Jim Carrey trashes the violence in Kick-Ass 2, Mark Millar responds
Brad Sturdivant
June 24th, 2013
Jim Carrey caused quite a stir over the weekend, coming out and saying he cannot support his upcoming summer film KICK-ASS 2 because the film is too violent. The timing is odd since the tragedy happened a while ago and KICK-ASS 2 comes out in August, and a lot of critics are accusing Jim Carrey of either trying to get out of the press for the film or just attempting a shameless publicity stunt for the film. To recap, here’s what Jim Carrey Tweeted:
“I did Kickass a month b4 Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence. My apologies to others involved with the film. I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart.”
Jim Carrey is an odd duckling, so this isn’t necessarily shocking, but it is a little out there and confusing, even for Carrey. As we all know, violence in film has been around for quite a while and this isn’t the first violent film for Jim Carrey. Why take this stand now? Why not take it when the tragedy in Aurora happened, which would have been before he started filming KICK-ASS 2? There are a lot of questions and Jim Carrey has opened himself up to criticism, the first of which has come directly from creator Mark Millar. Millar wrote a long statement in response to Jim Carrey, here are some of the highlights:
As you may know, Jim is a passionate advocate of gun-control and I respect both his politics and his opinion, but I’m baffled by this sudden announcement as nothing seen in this picture wasn’t in the screenplay eighteen months ago….Like Jim, I’m horrified by real-life violence (even though I’m Scottish), but Kick-Ass 2 isn’t a documentary…Ultimately, this is his decision, but I’ve never quite bought the notion that violence in fiction leads to violence in real-life any more than Harry Potter casting a spell creates more Boy Wizards in real-life. Our job as storytellers is to entertain and our toolbox can’t be sabotaged by curtailing the use of guns in an action-movie.
Those are just a couple of snippets and clearly, Millar has the advantage since he can write as much as he wants to. Plus, he took it seriously enough to not respond via Twitter, which is yet another questionable decision from Jim Carrey. Anyway, go to Page 2 to read Mark Millar’s full statement and decide for yourself who’s right in this debate.
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