BSP 2014 Advent Calendar: Day 17

Welcome to Day 17 of Bam Smack Pow’s 2014 Advent Calendar! Only eight more days left until Christmas, and that means eight more superhero films will be mined for trivia. For Day 17, we give you …

Kick-Ass (2010)

It’s not often that you have a film and a comic book be developed in parallel of each other. That’s exactly what happened with Kick-Ass. Created by famed comic book writer Mark Millar, the rights to the comic book story and characters were sold before the first issue was even published. Controversial and sprinkled with dark humor and gratuitous violence, the film garnered positive reviews and was enough of a financial success to spawn a sequel.

Kick-Ass was directed by Matthew Vaughn, written by Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaugh, and starred Aaron Taylor-Johnson as David “Dave” Lizewski / Kick-Ass, Mark Strong as Frank D’Amico, Chloë Grace Moretz as Mindy Macready / Hit-Girl, Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Chris D’Amico / Red Mist, Nicolas Cage as Damon Macready / Big Daddy, Lyndsy Fonseca as Katie Deauxma, Clark Duke as Marty, and Evan Peters as Todd.

Trivia

Aaron Taylor-John and Evan Peters, who played best friends in the film, would later go on to star as the same character in Marvel movies from two different franchises. Aaron Taylor-Johnson would play Quicksilver in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Evan Peters would play Quicksilver in Fox’s X-Men: Days of Future Past.
Daniel Craig and Mark Wahlberg were originally considered for the role of Big Daddy.
Nicolas Cage modeled his speech and mannerisms after Adam West’s Batman.
The comic montage of Damon Macready / Big Daddy was illustrated by one of the creators of Kick-Ass, John Romita, Jr.
Damon Macready / Big Daddy, who’s played by Nicolas Cage, asks Mindy Macready / Hit-Girl to name John Woo’s first film. Cage, in real-life, has starred in two of Woo’s films — Face/Off (1997) and Windtalkers (2002).
At one point in the movie, Big Daddy says, “Now go to Robin’s revenge!” This line is a reference to a DC Robin comic book issue where Robin trained with a blind master martial artist. The master could not be beaten, that is, until Robin set up an automatic whistle as a distraction, which allowed Robin to sneak up behind the master.
Christopher Mintz-Plasse originally auditioned for the role of David Lizewski / Kick-Ass.
The Red Mist is referencing Jack Nicholson’s Joker from Batman (1989) when he says, “As a great man once said, wait ’till they get a load of me.”
In real life, Chloë Grace Moretz is the opposite of her Hit-Girl character. Raised in a strict household, she’s not allowed to swear and when referring to Kick-Ass in public, she calls it “the film.” At home with her family, she refers to the film as “Kick-Butt.”
After buying the story and character rights, director Matthew Vaughn could not get financing from studios to make the movie. He then raised the money via a dinner party and made the movie independently. Later, Vaughn would sell the movie to Universal, one of the studios that initially rejected him, for more than the original financing amount he requested.
The character of Frank D’Amico was originally named John Genovese, which is the name of a real life mob boss. The name was changed to avoid confusion and to also pay homage to a mob boss character on The Simpsons named Anthony D’Amico.
The name of Frank D’Amico’s henchmen are based on members of the Spice Girls pop group — Ginger, Posh, Baby, Sporty, and Scary.
Actor Dexter Fletcher appears in the movie as a gangster named Cody who drives a yellow Range Rover. Fletcher also appeared in another Matthew Vaughn movie, Layer Cake (2004), and was also a gangster who drove a yellow Range Rover.
In order to drive the Mistmobile in the film, Chirstopher Mintz-Plasse had to learn how to drive a stick shift. After the movie, he completely forgot what he learned.
At one point in the movie, Big Daddy stands in front of a billboard of Claudia Schiffer. In real life, she’s the wife of the film’s director, Matthew Vaughn.
The total body count by the end of the film stood at 59.

Make sure to come back each day because we still have eight more days worth of superhero film trivia for you!

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A special thanks to Eric Dufresne for his amazing geometric superhero art that’s being used as the background for the advent calendar.

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