“Kick-Arse”.
That’s how director Matthew Vaughn, comic-book writer Mark Millar and co all say the title of their movie Kick-Ass on the engaging making-of-the-movie extra features on the film’s Blu-ray and DVD release.
The unapologetically Anglo-Saxon pronunciation tells you just how British – surprisingly – the movie is. The American accents, the New York setting and the characters may all scream ‘Made in the USA’, but the creative forces behind the film are all Brits – as are many of the cast, including Kick-Ass himself, Aaron Johnson.
The extras are full of revealing stuff about the movie’s creation, divulging how Vaughn began working on the script at the same time as Millar was writing the comic book (Jane Goldman, Mrs Jonathan Ross, stepped in after his early drafts) and how he and his team had to raise the money themselves after the Hollywood studios turned the project down. (More squeamish, it appears, about the film’s swearing than its violence.)
The only time you hear Vaughn deviate from his British enunciation of the film’s title is when – still without a distributor – he introduces eight minutes from the movie at last year’s Comic-Con in San Diego.
“I call it ‘Kick-Arse’”, he says, “but I’ve been told I’ve got to call it ‘Kick-Ass’ here.”
However you pronounce it, Kick-Ass would have been “dead in the water” if the Comic-Con crowd hadn’t been impressed, but the British contingent pulled it off. The fanboys gave the film an enthusiastic thumbs-up rather than the finger.
Kick-Ass is released on Blu-ray & DVD on 6th September and is also available from that date on Sky Box Office.
