Chloë Grace Moretz Reprises Hit Girl role in Kick Ass 2
Movie Release
Kick-Ass wouldn’t be half the hero he is without
Hit Girl, and no sequel would begin production without her in the mix. Imagined by Award winning writer Mark Millar
as a tribute to his eldest daughter, Hit Girl has struck a chord with readers
since her introduction and grown exponentially in popularity. The young woman who brought her to life, Chloë Grace Moretz, has been working up
a storm—earning critical acclaim in such fare as Let Me In, as well as working with the likes of Martin Scorsese in Hugo and Tim Burton in Dark Shadows
and soon to be seen starring opposite Julianne Moore as the title character in the
remake of Carrie. Like her co-stars, she was thrilled to step
back into her Kick-Ass role as Hit
Girl, unfazed by the commotion caused by her appearance the first time around.
"The obvious difference is that I'm older now, and the
difference between 11 and 15, which is how old I was when we finished, is that
you're a different person, obviously," Executive Producer Neal H. Moretz
reveals. "You're calculating more
ideas, you're experiencing more things in your own life, you're not just living
through other people's eyes, you're making your own decisions."
For the 2010 film, the
now 16-year-old actress took the world by roundhouse kick with not only her
acting abilities, but her phenomenal mastery of weaponry and martial arts. Indeed, Moretz didn’t know she was prescient
when she joked at the premiere of the first film that she wanted to ride a
purple Ducati: Hit Girl’s bike of choice in Kick-Ass
2. Laughs Moretz: “To get in the costume again and do all the
stunts was pretty amazing. I’ve had such a great time reliving the
character and bringing in more dimensions, while taking an older approach to
the role. I liked seeing what I could play within the part.”
We meet a now-orphaned 9th grader in Kick-Ass 2, a girl who is more terrified
of the treacherous girls in school than she ever was of the villains that she
and Big Daddy took down. Moretz
describes where we meet Mindy: “She’s
skipping school, still being a vigilante and caring more about Hit Girl’s life
than Mindy’s. Because she doesn’t have
Big Daddy anymore, and Marcus is much more of a normal parent than Big Daddy,
she starts to question herself. She
promises Marcus she’ll stop being Hit Girl and begins to figure out her life a
bit. The thing is…Mindy can’t really
change.”
Mindy McCready's life also comes as a direct response to the
previous one (also known as 2010's "Kick-Ass"), and that chapter
doesn't read the same way this time around.
"Here's this little girl who is basically raised to
be an assassin by this man who is insane," director Jeff Wadlow explains. "I mean, Big Daddy is treated like a hero in the first film, but
in our film we even take a step back and say, no, he loves his daughter and
that's a good thing, but he was totally crazy and he robbed her of any kind of
normal life. We try to deal with that in a very real way."
"What Jeff and I really wanted to improve was the
real heart of it," says Moretz. "Because I wanted to show that this girl didn't have a father
anymore and how much that affected her. She's really confused and going through
the self-torture of, 'Am I killing people because this is what I was raised to
believe was a good thing, or am I just murdering people?'"
Moretz also promises that Hit-Girl's physicality will be
different in the sequel, thanks to one big change: no guns. Well, mostly no guns.
"I wanted to show this darker side to her, and I also
wanted to make the action a little bit different. So we basically scrapped the
guns. I do use guns a little bit in the movie, but we basically do hand-to-hand
combat and it's just a lot more hands-on."
Drawing on the source material, Director Jeff Wadlow
and the producers were interested in exploring what happens when Mindy stops
being Hit Girl and grapples with life and love as a high-school student. The director felt that no other performer but
Moretz could possibly deliver that. He
says: “There’s something incredibly
special about Chloë that is hard to describe and quantify, but when you see her
on screen you instantly understand. As a
director, it was exciting for me to work with someone like her, because
normally I like to dissect the character and intellectualize the story. Chloë just gets it immediately; she doesn’t
need me to pontificate.”
Wadlow found that the usual manner of directing an
actor wouldn’t work with Moretz. He
proudly says: “Chloë understands how to
create a moment in a way that you can’t teach or talk about it. She just does it, and she does it every
take. It’s funny because we’d talk about
a scene, about where I wanted it to go or how it fits into the larger story,
and sometimes I’d wonder if what I was saying even made sense. But then we’d shoot it, and Chloë would
deliver—take after take. I don’t think
of her as a kid at all. I talk to her as
a peer because she is so incredibly savvy and mature, but also willing to be
goofy and not at all self-conscious.
She’s just an amazing actress.”
“Kick-Ass 2” is released and distributed by
Universal
Pictures and United International Pictures
through Solar Entertainment Corp.
Chloe Moretz and the european Saiorse Ronan are tops in my book in this generations' young actresses.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree with you there. These two have promising career ahead of them.
Delete