Last weekend, I went to Comic-Con for the second time in as many years. A ton of Hollywood people were in attendance as comic books have been embraced by Hollywood as a source to be mined for content to reap boatloads of cash from the global box office. I’ll write more about my Comic-con experience in my next post but there were several films that piqued my interest and led me to stay at home this weekend. Kick-Ass, directed by Matthew Vaughn and based on a comic by Mark Millar, was one of those films. They showed footage that had some amazing fight choreography and brought about a raucous reaction from the audience. After I came back from San Diego, I came upon an early draft for Kick-Ass and read it this weekend. I also came upon an early draft of the Green Lantern script.

Minor spoilers ahead!

The Kick-Ass script is fairly strong. A nascent superhero, Kick-Ass bumbles along, attempting to break away from his mundane life and pushes himself to see if he has what it takes to be a hero. Billed as a realistic view of a world where people without superpowers try to become superheroes, the script still contains many trappings of a comic book world. Usage of comic book physics and spandex costumes are a couple of items that make this less grounded in reality than I thought it would be. And Kick-Ass may be the titular hero in the film, but the supporting cast is as important and possibly more interesting than the lead character. After seeing the clips at Comic-con, Hit Girl might steal the movie and Nic Cage looks to have a great role as a mad blue-collar Batman if they stay with his character arc. The footage was definitely a hard R for violence, strong language, and bloody dismemberment. They kicked up the violence from the version of the script I read. Though there were action scenes galore, hopefully there’s still room for the smaller, quieter moments between characters that should help glue the film together. The ending sets up a possible sequel but changes the world in a way that could hinder the storytelling if they aren’t sure what happens in the next film.

The Green Lantern script was not as polished. The film will definitely depend on the special effects to drive it with an alien world inhabited by different alien species, glowing green constructs, and a destructive monster of chaos named Legion. They will all have to be rendered really well for this film to fly. I also think they took cues from Superman the Movie, especially the part when Hal shows Carol his powers which reminded me of the scene when Lois Lane goes flying with Superman for the first time. The finale where Hal heroically saves Carol needs work since it seems hard to visualize and a bit sappy, but it may work in a capable director’s hand. Since it was a very early version, hopefully they’ve cleaned up a number of problems now that they have cast Ryan Reynolds in the lead role and will probably go into production soon.