12-Year-Old Girl Curses, Kills In Kick-Ass Film Trailer

The newest trailer for the upcoming comic book adaptation “Kick-Ass” is getting a lot of attention on Twitter today, thanks to tweets and re-tweets by the likes of Rob Corddry, Jake Tapper, and TV’s Andy Levy. The R-rated trailer features copious violence and profanity, but the clip’s heat is generated by the source of the mayhem: 12-yr-old vigilante Hit Girl.

Is this a post-ironic hoot, or the end of western civilization as we know it? You tell me.

Here’s the (extremely NSFW) trailer:

Corddry notes:

Since I tweeted this, TONS of responses about the cursing, NONE about the violence. Way to be consistent America.

The trailer certainly achieves the intended effect, turning neutered kiddie movie cliche´s into bloody piles of goo, and it’s certain to get a lot of attention. It sure got mine.

From a political standpoint, this trailer is a bit of a contradiction. While conservatives aren’t likely to appreciate the profanity, they’ll surely agree that if all 12-year-olds carried handguns, there would be little or no wedgie-ing. Liberals might appreciate the puncturing of gender roles, but be dismayed at the lack of safety equipment.

Personally, this trailer just made me feel hopelessly out of the loop. I actually had to use the Google to find out what a “Red Band Trailer” is. (It’s a trailer that can only be viewed by people who claim to be 17 or older.)

The film itself sounds, um, kick-ass. The hero is a regular high school kid who decides to become a superhero, despite having no powers, just because. It’s a funny premise, and if the trailers are any indication, the action is first-rate.

While Hit Girl takes the conceit to 11, the idea of bad-ass kids is not a new thing to cinema, although Hollywood narrative tradition usually requires some kind of mitigation. In “Taxi Driver,” Jodi Foster‘s pre-adolescent prostitute Iris is “rescued” and returned to proper living. In “Robocop 2,” malevolent drug-dealing waif Hob goes all vulnerable in his death scene.

One possible exception is Natalie Portman‘s Mathilda character from “Leon: The Professional,” who ends up in a safe place, but who doesn’t really shed her relish for vengeance.

Will scenes like those in this trailer lead to pickets and boycotts? In a world where there’s no such thing as bad publicity, that’ll be a win-win for a film like this. Perhaps those who think this movie will be a bad influence on their kids should teach their kids not to sneak into R-rated movies.

Update: Chloe Moretz, The actress who plays Hit Girl, is 12, but according to the character’s Facebook page, Hit Girl herself is only 11.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.