Kick-Ass (film)/Headscratchers

Comic Version

• OK, so at the end of the book Katie is so pissed-off with Dave that she sends him a picture of her blowing another guy. Why? What's to stop Dave from making photocopies and distributing them around the school- especially since she gave him several reasons to take that kind of revenge! Never mind that this level of horrible spitefulness comes out of nowhere- why would a high school girl even risk the possibility of having a photo of her with a cock in her mouth being distributed around the school/city/internet or show to her parents?
  • Because she's a massive bitchwhore. Really, it's that and a combination of Shoot the Shaggy Dog and Crapsack World. There's a very good reason why many people prefer the movie's much lighter deconstruction over the comic and as you pointed out, the blowjob isn't supposed to make sense, just give Dave one final fuck you and portray him as even more of a pathetic loser and make it all the more wangsty. For an in-universe reason, I have nothing. She really is a slut and doesn't care? Although having a jerkass boyfriend that'll knock someone as per her request, she might assume Dave would be too much of a pussy to do anything about it.
  • Katie's idiocy does have a lot of real life in it. High school girls are doing so many similar things there are actual Public Service Announcements asking them not to.

• Why isn't Dave capable of kicking the shit out of that boyfriend of hers? He might not be a GREAT fighter, not at all, but there is no way any beating from a high-school kid will be anywhere near the amount of punishment he has taken in the past, and we have seen him kick the shit out of people with at least twice the muscle mass. Dave should have left the guy sobbing and bleeding on the ground without teeth.
  • I thought the same thing. Dave getting his ass kicked offscreen by some teenager after beating grown mobsters left and right was definitely the low point of the comic. It deflated the very idea of Dave becoming Kick-Ass and, for me, was the point at which I knew the movie version rolled all over the comic. At least in the movies, Dave's personal life is all the better for being Kick-Ass but in the comic, it does absolutely nothing for him and it was a complete waste of his time and effort, since he was basically the same loser as when the comic started. Of course, the comic did start with him getting his balls fried off so maybe that explains why he doesn't have them in the end.
    • The comic is supposed to be a satire, and (almost) a total reconstruction of superhero tropes. Dave isn't a real hero or a Badass; almost all of his "victories" are due to him getting lucky, or Hit-Girl doing all the hard work, so it's not that weird that a guy much bigger and stronger could still beat the shit out of him. If Dave would "win" in the end, that would undermine what the comic is all about. The movie gives up on the deconstruction/satire at some point by making Dave into a real Badass; the comic, for better or worse, follows it all the way through.

• In the film, we're told why Chris D'Amico (Chris Genovese in the comics) becomes Red Mist: as a ploy to gain Kick-Ass' trust because his dad thinks Kick-Ass has been killing his men. In the comic, Chris' identity as Red Mist is not revealed until he and John Genovese (Frank D'Amico in the film) get the drop on Kick-Ass, Hit Girl and Big Daddy, and in fact Genovese is not really introduced or has any storyline relevance up until the ambush. So is it just a Contrived Coincidence in the comic that Red Mist happened to team up with Kick Ass who was rescued by Hit Girl?
  • He was using the same plot, except he was trying to lure out Big Daddy and Hit-Girl, not Kick-Ass. He teamed up with Kick-Ass for sh*ts and giggles and when he found out Kick-Ass had a connection to Hit-Girl, he took advantage of it.

• Big Daddy & Hit Girl waste no time in tracking down Kick-Ass (with incredible ease), yet they don't both to do a background check on Red Mist. And it ends up getting Big Daddy killed. Why?
  • In the comics, they followed Kick-Ass and probably didn't have an opportunity to do the same with Red Mist.
  • Red Mist was an even lamer "hero" than Kick-Ass. While Kick-Ass actually confronted the bad guys, Red Mist just dropped a dime on them. You don't need a superhero costume for that (except to cover your identity for fear of reprisal). Red Mist, by all accounts, was just a grandstanding copycat and there was no reason for them to want to recruit or assist him (which is why they tracked down Kick-Ass in the first place). They didn't even know Kick-Ass and Red Mist were together until they showed up at the hideout.
  • Just on that, Big Daddy tracked Kick-Ass down by tracing his IP address. This was the first thing I thought of when Dave put up the site. Why didn't anyone else try it, like, say, the police? Y'know, who were actually trying to find Kick-Ass?
    • They covered that in the film. Big Daddy rerouted his IP as soon as they found him.

• After his second fight (the first one after having been in hospital), Kick-Ass narrates that he lost all of his teeth. But later, we don't see anything of it. How?
  • Dentures.

Movie Version

• In the movie when Hit-Girl is rescuing Big Daddy and Kick-Ass from a live execution! she uses the night-vision goggles to effortless kill mooks. But why doesn't she keep them? Rule of Cool aside on the strobe light, she could have probably saved a lot more time and Big Daddy's life if she hadn't thrown it away a few minutes into using it.
  • Because the mooks started a fire, which would play havoc with her vision. She does try to keep them on for a few seconds before she finally pulls them off, and she doesn't react to Big Daddy being set on fire until after they're off, implying that she couldn't see him until that point.

• How much time is supposed to have passed between Kick-Ass getting stabbed and hit by a car to being completely recovered? In the movie it seems like he's back on his feet and perfectly fine after about a week! I understand the need to move things on quickly, but seriously, recovering from the surgery he would have had to repair his bone injuries, let alone the stab wound, would have taken months of painful rehabilitation.
  • Months — the entire story takes place over 6 months.

• Film version: After Kick-Ass uses his totally awesome jetpack-mounted gattling guns to shoot down some thugs, the big guy drops the bazooka. Later on, after defeating Red Mist, Kick-Ass retrieves it... except he was in the little dojo off of Frank's office, and the bazooka is down the hall. He would've had to pass through the office to get it, yet obviously doesn't. He just magically has it.
  • Check the scenes again. In between the office and the dojo there is a hallway, he left the dojo to get the launcher before heading to the office.

• Rule of Cool aside, there is no possible way that having two gatling guns going off on either side of your head wouldn't make you go deaf.
  • How did he not fly backwards at an increadible speed from the force generated from those guns as well?
    • The film showed that Big daddy was working on the jetpack. You can be pretty sure that he has somehow synchroniced the gattlings with some horizontal thrust, to compensate. Think about it: If he wouldn't have done it, the jetpack wouldn't go back: It would spin vertically! About the ear protection... what about earplugs?
    • Because comic-book logic has taken over. Hit Girl and Kick-Ass are superheroes now, not a child soldier/vigilante and a loser wannabe. Same reason why the rocket didn't explode the on impact.

• How did Big Daddy get such an amazing jetpack/gatling gun, for $300,000 American, off the internet?
  • According to the "Making Of" book, the director really did see one on eBay (without the gatling guns; Big Daddy installed those himself).
  • They've become even cheaper since the movie; you can get one for under $100,000, these days. They are much more difficult to operate than the movie makes them, though.

• Just how/why did Big Daddy die in the film? The most obvious culprit is being set on fire, but he wasn't actually on fire for any more than 45 seconds. Not that that isn't a long time to be on fire, but he was wearing some seriously heavy-duty armor; it's a little hard to believe the flames could have been that fatal to him. And it certainly wasn't the pre-fire beating: Kick-Ass took the same brutal licks with virtually nothing to protect him and he walked limped away.
  • Fire that was in contact with exposed flesh. Doesn't matter how much armour you're wearing if you're getting burnt to a crisp in areas that aren't covered.
    • We don't know if that suit was fireproof, the inside lining might have melted onto his flesh. Plus it looks like his throat and windpipe got badly burned, he was obviously having trouble speaking for a start.
  • Upon rewatching the scene, Frank's mooks removed most of Big Daddy's bulky body armor, meaning he was also probably suffering some major internal damage.
  • You don't have to be on fire to die from it, you don't actually burn your food to cook it, right? Big Daddy probably roasted inside his armor.

• Why didn't Hit Girl shoot out the left legs of the chair Big Daddy was tied to? You can't tell me she's not that capable of a shot. Heck even the loss of one leg would've been enough for him to be out of the fire's convection. Granted he still would have burns, but not nearly as severe.
  • Several reasons. One is that she probably didn't think to do that in the moment. Two is that she was too busy taking out the bad guys, and three is that even if she did that there's no guarantee that Big Daddy would be far enough away from the fire. In fact, because of his height, being sat up probably meant he was further away from the flames than he would have been had the chair tipped over.
• When Dave first tries at being a superhero, he fails, getting beat, stabbed and hit by a car. His cover story was that he was mugged and his clothes was taken from him(with the possibility of being raped). Word gets out on this at school and rumors start circulating that he's gay. How does him being mugged, left nude with possibility of him being raped add up to him being gay?
  • They specifically think he's a male prostitute, if I remember correctly.
  • Because it's a high school. Rumours can spread very easily and it really doesn't matter how likely they are.
  • Same reason that in a male-on-male rape scenario (like in prison), it's the "bottom" (receiving end) that's considered to be "gay" (and derided for it), even though he doesn't have much say in the matter and it's the "top" maintaining the erection and perpetrating the vile act.
  • It was lost in the comic/movie transfer, but in the original story it had happened twice and the story wasn't just that he was gay, but that he was a gay prostitute. Since he kept getting found with no clothes on after being beaten people assumed he was a underage prostitute, and they then made the "logical" leap that, since there are no women pedophiles, he must be sleeping with older men who are then roughing him up and dumping him on the sidewalk.

• This troper isn't sure, but do RPGs really work like that? I thought their thing was exploding on contact.
  • Comic-book logic. See above.
    • I suspect RPGs don't from some filmed accidents I've seen, but grenade-launcher grenades have to travel a minimum distance (determined by the number of times they've spun, but anyway...) before they explode. Something like this was probably on the creators' minds, considering the nearly point-blank range. Even so, this does raise the question why the fast, pointy rocket didn't shoot through D'Amico rather than throwing him out the window.
      • Momentum. It would have to be pretty thin and sharp to go straight through him without moving him.
    • My housemate who was in the Infantry said the ones he has seen fired have a minimum distance they have to be before they explode and depending on the type they actually do have build up speed. So reality is unrealistic.

• In the movie, why did Big Daddy freak out when Hit-Girl gets shot? First he of all people should know that she was most likely wearing a bulletproof vest and would be fine. Second as an ex-cop he should have had training for a situation like this; you're supposed to take care of the person trying to kill you before you go help a hurt person. Red Mist was right in front of him, he easily could have disabled the kid, grab him and use him as a shield or hostage to get away from the mafia goons.
  • To put it simply, Hit-Girl was his daughter. No matter how much training the two have gone through, and no matter how paranoid/CrazyPrepared they were, there was always the chance that she wasn't wearing a bullet-proof vest. Seeing your daughter get shot 2 or 3 times is bound to instantly panic you.
  • Or that the bullets went through the vest or that she suffered injury from the impact of the fall. Not to mention he would've been expecting her to get shot in a pre-planned raid, not by Red Mist whom he'd just met.
    • Actually, he did know that she was wearing a bullet-proof vest. He also knew that she would be fine falling back through the window into the snow. He also knew that if he pretended to think she had been killed, then they were less likely to walk over and put a bullet in her forehead to make sure.
  • Big Daddy was using low-velocity rounds. Something tells me that Red Mist wasn't.

• How the hell did Katie Deauxma meet Razul the drug dealer at a needle exchange? OK, I realize that plot points and character connections were condensed from the comic, and that's fine. What bugs me is that Katie is supposed to have met Razul at the needle exchange, and felt so sorry for him that they ended up getting involved somehow. What was Razul doing at the needle exchange? He's a drug dealer. And I get that girls want bad boys, but HE incites Katie to look at him like a little lost puppy dog?
  • Drug dealers frequently hang out at rehab clinics and the like to keep their buyers from going clean, or even hook them on new drugs. It's entirely possible he saw her and decided he had to have her. So he deliberately put on a "suffering addict" act to get her to date him, only to try and control her. When she resisted, he got ugly.
  • There's also the subtle clue that comic book version Katie wasn't the good girl she claimed to be. After she sent Dave a picture of her blowing another guy at the end of the book, I figured she met and hooked up with Razul.

• Why bother Storming the Castle with D'Amico if you have a pair of gatling guns on a jetpack and his office has a large, unprotected glass window to his back?
  • Distraction? That sounds a lot like decoy.
  • Because activating the gatling gun takes time and noise, and they could have just walked out the office in that time?
    • There is a bit of time, and it does make some noise, but if you're behind him and a closed window, you could easily shoot him from far enough away that he wouldn't hear the activation.
      • He had to save Hit-Girl from getting blown away first, and by the time he's done killing D'Amico's bodyguard's, Hit Girl was already halfway down the hall to confront him herself, and once she was in there he wouldn't have a chance in hell of gunning him down without turning Hit-Girl into a fine red paste. Alternatively, he didn't know D'Amico was in that room.

• In the final Storming the Castle sequence, when Hit-girl is out of ammo, trapped behind the kitchen counter... she's not out of ammo. She has the grenade strapped to her uniform. IT'S CLEARLY VISIBLE (you know, being bright yellow and all). She knows the bad guys are hiding behind the corner, and she's able to get out of cover long enough to throw those knives... so why doesn't she toss the grenade?
  • If you look closely it's actually a smoke grenade. I imagine attacking with an ultimately harmless weapon would constitute striking first so the mooks (who seemed a little uncomfortable with two guns and a bazooka on an 11-year-old girl) would be retaliating instead and have no qualms about bazooka'ing the shit out of her. It'd just be provocation on her part with no offensive to back it up.

• So, having skeletal prostheses to repair the damage done by a car hit, makes you thougher and more able to resist a beating? I happen to know a person (a young woman) who had some prostheses done in her hips and other parts of her skeleton after bieng hit by a bus, and it doesn't make her more resistant. In fact she gets easily tired, and can support less weight than she could with her real hips.
  • Covered in the movie. All the metal reinforced his skeleton ("I'm like Wolverine!") and he'd had a fair amount of nerve damage which raised his pain threshold.

• Where exactly does Hit Girl emerge from in Razou's apartment? The window that she and Kick Ass exit the apartment from is clearly closed.
  • Rule of Cool.
    • Or she could have closed it when she came in so that the sound of the battle inside would be harder to hear from outside.

• So, in the final battle against D'Amico, why doesn't he just use his gun after he kicks Hit-Girl?
  • Petty reasons, I would assume. He had her at his mercy, and, since she played a huge part in effectively crippling his organization, he wanted her to suffer.
  • Or perhaps he wanted to give her an honorable death. Remember that his last words were "I wish to God I had a son like you."