Earlier today, Jim Carrey took to Twitter to announce that he would not be promoting his upcoming film Kick-Ass 2. Jim Carrey tweeted, “I did [Kick-Ass 2] a month b4 Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence. My apologies to others involve with the film. I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart.”Of course, Jim Carrey’s tweets have sent shock waves through the entertainment community, because it’s very unusual for an actor to disavow a film before it is even released. In response to Jim Carrey’s declaration, Kick-Ass 2 creator, writer, and executive producer Mark Millar has issued a response.On his MillarWorld forum, Mark Millar first praises Jim Carrey’s performance in the film and points out that Carrey had professed to being a huge fan of the first Kick-Ass film. Then, Mark Millar adds, “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. Yes, the body-count is very high, but a movie called Kick-Ass 2 really has to do what it says on the tin. A sequel to the picture that gave us HIT-GIRL was always going to have some blood on the floor and this should have been no shock to a guy who enjoyed the first movie so much.”Mark Millar also makes the point that Kick-Ass 2 isn’t a documentary and compares the violence depicted as being no different from other films from directors such as Taratino, Scorcese and Eastwood, John Boorman, Oliver Stone and Chan-Wook Park.Mark Millar writes, “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. Imagine a John Wayne picture where he wasn’t packing or a Rocky movie where Stallone wasn’t punching someone repeatedly in the face. Our audience is smart enough to know they’re all pretending and we should instead just sit back and enjoy the serotonin release of seeing bad guys meeting bad ends as much as we enjoyed seeing the Death Star exploding.”If you check out the entire Millar response on MillarWorld Forum be warned that Millar drops a major spoiler for Man Of Steel. Of course, the spoiler he drops is done to make the point of deflecting criticism from Kick-Ass 2.
