The "Kick-Ass" Controversy

This week, you are bound to hear lots of press in the movie news involving a little superhero called Hit-Girl. She uses a mean double-ended blade, gets into brawls with bad guys, and swears like a character from "Crashed."

Did I mention that she's about eleven or twelve years old?

Such is the controversary involving "Kick-Ass," a comic book movie opening Friday that has already drawn a ton of buzz, both possitive and negative. There are a ton of great reviews already on the internet, but there are also those that are a bit more...concerned about the film.

And virtually every review I've seen for the movie, in one way or another, is centered around the character of Hit-Girl: Either they say she completely steals the show, or they find her kinda...well, disturbing.

Obviously, I have not seen "Kick-Ass" yet (I absolutely can't wait to), but here's what I can tell you about the character without having watched the film:

* Hit-Girl swears. A lot. I have no idea just how strong her profanity gets, but it is known that her character uses "the c-word" at one point...although, to be fair, the child actor's mother gave the writers permission to use that word in the script.

* Hit-Girl fights. A lot. She's whips through bad guys like the best of 'em. Here's the thing: She even, apparently, sometimes kills them. Not something that hasn't been seen in superhero movies before, obviously. But this is probably the first time we've seen it from a little girl.

* Finally, and perhaps most controversially, Hit-Girl is, at one point of the movie, tortured by a villain. I don't know how the torture scene is done, but the buzz is that the scene is disturbing and brutal.

"Kick-Ass," from the very beginning, has had a rough time finding its way to the screen. Even with Nicolas Cage in a supporting role, the movie was shot before a distributor was even attached to the project. The reason for this is probably that "Kick-Ass," at least on the surface, seems kinda hard to sell: It has extreme violence, a dark sense of humor, and, worst of all, it's a superhero movie that's rated R! Of course, these are also all things that make the movie appealing for its target audience...even if that target audience ends up being fairly limited.

But back to Hit-Girl, who has stolen virtually all press involving the film in recent weeks: The big concern of many is that children are going to see the film and imitate the character's extreme stunts. Young girls are going to lose their manners and start trash talking like Hit-Girl does. Even the use of a young actress in such a role is placing the movie under a cross-heirs. Some are almost going as far as to call it child abuse!

My personal opinion: The character of Hit-Girl looks like an absolute blast. While I understand some people having problems with a character like that, by all accounts, "Kick-Ass" looks like a satire: it's clearly not meant to be taken seriously. Kids probably won't go, because even though the movie is a superhero film, it also has a swear word in its title, which will hopefully be enough to make parents go, "Hmmmm, this doesn't look like it's going to be for my kids." If it finds success, it will almost certainly be modest at best: It will reach a total of $70 million at most. And if that happens, everyone who was offended by the concept of a 12-year old ass-kicker will probably have forgotten all about it.