Guest post: Rachel O

Warning: Big Spoilers For Kick-Ass Ahead

This weekend I went to go see Kick-Ass.  I went to go see it for a couple reasons.  First I’ve been a fan of superhero action films since I was dragged to X-Men when I was 16.  Second, articles about the character of Hit Girl, an eleven year old assassin, were popping up everywhere, something that’s increased 100 fold since it opened on Friday.  The response to the foul-mouthed and hyper violent adolescent has been overwhelming, with everyone chiming in to voice their opinion.  However, while I found the purple haired killer plenty problematic, there were some issues I had with the other women in the film, that I haven’t yet seen addressed.

Kick-Ass has only a handful of female characters.  This is the doing of the original author of the comic the film was based on, Mark Millar, when he decided the original main characters of Hit Girl and Big Daddy, were “…not lead characters…too cartoonish…”  Two of the three mothers are dead (one dies of a brain aneurism in the first five minutes, the other dies of a drug overdose in a comic book panel.)  Red Mist’s mom, the only one who’s alive, has two lines, and is never present, despite the fact that many scenes take place in her home.  A final scene shows the family penthouse in lockdown in preparation for a final battle, but the mom is mysteriously absent – I guess she was out that day?

(more…)

….by Jennifer Weiner.

When the ads for the new film started running, I should have been suspicious. “Not your father’s Star Trek?” What was wrong with my father’s Star Trek? I liked my father’s Star Trek! But still, there I was, on opening day, with a bucket of popcorn, surrounded by what looked like the entire staff of several area comic-book stores.

There was much to love about the movie. Kirk was hot, and Spock was cool, and their relationship felt just right, at once edgy and familiar. Unlike the earlier outings, where a shaken camera connoted a collision, danger, and/or black holes and time warps, the special effects were, indeed, special.

I’m not so much of a nerd that I couldn’t handle the way the film chucked continuity and ignored some of the original show’s rules of the road (although, note to J.J. Abrams: if a Vulcan is bonded and his spouse suddenly dies, he either dies, too, or ends up in mortal agony, and should not be depicted just calmly hanging out on a transporter pad. Okay, fine, maybe I am that much of a nerd).

I was even okay with the way the plot recycled Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (in “Khan,” the villain deploys a Doomsday weapon because he believes Kirk was responsible for the death of his wife. In “Trek,” the villain deploys a Doomsday weapon because he believes Spock was responsible for the death of his wife….and let me just add that, in the all-important categories of “pecs,” and “scenery chewing,” Eric Bana is no Ricardo Montalban.)

Honestly, I didn’t have a problem until about midway through the film…at which point I realized that every single lady on screen was either a mother, a ho, or an intergalactic hood ornament.

That sounds like more of the same and exactly like your father’s Star Trek.