Nazi Zombies Kick-Ass, but Frank Miller is on Crack, By Felix Serrano – Robot Dialog #3

September 28, 2010 Felix Serrano 8 Comments

I’d like to start off by giving a wholehearted FUCK YOU to the boys and girls who take care of any sort of quality control over at Netflix. I’ve had the Kick-Ass Blu-ray sitting in my living room for at least a week, it’s been busy and I just haven’t had a chance to sit and watch it. This past Saturday my 13yr old daughter and I had the house to ourselves. It was a perfect time for a movie night. So I pop the disk in and sit there for about 5 minutes waiting for it to load. The load bar freezes and audio begins to play, I figure it’s the players software so I reboot then update the software…awesome, time for Kick-Ass (15 minutes have passed since initial attempt). Same shit, Kick-Ass won’t load. I figure it’s the disk. So we decide to fire up the Xbox and check out what’s on our Netflix instant queue. My daughter had wanted to watch a horror movie, and there it was Dead Snow.

After scaring the living shit out of her in the dark because she decided to use the bathroom 5 minutes into the movie, we sat, watched and enjoyed. Dead Snow is all about homage to Sam Raimi. It’s got all the classic elements of a horror film and just enough camp in it to make you accept the nonsense that goes on. It bombed at the box office here since the general American population hates reading subtitles (it’s a Norwegian film), but it is soooo worth a rent if your looking for something in the vein of the Evil Dead movies. So I guess Netflix has redeemed itself for now. I will reorder Kick-Ass (hopefully I’ll get a working disk this time).

Moving on, I think Frank Miller needs a creative intervention. Don’t get me wrong, the man is a legend, he’s done more for comics than any single creator in the last 20 years, BUT WTF is up with this Gucci ad?

I understand taking on gigs to pay the bills, and I’m sure Gucci paid well and by the looks of it he was given carte blanche to do what he wanted (he is Frank Miller), but come on dude. Cinematically speaking Sin City rocked with a little help from his friends. 300 translated well. I dodged the Spirit bullet as I heeded the warning of everyone who came in contact with it. I think the camp-noir has run it’s course, I’ll accept it in the Sin City universe, but please Mr. Miller, no more.

“People are attempting to bring a superficial reality to superheroes which is rather stupid. They work best as the flamboyant fantasies they are. I mean, these are characters that are broad and big. I don’t need to see sweat patches under Superman’s arms. I want to see him fly.” -FM

Perhaps that same philosophy can be applied to film. How awesome would an animated CG Miller film be (like the upcoming Goon film). Frank’s vision translated exactly. Until then, I look forward to Mr. Millers up coming print projects.

-F