Kick-Ass Success


There are numerous elements that mean that a film can be considered a success. But of course they always relative to the film itself. It would seem futile to compare the Box Office takings of a small independent film like I, Daniel Blake with a mega blockbuster like Avatar - it would be equally as ludicrous to compare them critically!

Here are some of the facts and figures that are relevant regarding the success of Kick-Ass...




... the facts and figures from Box Office Mojo and The Numbers tell part of the story...





... but it is really only part of the story. Here's some more information from Wikipedia ...



... which of course leads us to the reviewers ...






Now it's over to you. Write a paragraph that argues that the film either is a success or was a failure based on the data you've analysed and the arguments you've heard.

Leave your paragraph in the comments section below...

14 comments:

  1. I feel that the biggest success of the film was the box office, the films budget was a respectable $30 million but the universal box office completely surpassed this and made an even more respectable $96 million plus a nice $19 million in its opening weekend while being ranked the number one film in over 3000 cinemas globally and i feel as though considered the film had many factors going against it e.g it was R-rated and a lot of the core audience had already seen the film due to pre-release, it still managed to reach a very large audience and was arguably one of the biggest films of the year.

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  2. I think Kick-Ass can be considered as a failure because although the majority of the reviews from the film were positive, amongst them there were still negative ones who seem to not understand what the film set out to do. The negative reviews are predominantly about how the violence was too much and hard to watch but it seems that the preferred reading was to include the violence to conform to the comedy aspect of the genre and is key to the plot of the movie as Kick-Ass, Hit Girl and Big Daddy do use over the top violence to tackle the criminals especially in the final scene with Kick Ass and Hitgirl where they massacre Frank D'amico and his gangsters.

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. I think that Kick Ass did fail due to the box office, although it did beat the budget which was £29 million and the box office was over £96 million Kick Ass compared to other films in the same genre did not make enough profit that should be expected. Deadpool could be considered to have been similar to Kick Ass because the genre was superhero/comedy however, statistics clearly show how Kick Ass massively failed compared to Deadpool. Although Deadpool's budget was higher (£58 million) it hugely made a profit as the box office was £783 million which shows how the film was properly understood whereas Kick Ass could have been misinterpreted.

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  5. The film can be viewed as a controversial film however it can still be viewed as successful. this can be shown throw the box office as even though the film has been labeled with its negative aspects such as not generating a lot of interest during the films first opening days oly landing at number 2 at the box office. It still generated a large amount of profit which measured the success of the film. Aswell, with the actors and directors going on to star in and create even more popular films than kick ass shows the success of the film. It shows that kick ass gave the actors and director a platform to go onto do these films/ tv shows.

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  6. Although many of the reviews of Kick Ass show to of taken the preferred reading, and it made a profit as it made more in the Box Office than the budget I would argue that the film was not a success. The producers of Kick Ass had high expectations of the film, making the budget $30 million and using so many marketing techniques such as 4 sets of posters and various trailers, and I don't think the film lived up to their standards. In comparison to films of a similiar genre, Kick Ass' box office didn't compare. The film won only 7 out of 25 awards, all but one complimenting Chloe Moretz' acting rather than the film itself. None of the awards that it was nominated for were particularly prestigious. Despite the majority of the reviews being positive, many critics took the opposed reading commenting on elements of the films such as the violence and lack of 'intended satire and themes.'

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  7. The film Kick-ass could be considered a success in many regards however, it mainly seems like the reviews give a good balance between the film's success financially and success in terms of transposing its message to its audience. The reviews for Kick-Ass are mainly positive with comments talking about how the comedy arises through the ridiculousness of the film and how the violence is used to create a slapstick nature which in most circumstances would be problematic but this film manages to achieve success from this. Furthermore, it could be said that even with some negative reviews these could just be a reaction to the controversiality of the film which is another way in which the message is received by the audience. Moreover, this controversiality could be said to be a message or a point being made about comic book or action films in how the violence in these films is used in a nonchalant fashion and isn't so much as a negative review as it is the audience receiving the intended message of the film.

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  8. I would argue that the film was a failure. Seemingly, the reviews were positive and took the preferred reading of the film, however, a lot of these reviews revolved around Chloe Moretz' character rather than the film itself. This shows that the audience enjoyed her controversial character of Hit Girl more than they did the actual film. Supporting this, Moretz also received a majority of the film's awards; the film won seven awards, four of these were for Chloe, rather than for the movie itself. Furthermore, the awards that the film itself did achieve were not prestigious and were for more simple things; such as 'best blu-ray'. The awards did not seem to be centred around the films narrative and it did not receive any praise for the generic twist it took. The box-office return is also an indicator of the films failure, although it did make a profit, it was not a large profit - especially when compared to that of other superhero films. Similarly, in it's opening weekend, the film ranked as number two despite having no direct competition. As superhero films - which Kick-Ass partially is - are popular within modern society, it is expected that the film will reach its target audience and convince them to go and see the movie without much effort; audiences are familiar with the genre and already enjoy it, which is seen through the success of other superhero films.

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  9. Overall, in my opinion Kick-Ass failed as a film. Despite making a profit at the box office, other films of the same genre made more money and this film was expected to do the same. This could've been a result to Lions Gate screening so many early viewings of the film at conventions. The target audience would have then already seen the film, explaining why it didn't make as much money as it could have and why it didn't reach number one. It still didn't reach number one despite not having any competition, ultimately showing its failure. The lack of diversity and misrepresentation of people through stereotyping is another reason for the films failure. Having the majority of the cast being white, especially the superhero's and then casting African American and Latino's in stereotypical gangster roles is connoting a distasteful message and showing discrimination.

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  10. Kick-Ass was nominated for 25 different awards, presented by IGN, MTV and even Empire. While Kick-Ass only managed to net 7 out of the 25 awards they were nominated for, Kick-Ass did manage to secure the Empire Award for 'Best British Film' which can be considered quite substantial. 4 out of the 7 awards went to Chloe Grace Mortez' performance specifically, which can be linked to Chloe's IMDb page which displays her skyrocketing career.

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  11. I believe that Kick-Ass can be considered a success due to the box office figures. The budget for this film was $30 Million, which then generated a worldwide revenue of over $96 million. This is undoubtedly a great measure of success, as this not a superhero film, instead it falls under the comedy genre with an omage to superhero films. In addition, the reviews of this film on Rotten Tomatoes is extremely impressive. It scored 74% amongst top critics and 81% in audience success. This shows that the majority of the audience had taken the preferred reading and enjoyed the film to some extent.

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  12. I would say that Kick-Ass can be considered to be a failure. Although the box office draw was over treble the budget, it failed to take in $100m at the Box Office, which may seem to be very good, however in terms of other superhero films, this grossing figure is actually quite low, it wouldn't be unsurprising for a superhero film to take in over $500m, however this failed to even get $100m, which shows how poorly the film did. This was because of the pre-release, the film decided that they would do several early screenings at conventions, which usually is a useful technique, however in this case, they did too many, and the early screenings meant that the vast majority of their target audience had already seen the film, which lowered the box office money, because if they've seen it once, they wont pay money to see it again, unless the film is absolutely fantastic. The film needed to generate a hype at the early screenings, one that makes the audience want to see it again, just to digest all the action at comedy that they missed at the first viewing. As they failed to do this, this meant that the audience didn't want to go to the first week that ten film was in theatres for. The film was released at a time where there was no huge, direct competition around, yet failed to even beat a film that was already out in its fifth week. It only grossed $20m in its first week, which is very low for a film that had a lot of hype around it. However, the mistakes they made all led to them capitulating at the Box Office. This had a huge impact on the awards that they won, or were at least nominated for. They failed to win any 'prestigious' awards, such as a BAFTA, or an OSCAR, instead, won awards that could be seen as 'basic' or 'un-important'. The awards that they did win actually didn't even involve the film, primarily, most of the awards were scooped up by Chloe Moretz, which again is a signifier that the film did not do as well as it would have hoped, and can only be deemed asa failure. Speaking of the cast, the lack of diversity in the film played a huger part in why the film failed. The only representation they give of African-Americans is of Rasul, and Marcus, however Marcus had a little role in the film. Rasul is a drug dealer/taker, and treats women horrifically, and even gets killed as a result of abusing Katie. This representation of African-Americans doesn't appeal to the minority group, and means they are less inclined to go an watch the film.

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  13. overall i believe that the film is a failure due to all of the information i have considered. The box office income and profit was extremely low in comparison to other super hero films and the fact that the box office expected more money to be drawn from kick ass it is therefore a failure as it has not only not met audiences expectation is hasn't met the actual film makers expectation. This may have been as a result of the early screenings for fans which was an incentive for fans to see the film and spread the hype through word of mouth however, it done the opposite by providing the audience who would have seen the film no matter what with early entry and a free ticket, meaning that their lowered expectations resulted in no income from fans and no positive word of mouth from the as it was a film that didn't fully deliver on the audiences hopes and expectations for the film its self. this was predicted by the production companies in the early stages as no one wanted to be part of producing kick ass due to its violence and language, this should have been taken on board by vaughn in order to turn it around and create a successful movie, however by not taking the producers advice he ended up ultimately in the position of not attracting the possibly large audience and confirmed the producers fears that it would fail meaning that the failure of the indie genre would continue to put audiences off seeing them all together.

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  14. i believe that this film is a success due it its constant positive critical response and large budget and large theatre success, Rotten Tomatoes gives the film 75% which i personally think is quite good considering the backlash that some successful film receive on the website. Most of the top critic reviews give positive and nourishing comments with the exception of a handful of negative reviews, however these particular reviews only tell us of how they thought the film was gruesome, indicating that there were no initial harsh or critical comments made.

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