Jim Carrey has played a wide range of roles in his lengthy career — he’s done broad mainstream comedies, family films, superhero movies, indie sci-fi romances, serious dramas, and even a little bit of horror. By taking on supporting roles in quirky, challenging films like I Love You, Philip Morris, Carrey seems content to leave his comedic superstar status behind in order to explore smaller roles in more interesting films.
Case in point, Carrey’s latest gig is a supporting role in Kick-Ass 2: Balls to the Wall , the sequel to 2010′s “what if ordinary shmucks actually tried to be superheroes” flick, Kick-Ass, which was adapted from the funny, but brutally violent Marvel Comics series by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. Carrey will play a character named Colonel Stars, and Kick-Ass creator Mark Millar seems pretty pumped about landing the veteran funny man:
Matthew Vaughn, Jeff Wadlow and I did a conference call with Jim a couple of weeks back and we’ve been itching to talk about this ever since because the energy Jim’s going to bring to Colonel Stars has me buzzing as much as Nic Cage with Big Daddy. You have to remember that Big Daddy’s role before Cage came on was a much more straightforward bad-ass. It was Nic who gave him that Adam West delivery and brought this incredible warmth to the character, especially with regard to Mindy.
Nic is really good friends with Jim Carrey and it’s well-known to everyone that Jim loved the first movie. In fact, I think he had lunch with Vaughn the day before that Conan O’Brien kick-Ass/ Superman duet you can see in the link. So we’ve been talking very informally about this for a little over two years now. We didn’t quite know what Jim was going to be doing in the sequel, but the entire team loves him to bits and I’ve been a fan since I first saw him. I remember reading an interview with Spielberg, a great one back in Empire for a JAws anniversary, where he was saying that Jim would be his choice for Chief Brodie were he shooting Jaws now. He said he could see the brilliant dramatic range Jim had as well as the comedy people knew him for at that time. For all these reasons, combined with the conversation we had with him on the phone, I’m so genuinely excited about this. I can’t wait to see what he does once the cameras are on.
Ugh. I completely disagree with Millar in regards to Cage’s portrayal of Big Daddy. I hated that psuedo-Adam West shtick he was doing with the character, and found him to be utterly ridiculous. That’s truly saying something in a movie that also features a 10-year-old girl slicing people to ribbons, but I digress.
I was pretty lukewarm on the prospects of Kick-Ass 2, but now with Carrey onboard, I’m intrigued to see what direction he takes with Colonel Stars. The weird, hyper-violent, yet very grounded universe that these characters inhabit could be a good place for Carrey to flex his acting chops and deliver something unique . Kick-Ass 2: Balls to the Wall will be released on June 28, 2013
About the Author
Jeff Carter
Jeff is the defining voice of his generation. Sadly, that generation exists only in an alternate dimension where George Lucas became supreme overlord of the Earth in 1979 and replaced every television broadcast and theatrical film on the planet with Star Wars and Godzilla movies. In this dimension, he’s just a guy from New England who likes writing snarky things about superheroes, monsters, and robots.
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