By Erin Free

“Okay, you cunts…let’s see what you can do now!” With these few words, Kick-Ass’ Hit-Girl instantly became one of the most indelible, controversial, and surprisingly loveable comic book characters ever reconfigured for the big screen. Though ostensibly the story of Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), a high school nobody and obsessive comic book fan who makes the decision to become the titular superhero, 2010’s Kick-Ass really belongs to Hit-Girl and Big Daddy, two other masked crime fighters that the hapless Dave meets on his blood splattered adventures. Schooled from near birth to fight crime by her obsessed, slightly unhinged but loving father (Nicolas Cage), Hit-Girl (played with jaw dropping spirit, authority, and comic timing by Chloe Moretz) is only eleven-years-old but has the weapons training and combat skills of an SAS commando or top level ninja. Luridly costumed, and battling alongside her equally eccentric dad, Hit-Girl slices, shoots, beats and batters her way through New York’s criminal underworld, dispensing rough justice while somehow maintaining her childlike sense of wonder.

Along with the shuddering violence and advanced kill skills, it was also Hit-Girl’s use of the c-bomb that really riled up the conservatives and kick-started a minor controversy. “I’m not encouraging young girls to use language like that, but at the same time, I’m not going around encouraging young girls to kill fifty people,” director Matthew Vaughn told FilmInk. “What amazes me is that no-one seems to have a problem with her hacking people’s limbs off! The point is, she’s like a soldier. Soldiers use that language before they go in to sort out The Taliban, and no-one would even think about telling them what they could say. They’re on a mission, and she’s on a mission too. You pick up bad habits if you’re trained to be a lethal assassin! The rules that apply to a normal eleven-year-old girl do not apply to this person. If people are really offended by this, then let’s talk about the fact that she’s killing people before the fact that she’s swearing.”

Despite the utter brilliance of the Hit-Girl character, it was actually her that made the initial financing of the violent, daring Kick-Ass so difficult. “It was Hit Girl,” Vaughn told FilmInk. “It was having an eleven-year-old girl do the things that she does. Everyone would say, ‘Can we make her eighteen?’ and I would say, ‘Well, no.’ In the end, that’s what stopped people from investing in it. But when you take a risk on something like this, it pays off for the audience, because they get to see something which hasn’t been ‘focus grouped’ to death, and discussed and discussed so that all the rawness, originality and controversy has been taken out.”

The audience certainly got that with the instant classic, Kick-Ass, and in the pocket dynamo killing machine that is Hit-Girl, they got a movie character for the ages.

 

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