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Kick-Ass 2 "is The Empire Strikes Back" says Mark Millar - SciFiNow

Kick-Ass 2 “is The Empire Strikes Back” says Mark Millar

Kick-Ass creator Mark Millar talks escalation and being the “palate-cleanser” of the summer

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Chloe Grace Moretz kicking ass in Kick-Ass 2

Kick-Ass 2 hits UK cinemas on 14 August 2013, bringing Mark Millar’s unique brand of superhero ultraviolence back to the big screen. When we spoke to the comic’s creator, he told us that the filmmakers had strived to make everything bigger and better.

“There has to be that consistency from movie to movie, they’ve got to have moved on, there’s got to be a sense of escalation,” he said, speaking exclusively to SciFiNow. “It’s gone from a guy wants to be Spider-Man to be a guy who wants to be in The Avengers essentially, and then antagonists starting to appear.”

“You’ve got to build it up bigger, this is Empire Strikes Back. And I think the Star Wars analogy is probably a good one because George Lucas was in the background of all of his films but Irvin Kershner came in and did the second one, and I think Jeff Wadlow is the Irvin Kershner here. He’s the guy who’s come in and made it a little bit darker, a little bit bigger but you can sort of feel Matthew’s guiding hand as a producer in the way he informs the material, it’s sort of got a British accent even though it’s an American film.”

Jeff Wadlow is the man chosen to bring Kick-Ass 2 to life, taking over both writing and directing duties from Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn.

“We looked at a lot of people, actually,” Millar remembers. “Matthew and I were first looking in September 2010 and we were firing emails back and forward saying ‘What do you think of this guy?’ ‘Oh no that guy’s shit and I’ve heard he’s an asshole, a pain in the arse to work with,’  and then Matthew says to me ‘Oh there’s this really interesting guy, Jeff Wadlow, who pitched me this thing and he wrote a really good screenplay that was based on the pitch, he didn’t meander and he actually did what he said he was going do and he’s really interesting.’

“So we did a conference call and he gave his take on what he could do with the two books, how he was going to streamline them into one movie. And it was great, right from the get-go really I think we knew we’d found the guy.

“And at first when Matthew said he was American I was like ‘What?’ What makes Kick-Ass a little different is it’s almost like the British punky version of an American superhero story but Jeff just nailed it and I’m really, really happy.”

Kick-Ass creators John Romita Jr and Mark Millar on set for their Kick-Ass 2 cameos.
Kick-Ass creators John Romita Jr and Mark Millar on set for their Kick-Ass 2 cameos.

Kick-Ass 2 comes at the end of a long summer of comic book and end of the world movies, and Millar couldn’t be happier about the scheduling.

“I think this summer’s been a weird one, there’s been five complete disasters from the studio and at worst there’s one disaster, but there’s been five this time and that’s kind of weird,” he muses. “Normally 3/4s of what’s invested in has really good returns, but for so many movies to lose so much money, it’s fascinating that the superhero movies are the ones that have made money, they’re kind of bullet proof.

“And Kick-Ass is tracking really well as well, we reckon it’s going to do two, two and a half times what the first one did based on the projections. I think the timing’s good, originally it was coming out in June and I think that would have been a mistake, I think it would have been steamrollered by all those titans that were coming out but they’ve all lumbered over and fallen and I like the idea of coming out at the very end as a palate cleanser to a quite morose summer.”

“How many of these little CGI guys can you see being smashed up inside skyscrapers, you know? Eventually you just don’t give a shit!”

Kick-Ass 2 is released on 14 August in the UK – read our review here. You can buy Kick-Ass on Blu-ray for £5.09 at Amazon.co.uk.