Kick-Ass: Is Hit-Girl the new It Girl?

The screenwriter Jane Goldman  freely admits that her new film Kick-Ass "is not, obviously, for everyone".

Perhaps she is thinking of the scene in which Hit-Girl, an 11-year-old female assassin in a luminescent purple wig, enters a roomful of evil baddies and utters the immortal line: "OK you c***s, let's see what you can do now." Or maybe she is referring to the bit where Hit-Girl, in a conversation with her father about what she wants for her birthday, pretends to ask for a puppy before admitting with a coquettish giggle, "I'm just f*****g with you Daddy. I'll have a Benchmade model 42 butterfly knife." Or she could be recalling the moments where Hit-Girl shoots a man through his cheek or slices off a drug dealer's leg with a machete.

Whatever the reason, Goldman is aware that Kick-Ass could cause something of a stir. "I wouldn't take it personally if someone didn't enjoy the film," she says when we meet. "Certainly my 86-year-old friend of the family, I'd strongly recommend she doesn't go and see it."

Goldman, 39, a talented writer who penned the widely-acclaimed 2007 film fantasy Stardust, is clearly nervous about how Kick-Ass will be received. "You've no idea how the audience is going to react, you just hold your breath," she says.

Unsuccessful vigilante

But in this case the nerves are misplaced. Kick-Ass is a brilliant and inventive piece of filmmaking and looks set to become one of the box-office hits of the year. It tells the story of Dave Lizewski, a nerdy high school student and comic book fan who decides to become a superhero despite the fact that he has no special powers. Dave (played by Aaron Johnson, who recently starred as the young John Lennon in Nowhere Boy) proves to be a fairly unsuccessful vigilante until fate brings him into contact with Hit-Girl, who has been trained by her father in the art of self-protection and who is the master of an astonishing array of weaponry, including butterfly knives and taser guns.

Directed by Matthew Vaughn, who also co-wrote the script and with whom Goldman worked before on Stardust, Kick-Ass is based on the eponymous superhero adventure penned by the Scottish comic book writer Mark Millar. The film is shot through with Tarantino-esque action sequences but also manages to be extremely funny, despite the fact that the subject-matter — a pre-teen girl who swears like a sailor and shoots baddies dead with big guns — is somewhat problematic. Seven American film studios turned down the script before Vaughn released it through his own production company.

"We just really wanted Hit-Girl to be a character who, in a sense, simply happens to be an 11-year-old girl, in the same way that Ripley in Alien could have been a guy but the part happened to be played by Sigourney Weaver," explains Goldman. "She [Hit-Girl] is genuinely dangerous, she's genuinely mad. It's not her fault: she's been raised in this environment where she doesn't know anything different. She's unwittingly part of a folie a deux."

Does she think of Hit-Girl, who is played by the 13-year-old actress Chloe Moretz, as a sort of hardcore mini-feminist, a challenge to the usual assumption that most movie violence is carried out by adult men? "Yeah... she's a feminist hero by token of the fact that she pays no attention to gender stereotypes. I think she also doesn't want special treatment because she's a girl."

‘This is light'

Was Goldman worried about the effects on Moretz, who, despite starring in the film, is too young to go and see it in the cinema? "The fact that she's actually enacting the violence is in many ways probably less traumatic for a child actor than a lot of films where the children are victims of violence — serious films where they're the victims of violence at the hands of family members. I think actually, emotionally, that's a lot more disturbing for a child actor whereas this is comic book; it's light. I don't think it raises any difficult emotional issues for a child to process."

Goldman grew up in north London, the only child of liberal, wealthy parents. Like Hit-Girl, she was terrifyingly precocious. She seems to be intrigued by the supernatural and fantastical and admits to a "geeky" enthusiasm for comic books and computer games.

"I play World of Warcraft, which means I end up hanging out with teenage boys a lot," she says. "I really enjoy the company of my kids — I'm not one of those people who goes, ‘Yeah, my kids are my mates,' that's a dreadful kind of mother, but I'm fortunate that there are times that they do want me around, and I feel lucky that they let me into their world."

In person, Goldman has a beautiful face, fire-red engine hair and a figure that looks as though it has been drawn by a lascivious comic book artist. Is it a coincidence that she looks like the superheroes she has written about? "I've always loved science fiction, fantasy, manga, comic books, so I guess to some degree those things influence my personal idea of what looks nice, which definitely isn't everyone else's."

She laughs, but it must take a certain degree of chutzpah to look so flagrantly individual. "In some way it's less courageous because it's essentially saying, ‘Please don't judge me against society's standards! I know I don't measure up, I've opted out, I'm playing a different game.'"

It is a game that she plays extremely well — but then, all that time practising on World of Warcraft must surely help.