Matthew Vaughn Discusses Kick-Ass and a New Poster Debuts
Posted 12.05.09 by BrentJS
Director Matthew Vaughn likes to do things his own way. When his friend, comic book writer Mark Millar, approached him with the idea of making a movie based on his Kick-Ass comic book, Vaughn refused to leave it up to "the whores in Hollywood." Instead, he went out and raised Kick-Ass's $50 million budget himself.
One of the ways Vaughn avoided the inflated budgets of other "superhero" movies is by filming as much as possible with his cameras, rather than relying on CGI, a technology that he is not very comfortable using.
I hate [CGI]. F*cking green screen. It's like, for me, CGI is for when you really can't do it in camera. I use it when I have to, but I just think it's fake.
Another way that Vaughn kept the cost of the movie down was by hiring up-and-coming actors, rather than "name" actors, for the lead roles. The notable exception to this is veteran actor Nicolas Cage as Damon "Big Daddy" Macready, who Vaughn said was pretty easy to convince to star in the picture.
Nick is a big comic book fan, and he just read the script and went, "This is cool. I'm in." Simple as that. You know, Nick wants to do good work, and he was very cool. Literally, we sent him the script and he read it and said, "I'm in." So it was a very easy process.
While the name of the movie implies that there's going to be a lot of action, Vaughn said that the main character, Dave "Kick-Ass" Lizewski (played by Aaron Johnson), does learn some valuable lessons nevertheless.
What Dave learns is, he goes on a big journey. At the beginning of the movie, he says, "Why does nobody help people?" Then he falls in love with someone, so he stops helping people. And then he starts helping people. And he realizes that the reason it stops most people from helping people in danger is that they've got to lose. And he realizes that a real hero is someone who, even with something to lose, still does, takes a risk.
In related news, AICN has the first look at a new Kick-Ass teaser poster featuring Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Chris "Red Mist" D'Amico.
Next Showing: Kick-Ass opens April 16, 2010