weeks Later are far and away the best part of this sequel, offering in quick succession a devastating moral quandary and a waking nightmare, immortalised on the screen. After that, while significantly more polished, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo reveals his concept to be altogether inferior to Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s, falling back on the crutches of gore, nihilism, and disengaging and limiting shifts of focus between characters in whom one has little investment in the first place.

The Bible never said anything about amphetamines.

The Color of Money (1986) (SPOILERS) I tend to think it’s evident when Scorsese isn’t truly exercised by material. He can still invest every ounce of the technical acumen at his fingertips, and the results can dazzle on that level, but you don’t really feel the filmmaker in the film. Which, for one of his pictures to truly carry a wallop, you need to do. We’ve seen quite a few in such deficit in recent years, most often teaming with Leo. The Color of Money , however, is the first where it was out-and-out evident the subject matter wasn’t Marty’s bag. He needed it, desperately, to come off, but in the manner a tradesman who wants to keep getting jobs. This sequel to The Hustler doesn’t linger in the mind, however good it may be, moment by moment.

Doctors make the worst patients.

Coma (1978) (SPOILERS) Michael Crichton’s sophomore big-screen feature, and by some distance his best. Perhaps it’s simply that this a milieu known to him, or perhaps it’s that it’s very much aligned to the there-and-now and present, but Coma , despite the occasional lapse in this adaptation of colleague Robin Cook’s novel, is an effective, creepy, resonant thriller and then some. Crichton knows his subject, and it shows – the picture is confident and verisimilitudinous in a way none of his other directorial efforts are – and his low-key – some might say clinical – approach pays dividends. You might also call it prescient, but that would be to suggest its subject matter wasn’t immediately relevant then too.

I said I had no family. I didn’t say I had an empty apartment.

The Apartment (1960) (SPOILERS) Billy Wilder’s romcom delivered the genre that rare Best Picture Oscar winner. Albeit, The Apartment amounts to a rather grim (now) PG-rated scenario, one rife with adultery, attempted suicide, prostitution of the soul and subjective thereof of the body. And yet, it’s also, finally, rather sweet, so salving the darker passages and evidencing the director’s expertly judged balancing act. Time Out ’s Tom Milne suggested the ending was a cop out (“ boy forgives girl and all’s well ”). But really, what other ending did the audience or central characters deserve?

Your desecration of reality will not go unpunished.

2021-22 Best-of, Worst-of and Everything Else Besides The movies might be the most visible example of attempts to cling onto cultural remnants as the previous societal template clatters down the drain. It takes something people really want – unlike a Bond movie where he kicks the can – to suggest the model of yesteryear, one where a billion-dollar grosser was like sneezing. You can argue Spider-Man: No Way Home is replete with agendas of one sort or another, and that’s undoubtedly the case (that’s Hollywood), but crowding out any such extraneous elements (and they often are) is simply a consummate crowd-pleaser that taps into tangible nostalgia through its multiverse take. Of course, nostalgia for a mere seven years ago, for something you didn’t like anyway, is a symptom of how fraught these times have become.

Listen to the goddamn qualified scientists!

Don’t Look Up (2021) (SPOILERS) It’s testament to Don’t Look Up ’s “quality” that critics who would normally lap up this kind of liberal-causes messaging couldn’t find it within themselves to grant it a free pass. Adam McKay has attempted to refashion himself as a satirist since jettisoning former collaborator Will Ferrell, but as a Hollywood player and an inevitably socio-politically partisan one, he simply falls in line with the most obvious, fatuous propagandising.

Captain, he who walks in fire will burn his feet.

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) (SPOILERS) Ray Harryhausen returns to the kind of unadulterated fantasy material that made Jason and the Argonauts such a success – swords & stop motion, if you like. In between, there were a couple of less successful efforts, HG Wells adaptation First Men in the Moon and The Valley of the Gwangi (which I considered the best thing ever as a kid: dinosaur walks into a cowboy movie). Harryhausen’s special-effects supremacy – in a for-hire capacity – had also been consummately eclipsed by Raquel Welch’s fur bikini in One Million Years B.C . The Golden Voyage of Sinbad follows the expected Dynamation template – blank-slate hero, memorable creatures, McGuffin quest – but in its considerable favour, it also boasts a villainous performance by nobody-at-the-time, on-the-cusp-of-greatness Tom Baker.

Archimedes would split himself with envy.

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) (SPOILERS) Generally, this seems to be the Ray Harryhausen Sinbad outing that gets the short straw in the appreciation stakes. Which is rather unfair. True, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger lacks Tom Baker and his rich brown voice personifying evil incarnate – although Margaret Whiting more than holds her own in the wickedness stakes – and the structure follows the Harryhausen template perhaps over scrupulously (Beverly Cross previously collaborated with the stop-motion auteur on Jason and the Argonauts , and would again subsequently with Clash of the Titans ). But the storytelling is swift and sprightly, and the animation itself scores, achieving a degree of interaction frequently more proficient than its more lavishly praised peer group.

You just threw a donut in the hot zone!

Den of Thieves (2018) (SPOILERS) I'd heard this was a shameless Heat rip-off, and the presence of Gerard Butler seemed to confirm it would be passable-at-best B-heist hokum, so maybe it was just middling expectations, even having heard how enthused certain pockets of the Internet were, but Den of Thieves is a surprisingly very satisfying entry in the genre. I can't even fault it for attempting to Keyser Soze the whole shebang at the last moment – add a head in a box and you have three 1995 classics in one movie – even if that particular conceit doesn’t quite come together.

You have a very angry family, sir.

Eternals (2021) (SPOILERS) It would be overstating the case to suggest Eternals is a pleasant surprise, but given the adverse harbingers surrounding it, it’s a much more serviceable – if bloated – and thematically intriguing picture than I’d expected. The signature motifs of director and honestly-not-billionaire’s-progeny Chloé Zhao are present, mostly amounting to attempts at Malick-lite gauzy natural light and naturalism at odds with the rigidly unnatural material. There’s woke to spare too, since this is something of a Kevin Feige Phase Four flagship, one that rather floundered, showcasing his designs for a nu-MCU. Nevertheless, Eternals manages to maintain interest despite some very variable performances, effects, and the usual retreat into standard tropes, come the final big showdown.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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