4) Sin City
Back when Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City was first released, the PG-rated comic book movie was gaining a foothold as one of the dominant forms of cinematic entertainment. Sin City almost seems like a knee-jerk reaction, full to the brim as it is with sex, nudity and violence – so much so that it looks like a direct, R-rated riposte by a filmmaker tired of watching comic book movies become more sanitized on-screen.
Styled like a film noir, Sin City is lensed in an audience-unfriendly black and white (with the odd splash of color) and harks back to hard-boiled movies from the 40s and 50s. Then it adds in buckets of blood and storylines involving domestic abuse, pedophilia, cannibalism and scores of prostitutes massacring anyone who gets in their way.
Unexpectedly, this was a hit.
3) Kick-Ass
Much like Sin City, Kick-Ass appeared to be a direct response to the state of the average comic book movie upon its release in 2010. This was the year of Jonah Hex, an Iron Man sequel, and The Losers, all films which eschewed the darker elements of their origin properties and went strictly PG-13. Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass, on the other hand, gleefully embraced its R-rated status.
Though its stars include McLovin, teen heartthrob Aaron Taylor-Johnson and a pre-pubescent supergirl, Kick-Ass isn’t meant for tween viewers: it’s a dose of darkly comic quasi-realism for older comic book audiences. This is a movie in which the aforementioned child ‘superhero,’ Chloe Grace-Moretz’s Hit-Girl, dices up a room full of bad guys with a sword whilst dropping C-bombs, and Nic Cage gets burned alive in a home-made superhero outfit.
Published: Feb 3, 2016 01:58 pm