Jim Carrey — who plays Colonel Stars And Stripes in Kick-Ass 2 — disavowed the movie on Twitter yesterday due to its violence, a move he says was prompted by the Newtown shootings. Here are the relevant tweets (via here and here).
We don’t know if this means Jim Carrey won’t participate in the press junkets for Kick-Ass 2, but this does seem like an odd about-face considering Carrey liked the first film which was also violent. Also, the Kick-Ass 2 comic books were published before Carrey signed for the film, so it isn’t like their content was a secret. Yeah, Sandy Hook was a particularly distressing tragedy, but why would that make an actor regret playing a crime-fighter who doesn’t like guns?
We can sum up our initial reaction with a GIF.
Then again, Jim Carrey has possibly the strangest official website ever and recently made a really odd video about guns or Hee Haw or something. His mercurial nature and dislike of gun violence wasn’t a secret either. Which brings us back to this point: the character he’s playing in Kick-Ass 2 usually avoids using guns, and the violence has visible consequences. If you’re going to disavow a movie for violence, the franchise about crime-fighters who don’t heal overnight seems like the wrong place to lay blame.
Kick-Ass writer Mark Millar responded to Jim Carrey’s disavowal with a very long post at his website. Here’s an excerpt.
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.
Critical hit.
The always-modest Mark Millar goes on to compare his franchise to other movies that are totally in the same league. *clears throat*
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.
We’d like to believe the role was more attracted to him than he was to it…
Okay, we’re going to level with you. This whole post was just an excuse to post Jim Carrey GIFs. I don’t care what Jim Carrey thinks about violence in his movies. Unless he’s telling me to ride the snake, I’m not listening.
[Sources: Bleeding Cool, Final Ellipsis, Julia Segal, and Doctor Sauce; Banner picture courtesy of Universal.]