Moretz said ‘it would be fun’ to see what Hit Girl is like as an adult. That will only be true if the studio avoids the shallowness of Kick-Ass 2 and returns the saga to its renegade roots
Let’s not forget the impact Matthew Vaughn’s original Kick-Ass movie made in 2010. Based on the comic book of the same name by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr, this was Watchmen’s punky little kid brother, a spiky, primary-coloured black
comedy about real-life superheroes for the
Social Media age. Its undoubted star was 12-year-old Chloë Grace Moretz as foul-mouthed, deadly preteen Hit Girl, a role you knew she’d absolutely nailed when the Daily Mail called her “one of the most disturbing icons and damaging role-models in the history of cinema”. Aaron Taylor-Johnson seemed perfectly cast (if a little overly buff) as the nerdy title character, who finds himself biting off way more than he can chew when he decides to become a real-life costumed vigilante on the streets of suburban Staten Island.
Kick-Ass proved an outlandish success because its creative team, Vaughn and screenwriter Jane Goldman, had the freedom to adapt Millar’s graphic novel with the biggest of geeky, fanboy-friendly hearts. The entire movie was made for just $30m outside the studio system after Vaughn bought the rights and raised the budget independently. The result was a surprisingly raw and bloody paean to comic book culture that inspired one of Nicolas Cage’s finest performances of recent years as the Adam West-channelling Big Daddy, Hit Girl’s father and crime fighting mentor.