Seriously, looks fantastic. Can't wait for August.
The very strange thing is that according to every site I have looked at except IMDB which doesn't have a UK listing at all, all state that it has a UK release of 19th July but doesn't get released in the USA until 16th August. If this is true, then it makes a nice change.
Yeh, because bad stuff didn't happen before Sandy Hook.
What a moron.
If he doesn't want to support it and regrets his association with it, can we expect him to give up his paycheck or donate it to charity? Or is this one of those deals where he'll profit from it but denounce it at the same time?
Also, fictionalised violence and real life violence tend to look quite different. I am quite sure nothing in Kick Ass resembled anything realistic. He might as well petition for Tom and Jerry, Roadrunner and Wile E Coyote and Tweety vs Sylvester cartoons to be banned as well.
For his part, Millar responded to Carrey's comments on his own website. "As you may know, Jim is a passionate advocate of gun-control and I respect both his politics and his opinion, but I'm baffled by this sudden announcement as nothing seen in this picture wasn't in the screenplay eighteen months ago," Millar wrote on Millar World. "Yes, the body-count is very high, but a movie called Kick-Ass 2 really has to do what it says on the tin." Millar, a self-professed Carrey fan, noted that his work in "Kick-Ass 2" is a career highlight.
There's no plot description at all. I won't go into spoilers for those who haven't read it, but I found it utterly horrible.
I'm not saying that as a prude - I've read lots of Millar's work and I like a lot of it. But for me, he totally crossed the line with Kick Ass 2 and I'm wondering if someone has taken the decision to try and cover up plot details ahead of its release. That would be a pointless exercise given the TPB is readily available, but it will make it more difficult for lazy hacks at The Daily Mail to Google it.
Kick Ass 2 (the book) didn't offend me, in fact I think some issues of the current runs of Batman and Detective Comics are potentially more problematic in terms of the fact there are presumably young children reading them and hopefully there aren't any under 10's reading Kick Ass 2. Never the less I didn't enjoy it either; drawing after drawing of people being shot in the head, with me none the wiser about what the point actually is.
I'm conflicted about seeing the film, I enjoyed the first one, and hopefully the performances will still be high quality, but I suspect it may well be a complete car crash. Presumably it's in Carrey's contract that he has to be positive about the film while promoting it; the fact he's got cold feet already is some what amazing, and far from a good sign.
Interesting he posted it today; can only assume he watched it today and is shitting it about the reaction it's gonna get.
I also find that interesting.
He obv. read the script so he knew exactly what to expect and how much violence there would be in the movie. Why didn't he reject the role when he read the script?
I find this baffling. Either he's seen the film and thinks it sucks or he's seen the film and genuinely is disturbed with the level of violence in the movie.
Either way, some were saying this was going to be the role to kickstart his career again. Not anymore now that he's publicly denounced it.
Kick Ass 2 (the book) didn't offend me, in fact I think some issues of the current runs of Batman and Detective Comics are potentially more problematic in terms of the fact there are presumably young children reading them and hopefully there aren't any under 10's reading Kick Ass 2. Never the less I didn't enjoy it either; drawing after drawing of people being shot in the head, with me none the wiser about what the point actually is.
I'm conflicted about seeing the film, I enjoyed the first one, and hopefully the performances will still be high quality, but I suspect it may well be a complete car crash. Presumably it's in Carrey's contract that he has to be positive about the film while promoting it; the fact he's got cold feet already is some what amazing, and far from a good sign.
Carrey has made some awful choices such as Mr Popper's Penguins, The Number 23, Fun With Dick and Jane, I Love You Philip Morris, Yes Man etc The fact he is making Dumb and Dumber To when he shot down a potential Mask sequel and a Dumb and Dumber sequel before yet has went back to the well this time suggests he is aware he's going to have to trade on old projects since his most recent ones tanked horribly. To be speaking out of turn about Kick Ass given his stock in Hollywood is low anyway is only going to make things worse since they had to shop around Dumb and Dumber To to more studios after is was rejected at first and both Carrey and Daniels have almost pulled out of the project already doesn't suggest it's going to be the best quality either.
Jim Carrey is a talented performer but clearly not the best business man or person capable of telling what is the best business move for his career anymore. Mark Millar and Matthew Vaughn's stock are on the rise while his is not. This is not a smart thing for him to be doing since this may have been his best chance at getting some mainstram spotlight in a positive way since Eternal Sunshine...
I've just read Carrey's comments as well. I can certainly respect his stance on gun control, but, as people have said, if he believes that strongly about it, why do the film in the first place?
At the risk of sounding crass, it makes you wonder what he would have said if the victims of Sandy Hook had all been adults?
Strange decision, which will seem even stranger if the film does turn out to be good.
Carrey has made some awful choices such as Mr Popper's Penguins, The Number 23, Fun With Dick and Jane, I Love You Philip Morris, Yes Man etc.
I agree with that list except for I Love You Philip Morris. Personally i thought he excelled in the role and was one of his best roles in years. Most of his recent movies have generally been family orientated. With KA2 he had the chance to do something different, he's now blown that chance.
I agree with that list except for I Love You Philip Morris. Personally i thought he excelled in the role and was one of his best roles in years. Most of his recent movies have generally been family orientated. With KA2 he had the chance to do something different, he's now blown that chance.
I don't think he's really blown his chance of a career revival just because of a few tweets. He's still in the film, so if it's a success and his performance is praised then Hollywood will surely come knocking at his door again, regardless of his feelings towards screen violence. He was great in 'The Incredible Burt Wonderstone' earlier this year too, back to his madcap best so he's clearly still got it.
I think news sites are blowing his tweet totally out of proportion, he's not "condemning" the film, he's just saying that in the light of recent events that he can't personally stomach watching that level of violence, he's not said its a crap film or anything like that.
Having read the Kick Ass 2 graphic novel, if half of the stuff in the book is in the film then i can sort of sympathise with his feelings, the violence in the book was just there for shock value.
And if they include anything related to the bit where The Motherf*cker mows down children in the street then i can see why he'd feel it was in bad taste after the events of Sandy Hook
I think news sites are blowing his tweet totally out of proportion, he's not "condemning" the film, he's just saying that in the light of recent events that he can't personally stomach watching that level of violence, he's not said its a crap film or anything like that
I think you're right. He's quite clearly said he's not ashamed of it. And I don't think he'd 'invoke' Sandy Hook lightly either - it's still an emotive topic in the States and I think the backlash would be huge if it was discovered that he'd used it to generate buzz for the film.
I think news sites are blowing his tweet totally out of proportion, he's not "condemning" the film, he's just saying that in the light of recent events that he can't personally stomach watching that level of violence, he's not said its a crap film or anything like that.
That's true he said he wasn't ashamed of the movie but he won't promote it. He's citing violence as the reason why, whether that's genuine or not we don't know.
Here's Mark Millar's full statement on the matter:
First off, I love Jim Carrey. When producer Matthew Vaughn and director Jeff Wadlow called me up and suggested we do a conference call with him to talk about the sequel to the 2010 original I was genuinely excited. Like you, I love Eternal Sunshine, Man on the Moon and The Truman Show. Carrey is an actor like no other, an unpredictable force of nature who brings a layered warmth and humanity to his work as well as that unstoppable energy he's always been renowned for. He had lunch with Matthew around the time of the first movie and dug it so much he appeared that night on Conan O'Brien DRESSED as Kick-Ass, singing a duet with Conan dressed as Superman. Vaughn and I made a mental note to work with this guy as soon as possible as we're both huge admirers.
Cut to almost three years later and I'm sitting in a screening room in London watching what I think is one of Carrey's best-ever performances. I'd seen Kick-Ass 2 in many forms, but this was the absolute final cut complete with opening titles, music and a terrific post-credit sequence you're all going to love. I couldn't be happier with this picture. It's as good as the original and in many ways BIGGER as it expands upon the universe and really takes things to the next level. There are a lot of stand-outs in the sequel, every actor really firing on full cylinders and an amazing script that moves like a rocket. But Carrey in particular is magnificent. He's never done anything like this before and even from the trailer, with his masked dog sidekick specially trained to munch criminal balls, you can see that something really fun and special is happening here. Colonel Stars and Stripes is so charismatic and all his scenes are up there with Nic Cage's amazing turn as Big Daddy in the original... which made it all the more surprising when Jim announced tonight that the gun-violence in Kick-Ass 2 has made him withdraw his support from the picture.
As you may know, Jim is a passionate advocate of gun-control and I respect both his politics and his opinion, but 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.
Ultimately, this is his decision, but I've never quite bought the notion that violence in fiction leads to violence in real-life any more than Harry Potter casting a spell creates more Boy Wizards in real-life. Our job as storytellers is to entertain and our toolbox can't be sabotaged by curtailing the use of guns in an action-movie. Imagine a John Wayne picture where he wasn't packing or a Rocky movie where Stallone wasn't punching someone repeatedly in the face. Our audience is smart enough to know they're all pretending and we should instead just sit back and enjoy the serotonin release of seeing bad guys meeting bad ends as much as we enjoyed seeing the Death Star exploding. The action in Kick-Ass 2 is like nothing you've ever seen before. The humour, the characters, the heart and the set-pieces are all things we're very proud of and the only warning I'd really include is that it's almost TOO EXCITING. Kick-Ass 2 is fictional fun so let's focus our ire instead of the real-life violence going on in the world like the war in Afghanistan, the alarming tension in Syria right now and the fact that Superman just snapped a guy's ****ing neck.
Jim, I love ya and I hope you reconsider for all the above points. You're amazing in this insanely fun picture and I'm very proud of what Jeff, Matthew and all the team have done here.
I agree with that list except for I Love You Philip Morris. Personally i thought he excelled in the role and was one of his best roles in years. Most of his recent movies have generally been family orientated. With KA2 he had the chance to do something different, he's now blown that chance.
I'm talking money and acclaim, you can't live off critical goodwill.
I'm talking money and acclaim, you can't live off critical goodwill.
He famously got $20 million for The Cable Guy, and was presumably on a huge salary for all his 90's pictures. Critical acclaim probably means more to him than cash at this point.
He famously got $20 million for The Cable Guy, and was presumably on a huge salary for all his 90's pictures. Critical acclaim probably means more to him than cash at this point.
That was a bomb as well. Also, keep in mind about 8 million of that would have went to the IRS. That was also in 1996. 17 years ago.
Also he took a back end profit sharing deal on 5 movies which meant if they didn't make money past the point of production and advertising costs, he lost money. So he's not actually been a high earner in a long time because very few of his films have made much more than their production and advertising budget in the last 10 years. Which is why he's now doing a sequel to Dumber and Dumber when he said no to the idea 10 years ago and they made Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd. That was before he stopped being a box office draw he used to be. Also Eternal Sunshine was a critical success but also barely made back it's budget at the time, it finished at 34 million and had a budget of 20 million for production, probably about 5-8 for advertising.
Seriously, Jim Carrey has not been making good money for a long time and considering his star is on the wane while Millar's is on the rise given Nemesis, The Secret Service and Supercrooks have already been optioned for movies and he's made friends with Ridley Scott, Matthew Vaughn and Joe Carnahan, he really has chosen a bad time to try make a stand.
Comments
The very strange thing is that according to every site I have looked at except IMDB which doesn't have a UK listing at all, all state that it has a UK release of 19th July but doesn't get released in the USA until 16th August. If this is true, then it makes a nice change.
August is going to be awesome.
What a moron.
If he doesn't want to support it and regrets his association with it, can we expect him to give up his paycheck or donate it to charity? Or is this one of those deals where he'll profit from it but denounce it at the same time?
Also, fictionalised violence and real life violence tend to look quite different. I am quite sure nothing in Kick Ass resembled anything realistic. He might as well petition for Tom and Jerry, Roadrunner and Wile E Coyote and Tweety vs Sylvester cartoons to be banned as well.
They would have to make major changes to the comic for it to be film-able.
Carrey's distancing himself from the project is interesting...and what I find even more interesting is the Wikipedia article on the comic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kick-Ass_2_(comics)
There's no plot description at all. I won't go into spoilers for those who haven't read it, but I found it utterly horrible.
I'm not saying that as a prude - I've read lots of Millar's work and I like a lot of it. But for me, he totally crossed the line with Kick Ass 2 and I'm wondering if someone has taken the decision to try and cover up plot details ahead of its release. That would be a pointless exercise given the TPB is readily available, but it will make it more difficult for lazy hacks at The Daily Mail to Google it.
I'm conflicted about seeing the film, I enjoyed the first one, and hopefully the performances will still be high quality, but I suspect it may well be a complete car crash. Presumably it's in Carrey's contract that he has to be positive about the film while promoting it; the fact he's got cold feet already is some what amazing, and far from a good sign.
I also find that interesting.
He obv. read the script so he knew exactly what to expect and how much violence there would be in the movie. Why didn't he reject the role when he read the script?
I find this baffling. Either he's seen the film and thinks it sucks or he's seen the film and genuinely is disturbed with the level of violence in the movie.
Either way, some were saying this was going to be the role to kickstart his career again. Not anymore now that he's publicly denounced it.
Jim Carrey is a talented performer but clearly not the best business man or person capable of telling what is the best business move for his career anymore. Mark Millar and Matthew Vaughn's stock are on the rise while his is not. This is not a smart thing for him to be doing since this may have been his best chance at getting some mainstram spotlight in a positive way since Eternal Sunshine...
At the risk of sounding crass, it makes you wonder what he would have said if the victims of Sandy Hook had all been adults?
Strange decision, which will seem even stranger if the film does turn out to be good.
I agree with that list except for I Love You Philip Morris. Personally i thought he excelled in the role and was one of his best roles in years. Most of his recent movies have generally been family orientated. With KA2 he had the chance to do something different, he's now blown that chance.
I don't think he's really blown his chance of a career revival just because of a few tweets. He's still in the film, so if it's a success and his performance is praised then Hollywood will surely come knocking at his door again, regardless of his feelings towards screen violence. He was great in 'The Incredible Burt Wonderstone' earlier this year too, back to his madcap best so he's clearly still got it.
I think news sites are blowing his tweet totally out of proportion, he's not "condemning" the film, he's just saying that in the light of recent events that he can't personally stomach watching that level of violence, he's not said its a crap film or anything like that.
Having read the Kick Ass 2 graphic novel, if half of the stuff in the book is in the film then i can sort of sympathise with his feelings, the violence in the book was just there for shock value.
I think you're right. He's quite clearly said he's not ashamed of it. And I don't think he'd 'invoke' Sandy Hook lightly either - it's still an emotive topic in the States and I think the backlash would be huge if it was discovered that he'd used it to generate buzz for the film.
That's true he said he wasn't ashamed of the movie but he won't promote it. He's citing violence as the reason why, whether that's genuine or not we don't know.
Here's Mark Millar's full statement on the matter:
I'm talking money and acclaim, you can't live off critical goodwill.
He famously got $20 million for The Cable Guy, and was presumably on a huge salary for all his 90's pictures. Critical acclaim probably means more to him than cash at this point.
Hmm. A faint whiff of PR stunt, perhaps?
Sounds good to me
Dark & offensive is meaningless. Movie 43 is dark & offensive.
My thoughts exactly, either way, i'm still gonna be front and centre on opening night!
That was a bomb as well. Also, keep in mind about 8 million of that would have went to the IRS. That was also in 1996. 17 years ago.
Also he took a back end profit sharing deal on 5 movies which meant if they didn't make money past the point of production and advertising costs, he lost money. So he's not actually been a high earner in a long time because very few of his films have made much more than their production and advertising budget in the last 10 years. Which is why he's now doing a sequel to Dumber and Dumber when he said no to the idea 10 years ago and they made Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd. That was before he stopped being a box office draw he used to be. Also Eternal Sunshine was a critical success but also barely made back it's budget at the time, it finished at 34 million and had a budget of 20 million for production, probably about 5-8 for advertising.
Seriously, Jim Carrey has not been making good money for a long time and considering his star is on the wane while Millar's is on the rise given Nemesis, The Secret Service and Supercrooks have already been optioned for movies and he's made friends with Ridley Scott, Matthew Vaughn and Joe Carnahan, he really has chosen a bad time to try make a stand.