Follow TV Tropes

Following

Awesome / Kick-Ass

Go To

Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

The comic

  • Kick-Ass beats the living shit out of a gang about to beat up a person with pipes and punches. And this is considering he got his ass whipped in the previous issue.
  • The first appearance of Hit-Girl, where she first appears after running a blade through a drug dealer and letting his body slump to the ground, quips, and then proceeds to slaughter everyone in the room, except for Kick-Ass.
  • Kick-Ass and Red Mist charge into a burning building to save a distraught woman's baby, despite having no super powers or fire fighting equipment. Of course, the 'baby' wound up being a cat, but still.
  • After being electrocuted by his testicles and watching Big Daddy take a bullet through the back of his head, Kick-Ass comes up with a frantic and desperate last-ditch escape plan that revolves around taunting most of Frank Genovese's goons that are present to punch and kick him to death instead of shooting him, until the chair he's tied to shatters, then he picks up the splintered parts of the broken legs to fight his way out. And it almost happens, if not for the presumed dead Hit-Girl choosing that moment to jump out of the shadows and kill everyone.
  • Kick-Ass & Red Mist having their showdown, where, despite still suffering from the effects of a marathon of tinker telephone torture and being pummeled to within an inch of his life, Kick-Ass uses his make-shift clubs to beat Red-Mist into a bloody pulp with four hits; even though Red-Mist was completely unharmed until this point and wielding a .45!
  • "Just some kids dressed up in Halloween costumes."
  • John Genovese taunting Kick-Ass by remarking that he doesn't have the balls to shoot him, only for Kick-Ass to promptly retort by shooting John in the balls. And blow pretty much his whole dick off.
    • Also Funny, as Johnnie screams that Kick-Ass just shot him in the "tunk", before Hit-Girl yells: "TUNK YOU, ASSHOLE!" as she swings a meat cleaver into his head, and proceeds to kill everyone else in the room. Again. The entire time this is going on, Kick-Ass is just stood in amazement as to how fast the word "tunk" has caught on, as earlier in the series Kick-Ass is told by his high-school friends that they've created a new curse word, (tunk), to serve as the male equivalent to a certain other four lettered word.
  • Hit-Girl single-handedly tearing through the mob in the interquel. It explains exactly why Red-Mist went out of his way to hire Mother Russia.
  • "Avengers fuckin' assemble, asshole!"
  • Hit-Girl vs Mother Russia.
  • The end of the second series. The heroes beat-down the villains. Kick-Ass brutalizes and cripples the Motherfucker.
  • In Kick-Ass 3, Mindy has taken over the jail. From solitary confinement. Her third therapist (after the first two transferred away) is comprehensibly spooked when she informs him of this... And even more when she proves it.
    • How did she prove it? By cutting the junk of another inmate who had violated her policy against drug dealing and had ignored her order to stop. Without ever leaving her cell.
  • In the fourth issue of Kick-Ass 3 the jail guards get an Off Screen Moment Of Awesome. How? They stopped Hit-Girl's breakout. Not bad, considering who they're dealing with!
    Guard 1: Jesus! How did they take her down?
    Guard 2: Dogs caught up with her, but not before she punched out three of em'. Hospitalized eleven guards and completely totalled the entire South Wing.
    Prisoner: Atta girl, Mindy! You show these fucks! Better luck next time you make a break for it, you crazy bitch!
    Mindy: Don't you dare cheer for me, you degenerate scum. The next man who claps gets his throat ripped out. Understand?
    Prisoners: ...
    Mindy: Better.
    • Also, a minor one for Hit-Girl's therapist... Who is still the third one, and managed to get a rise from her.
  • Mindy's mother is allowed to pay her a visit in maximum security, as a way for the therapist to guilt his most difficult subject into being supposedly rehabilitated. It does not go as he'd planned.
  • Kick-Ass' He's Back! moment, saving a drugged-up Hit-Girl. He's not in a costume, but he doesn't need it anymore.
  • Kick-Ass rescuing Todd from being chain-sawed to death ala Scarface, with a spirit soaked floor and a live wire, while quoting Batman crashing the meeting of Gotham's mob and putting the fear of God into them.
  • Hit-Girl wiping out all organized crime on the Eastern Seaboard, and dismantling Gigante's corrupt NYC police department in the same stroke.
  • The ending. Turns out that Kick-Ass (still fighting crime, only now as a cop) made a huge impact on society. Now people aren't fearing criminals anymore... And, in a nice Book End, we find out there are new superheroes helping Hit-Girl (who's still out fighting crime around the world) when a guy with a winged suit jumps down from a building and, differently from "some Armenian guy with a history of mental health problems" at the start of the series, he flies.

The film

  • Even though Dave's first attempt at crime-fighting as Kick-Ass goes horribly wrong, there's something to be said about how he carries himself when entering the situation.
    • First, he sees two guys breaking into a car; they tell him to get lost, and he does. He hides behind a building, but he makes the conscious choice to go back and stop them, because he's gotten to the point where "fantasizing just doesn't do it for [him] anymore".
    • He then gets changed, as signified by a thoroughly Superman-like shot of him pulling open his street clothes to reveal his Kick-Ass suit underneath.
    • The most notable part is what happens when he goes back and the criminals heckle him. In real time, you witness Dave Lizewski turn into Kick-Ass.
      Criminal: What the fuck you looking at? I said, what the fuck are you looking at?
      (Dave looks around, meek and insecure from the criminals' words — but then his face changes to brazen confidence as he advances towards them)
      Kick-Ass: Two cheap-shit losers screwing with a car that someone probably worked their ass off to pay for.
  • Kick-Ass's first proper fight, and the one that propels him to Internet stardom — beating up three douches that seemed intent on murdering a helpless man.
    Thug: Fuck off, man. It's none of your business!
    Kick-Ass: ...Yes, it is! (draws batons)
    • What makes the moment especially awesome is how little hesitation he has in going in. Here's a kid with no fighting skills, no experience, no reason to care, and yet he charges in to help the guy anyway. And wins!
      Gang-banger Leader: (flicks out switchblade) Give it up, man. Just walk away.
      Kick-Ass: No. Never.
      Gang-banger Leader: What the fuck is wrong with you, man? You'd rather die for some piece of shit that you don't even fuckin' know?
      Kick-Ass: And three assholes, laying into one guy while everyone else watches...! And you wanna know what's wrong with me?! Yeah, I'd rather die! SO BRING IT ON!
    • At the beginning of the fight, the thugs basically ignore Kick-Ass, even when he's hitting them, and prefer to go for their victim. But as the fight continues, it goes from one guy fighting him, to two, to all three once they realise he isn't going to give up.
    • The icing on the cake is that after the thug leaves, the mugging victim, bloodied but alive, gasps out a delirious and repeated "thank you" to Kick-Ass.
  • Kick-Ass going to confront Rasul to leave Katie alone. He walks into a bad neighborhood alone at night, enters a room where he's outnumbered by scary-looking bodyguards, and still finds the courage to not only relay the message to Rasul, but even threaten him.
    Kick-Ass: You gotta stay away from Katie now. It's over. So if you just leave her alone, everything will be fine.
    Rasul: What? Yo, kid, who the hell are you? And what is this?
    Kick-Ass: I'm Kick-Ass. Look me up. And this is me giving you a message: leave Katie alone.
    Rasul: Or what?
    Kick-Ass: Or I'll come back...and break your fucking legs.
  • Hit-Girl's introduction again, where she wipes out Rasul and his entire apartment full of mooks with nothing more than a couple of blades, all set to the Dickies' version of the Banana Splits theme.
  • Okay, so Big Daddy may not be an upstanding citizen, but come on, who cares?! Him taking down all of Frank's mafiosi at the lumber warehouse with practiced ease, utilizing a brass-knuckle Bowie knife and a Beretta 92FS in tandem, and then burning the warehouse down with grenades and a road flare thrown onto flammable liquids, is one of the seminal action scenes of the entire franchise. And it lasts less than thirty seconds! We see what it would be like if Batman didn't have his one rule...and it's terrifying. And awesome.
    • Special mention for how Big Daddy deals with the cornered crook hiding in the office with a frag grenade, then borrows a shotgun off the last mobster before gunning him down.
    • Their return fire not even chipping whatever experimental composite plates Daddy is armored-up in. "Kevlar down to the underroos" indeed!
  • Hit-Girl. Combat knife and rope dart. A Heckler & Koch USP Compact and a SIG-Sauer P232. Perhaps the single coolest thing ever done by a prepubescent girl in film history.
    • That library corridor shootout. The build-up and payoff to this sequence is fantastic.
      • The fact it's executed to the background music of "Bad Reputation" makes it even more awesome.
      • When Hit-Girl gets two of Frank's goons to shoot themselves.
      • At one point, Hit-Girl actually reloads both pistols without touching the magazines as she charges. It was not CGI—lest we forget, the actress playing Hit-Girl did many of her own stunts. And this is not Dawson Casting—there really is an eleven-year-old doing this.
  • Kick-Ass going Apocalypse Now on the gangsters. With a pair of XM214 Microguns grafted onto a jet-pack. While Elvis is rocking in the background. The Oh, Crap! look on their faces when they saw him FLYING IN ON A FREAKING JET-PACK is completely priceless.
    • Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl's subsequent jet-pack flight through the city—the Awesome Music helps.
  • To Frank's credit, he did manage to defeat Hit-Girl in a fight. Yes, it's still a little girl, but considering the level of complete chaos she brings with her, it's still kinda awesome.
    • It’s also impressive that Hit-Girl was able to hold her own in a physical fight with Frank. She’s a capable fighter even without her swords and guns.
  • The real moment where the film not only lives up to its title but goes above and beyond comes at the climax. Let's just say it involves a bazooka and the words:
    Kick-Ass: Hey! Why don't you pick on someone your own size?
  • Big Daddy coordinating Hit-Girl while burning alive. He may be a near nut-job, but he's one hell of a Determinator.
    BD: NOW, SWITCH! TO KRYPTONITE!! GO TO! ROBIN'S! REVENGE!!
    • Hit-Girl using a blackout and IR night-vision goggles, then a tactical strobe flashlight rail on her USP to divide and conquer Joe's goons.
  • The final line of the movie, in an absolutely perfect Shout-Out to the '89 Batman film:
    Red Mist: Well, as a great man once said... wait 'till they get a loada me.
  • The Prodigy's "Stand Up" just perfectly captures the whole "Why not?" theme behind the Kick-Ass series.

Top