Dave and Katie: The relationship between Dave and Katie is pretty much the same in the comic and the movie for a good portion of the movie. The point where it changes is when Dave decides to visit Katie to tell her the truth. In the comic Dave goes to Katie's house dressed in his Kick-Ass costume and yells to her from outside her window "I've been Kick-Ass all along and I'm not gay!" He decides that this might not have been a good idea and runs away before she comes to the window and sees him. In the movie, the scene is similar, but has a very different ending. Dave comes into Katie's room through her window, dressed as Kick-Ass. She attacks him, so he takes off his mask so she'll stop. He confesses to her that he is Kick-Ass and that he is not gay. She's initially freaked out and angry, but then decides to let him stay the night and she sleeps with him. After this scene, they're a couple for the rest of the movie. At the end of the comic Dave confesses to Katie that he's not gay and that he's really in love with her. "I love you Katie. You're the last thing I think about before I go to bed and the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning...Uh, isn't this the part where you're supposed to say you feel exactly the same way?" But she doesn't. She swears at him and get really ticked off. (Dave remarks "Oh God. This was a mistake wasn't it?") Katie then gets her boyfriend Carl, who Dave did not know about, to beat him up. I actually prefer the comic ending, with him not getting the girl in the end. For one thing, it was pretty funny. It also helped to make the story unique and even less cliché than it already was.
The Fire: Both the comic and the movie feature a scene with Kick-Ass and Red Mist run into a burning building. However, the circumstances of the two scenes are quite different. In the comic, they're riding in the Mist Mobile and they see that an apartment building is on fire. There's a crowd gathered outside and a woman says that her baby, Charlie, is inside. It plays out pretty similarly to the scene in Spider-man 2 when Peter rushes into a fire to help a little girl trapped inside. Kick-Ass realizes that he's out of his league, but since there is someone inside, he feels that he has to go. Red Mist really doesn't want to go in, but since Kick-Ass goes, he reluctantly follows. Once inside the building, Red Mist suggests that they sneak out the back but Kick-Ass refuses. They find Charlie, who it turns out is only the woman's pet cat. The building starts to collapse around them and they're trapped inside. Then the firemen arrive inside just in time to save them. They give the woman her cat and the crowd loves them for what they've done (Kick-Ass compares it to Superman catching the helicopter and Luke blowing up the Death Star) This scene serves to point out that Kick-Ass really is a lot braver than Red Mist after you have been led to believe that Red Mist is the better superhero. In the movie, Red Mist has lied to Kick-Ass, and is taking him to a building owned by his dad for a trap. When they arrive at the building, it's on fire. Red Mist believing that his father and some of his associates are inside, rushes into the building. In this version, Kick-Ass is the one who is reluctant to go inside. They see that the men have been murdered, and Red Mist recovers footage of what happened so he can give it to his father before the two narrowly escape. The film version makes Red Mist braver than he was in the comic and shows that he cares for his family. This makes him into a more sympathetic and respectable character in some ways.
The Betrayal: The presentation of Red Mist's story and some of the details were altered from the comic to the movie. In the comic, you're briefly introduced to Chris, but not explicitly told that he is the mob boss's son. Even if you do figure it out (I knew since I had read a little bit about the movie) you don't know that he's working with his dad until he and Kick-Ass arrive at Big Daddy's headquarters where the trap has been set up. When they enter the building to meet with Big Daddy and Hit-Girl, Big Daddy and Hit-Girl are beaten and on the ground surrounded by mob men. Big Daddy asks Kick-Ass to help them. Red Mist pulls a gun on Kick-Ass and says "Are you sh@%ing me? This prick can't even help himself." It's kind of a shocking moment, because up until this point, Red Mist and Kick-Ass are friends, they're talking casually, and you really think the next scene is going to be them having a conversation with Big Daddy and Hit Girl. Red-Mist is revealed to be completely evil. This whole time, he's just been faking like he respected Kick-Ass and they're whole friendship is a lie. He tells Kick-Ass "I've wanted to see you in pain since the first night we met. I've even jerked off about it. does that sound weird?" By the end of it, you see Red Mist as a totally despicable character. The movie chooses to show you pretty much everything about Red Mist's story. He is shown wanting to be with his dad as he talks mob business. Later it shows him presenting the idea to his dad to fool Kick-Ass by becoming a superhero. However, once he realizes that Kick-Ass isn't the one his dad is looking for, he tries to steer them away from him. He still uses Kick-Ass to get to Big Daddy and Hit-Girl, but he attempts to tell his father's men to leave Kick-Ass alone. He doesn't want Kick-Ass to get hurt and tries to get his dad to let him go. He's still a bad person, as shown when he shoots Hit Girl, but you get the sense that he genuinely saw Kick-Ass as his friend and wasn't completely fake with him. I can see the benefits of both ways of telling the story. The comic version shocks you, while with the movie version you're not sure which direction the character is going to go. Knowing the trap that is set also helps to build tension. I think it would have been possible for the movie to tell the story the way the comic did. When he was with his dad, Chris's face could always be obscured. In the comic store, he would be blocked by his body guard. The trick would be to have the audience not really pay attention to D'Amico's son so the reveal would be a surprise. Anyway, both versions work, so I don't have a problem with the movie version.
Big Daddy's Story: Big Daddy's comic back story and movie back story are very different. In the comic, when Big-Daddy and Hit-Girl visit Dave at his house, they tell him their "secret origin." Hit-Girl informs Kick-Ass that "Once upon a time..." Big Daddy was a good cop in a corrupt city. All the criminals hated him because he wouldn't be bought off. They killed his wife and tried to kill him, but he escaped with his baby daughter and plotted revenge. The movie version reveals his story through a comic strip that he has made for his daughter. Big Daddy, whose real name is Damon Macready, was a good cop and so was his partner Marcus. Frank D'Amico framed him and had him sent to prison. While he was in prison, his pregnant wife couldn't pay the bills and overdosed on drugs (hinted to be suicide). Fortunately, the doctors were able to save Damon's daughter Mindy, who went to live with Marcus until Damon got out of prison. He then trained her to fight crime, and they became Big Daddy and Hit-Girl. That's a little bit different, but for all intents and purposes, it's the same story. However, the comic book version has a twist. Before Big Daddy died, he revealed to Dave and the people who had them captive that everything he told him about his past was a lie. He was really an accountant whose wife hated him. He hated the life he lived so he ran away with his baby daughter and built himself a new one. He was really a comic book fanboy like Dave, who had been selling his collection of early Marvel comic books (collectively value at about a million dollars) to fund the last ten years of his life. He targeted Genovese because he and Hit-Girl needed a villain. He wanted her life to be exciting and for her to be different than normal girls her age. Now that's completely different! In both cases he dies in the end (shot in the comic, burned alive in the movie) so Mindy goes to live with her mom in the comic and Marcus in the movie. Both version of the story work, but have different effects. The comic version is more shocking and provides an interesting twist, but it makes Big Daddy seem more like a pathetic and irresponsible character since he had no real motivation to place himself and his daughter in danger.
The torture: The scene where Kick-Ass and Big Daddy are tortured is slightly different. In the comic Kick-Ass had his testicles electrocuted and Big Daddy was brought in bloodied and beaten. Big Daddy is shot. Kick-Ass, desperate, tells them to kill him with their hands instead of the gun. They beat him and he falls down in the chair causing it to break. He gets up, grabbing to pieces of the broken chair and says "Let's see what you motherf-ers got now!" They laugh at him, pin him against the wall and point the gun to his head. Then Hit-Girl arrives. In the movie Big Daddy and Kick-Ass are tied to chair and beaten while it's broadcasted via a live webcast on Kick-Ass's website. Big Daddy is burnt alive, but Hit-Girl arrives in time to save Kick-Ass. This scene is not really that different, but I thought it was worth noting. The movie version, was more intense in my opinion.
Other Stuff: There was no jet pack in the comic book, making Kick-Ass one of the few movie adaptations that is actually less realistic than the comic it's based on. This leads to another difference, in the movie, Dave mowed down a bunch of the mob guys using the machine guns which were mounted on the jet pack. Then he shoots D'Amico with the bazooka. In the comic Dave doesn't kill anyone. He only shoots a gun one time, and that's when he shoots Genovese in the crotch to save Hit-Girl's life. I really prefer the comic version because it keeps Dave from getting his hands dirty and makes him fit more closely with the moral code most people think superheroes should have. He says earlier during them comic that he won't kill anyone. Keeping the main character from killing in the movie would have helped to steer away from that criticism that the movie glorifies killing.
That pretty much sums up the significant differences I noticed between the comic and movie versions of Kick-Ass. They're both good, but I think I prefer the way the story was told in the comic. I'm probably a little bit biased because I read the comic first. Since it's pretty much the same story, I was inclined to enjoy it slightly more the first time I experienced it.
Please check out the video version of this article and subscribe if you like it. (I had to split it into 2 parts)Also, please make suggestions on how I can improve the way I do my videos (things like how to speak better, how to organize better etc.)