Welcome to the wonderful world of Mark Millar.
-Tom
Mark Millar is what I think of as the fag end of the whole UK invasion/grimdark thing, and it’s a bit annoying that he’s the one cashing in with his formulaic, pseudo-political, but at the same time occasionally amusing-and-ultraviolencey-enough-to-enjoy, stuff.
Virtually all the other writers in the same vein (i.e. UK invasion/grimdark writers from the past 25 or so years) are better and more deserving of having movies and tv shows made of their stuff.
(Hmm, that reminds me, wasn’t there a rumour about someone having another stab at making Global Frequency?)
Kingsman’s tone, and Kick-ass before it, is much more Goldman/Vaughn than Mark Millar. If it were true to Millar, it would be seething with superficially ironic but actually genuine racism, homophobia, misogyny and emasculated rage. They do an amazing job retaining the pop hooks and adolescent energy while sucking out the venom.
I enjoyed Kick Ass very much, all of it. Tone, pace, story, characters, it’s all good. Kingsman is like an engine that isn’t firing on all cylinders. I liked Wanted, though not as much as Kick Ass. So Mark Millar wasn’t a bad name to me before but some of the stuff in Kingsman at the end there makes me cringe and if that’s what he brings to the table then I can see why he has that rep.
Kingsman may not be “seething” with misogyny and emasculated rage – I grant you it’s no Wanted – but it’s still clearly a Mark Millar joint. Or am I just forgetting the sidelined female heroes and anal sex with Swedish princesses from Layer Cake?
And if you really want to see Kick-Ass come into its Mark Millarness, check out the sequel. Or, better yet, don’t.
-Tom
Kick Ass 2 fucking sucks so bad.
Yep, you are right on that one - I just looked up other stuff he was involved with, and I disliked Kick-Ass and Wanted for largely the same “can’t quite put a finger on it” reason - something about it just a little harder edged/darker in tone than I want my fun action movies to be, I think. It’s like when I went to see the last Rambo movie and walked out of the theater feeling kinda sick to my stomach and more than a little disturbed, rather than entertained. Well, maybe not quite like that, but something like it.
Wanted the movie is nothing like the comic. This is both bad (the comic has an interesting premise and some interesting bits therein) and very, very good (the comic is filled with Mark Millar’s Mark Millarisms, and literally ends with the main character butt-fucking you the reader, which is ok because a magical super computer is going to wipe your memory after the fact. Also spoilers but fuck that because Mark Millar).
I had managed to forget there was a Kick-Ass 2 until today. Thanks a lot, jerks. :(
Oh man! Remember that scene in Kick-Ass 2 when Union J performed their hit song Carry You while Hit Girl got all excited? Good times, amirite?
This is why I have a hard time taking Tom seriously when he goes “because lol Mark Millar”. Until you’ve read the vomitous bile that man puts to paper, you don’t know what’s unfiltered Mark Millar is.
Wanted still feels closer to a the comic in that it’s just indulging in the power fantasy, albeit without the strapping young white lad being oppressed by minorities before taking his vengeance on them and the casual raping of celebrities (yes, this happens because fuck Mark Millar). Kingsman and Kick-Ass on the other hand have a knowing ironic distance to them. Or rather, they go from presenting an indulgent fantasy, to undercutting and deconstructing it, to finally reconstructing it into something better.
(The anal sex joke in Kingsman though is, well…iffy. Film Crit Hulk makes a stirring defense for it being a knowing troll, and I think the caption after it backs him up on that, but I don’t know that that was the way to do it.)
Gosh, if all the Mark Millar was expunged from those adaptations of his comics, it makes you wonder why they even bother giving the man a story credit! Next you’ll be telling us there’s no actual Frank Miller in Sin City!
At any rate, I have never read a Mark Millar comic book, so I’ll have to take your word for it that the gross bits of Kingsman, Kick-Ass, and Wanted are all the fault of the movies’ respective directors and have nothing to do with the source material. Seems like a bit of a stretch, though. Maybe you can link me something written in all caps to set me straight?
-Tom
It’s kind of important to realize that Wanted is an origin story for a supervillain. He’s not meant to be a sympathetic character, and you’re not supposed to cheer him on when he displays his flagrant racism or goes around raping people. A lot of people seem to read it as “this guy is the protagonist of the story, therefore the hero of the story”, and the two do not automatically go hand in hand. I’d argue that the movie actually kind of misses the point by removing the villainous aspects of the main character.
That said, Millar’s not exactly a subtle master craftsman.
I think Soren’s point is that the source material is a lot worse.
That’s how I read it; and I think he’s mis reading Tom’s “Lol Mark Millar”. I think we can all agree that Millar is a weirdy pants. Or we should, anyway.
You’re right that Wanted (book) is a Villain origin story but it’s such a clumsy one (calling Millar unsubtle doesn’t do it justice IMO). I feel like Millar tries to sell us on rooting for the main character at first, but there’s no payoff for this and it’s clear where the story is heading. Nobody expects the main character to lead a reformation movement. Or to somehow access the ability to call out to super heroes from another reality to fix the situation. It’s pretty clear how everything is going to go down, and the last panel is just stupid.
Oh, I get that. I don’t think that’s news to anyone. I’ve heard that bit about the end of Wanted that peacedog mentioned upthread. I just don’t understand why Soren objects to someone noting that Wanted, Kick-Ass, and Kingsman all come from Mark Millar comics. That’s kind of significant when you talk about their “issues”.
-Tom
When I read a Mark Millar comic, I want to reach through the pages and strangle him. When I watch a Matthew Vaughn/Jane Goldman adaptation of those comics, I don’t. Because while a lot of the surface stuff is the same (although with Kingsman that’s debatable, since so much of it is changed) the tone and purpose feels different. Being familiar with both, like it or not, good or bad, the movies feel a lot less Millar than Vaughn/Goldman.
Origin story is putting it charitably. You could handle that content intelligently and turn it into an examination of power corrupting a person, but no, the actual transformation from emasculated wuss to villain (but really hero) is handled in a couple of pages of montage in the first issue and then never touched upon until the aforementioned casual rape (and murder) is turned into an equally throwaway moment of doubt. The rest of is is just tedious intra-villain fighting and Millar congratulating himself on how he’s made the new Watchmen for turning regonizable villains Joker and Clayface into Rictus and Shithead*.
*Made from the feces of the 666 vilest people on earth. So clever.
I would instead suggest it’s just not a very well done origin story.
Also, had I totally forgotten about Shithead. Man that was pretty stupid. Maybe not as stupid as the dude with the sentient phallus.
You say potato, I say potahto.
I just saw Kingsman. And then I read this thread. I had no idea about Mark Millar and such. Still, I enjoyed Kick-Ass the movie a great deal. The tone really worked for me in that movie. The fact that it was like a hyper-surreal comic book at times, but then switched to almost realistic real life violence, it was all very well integrated as part of the story and what it was trying to portray.
Kingsman’s tonal changes didn’t quite work the same way. But I did have a good time watching the action sequences. And the movie did surprise me quite a few times with character deaths and various actions in the movie that took place.
If they do have a sequel, I hope they don’t gloss over the fact that the world went nuts and a lot of people probably died.