The Prodigy: The best music for fighting

It just so happens that the last two movies I've rewatched, Kick-Ass a few weeks ago and Charlie's Angels last night, both contain fight scenes set to music by groundbreaking electronic band The Prodigy.

The Prodigy was one of two bands who ushered me into this sort of music in the year 1997. The other was The Chemical Brothers. I still love both bands dearly, and I'm glad to say I got to see both of them at the same Coachella in 2005. (And Daft Punk a year later, in what is supposed to be one of their greatest live shows ever.) Sadly, The Prodigy (sometimes known as just "Prodigy") lost frontman Keith Flint about five years ago, but Wikipedia tells me they still exist and are still touring.

We know Matthew Vaughn really digs The Prodigy. He includes not one, but two songs from their 2009 album Invaders Must Die, "Omen" and "Stand Up," in Kick-Ass, released only the next year. When you take one song from an album, that's affection for the band, but you can't read that much more into it. When you take two, it means you think that band slays, and you might just be a stalker.

While "Stand Up" is among the cheerier songs The Prodigy has ever written, a lyrics-free banger that might be at home in the set of a marching band playing a college football game, "Omen" is more typically frenzied and insidious. And of course, it plays while the title character is making his first attempt at fighting -- and having his ass handed to him. (Though he survives the beating, and ends up scaring off the attackers through the certainty of his convictions.)

Of course, Vaughn wasn't new to identifying the combative electricity in The Prodigy's music. McG got there first ten years earlier in Charlie's Angels, where he used the then three-year-old "Smack My Bitch Up" -- released in the aforementioned year of my electronica conversion, 1997 -- heavily. He only uses it in one scene, but it essentially plays out in total -- all 5:45 of it -- or at least enough repeated bits of the same song for 5:45 worth of screen time. And yes, this is during an extended chase and fight scene between the three leads and the weirdo played by Crispin Glover. (Did Crispin Glover ever not play a weirdo? Discuss.) 

The almost instantly problematic title of that song probably prevented Vaughn from going to that well in Kick-Ass, but he had a brand new album of kinetic Prodigy bangers to choose from.

And the combative energy of their music was certainly what drew me to it. Not that I am particularly combative, but my love of Nine Inch Nails should tell you that I'm down with getting in touch with my inner rage through a song. And The Prodigy's first album that I knew, The Fat of the Land, did that and then some. 

In fact, when I made my friend who doesn't ordinarily like this type of music -- our main music connection is Phish -- a mix that included this sort of music, I called it "In Touch With Your Inner Punch Dance," because his joke was that you had to punch-dance to songs like this. The mix included the likes of Rob Zombie, Filter, Rammstein, Nine Inch Nails, Lo Fidelity Allstars, and yes, The Prodigy, which I then called just Prodigy -- "Smack My Bitch Up," no less.

I'm sure Matthew Vaughn and McG were not the only ones to think The Prodigy would kick ass as the score for some bone-crunching fisticuffs, but I'm not going to go down an internet rabbit hole to find the others right now. 

Though if the next movie I rewatch features someone kicking someone else's ass to the tune of Keith Flint et al, I will be quite surprised. 

A whole different classification

One of the topics I've been concentrating on in my early Australia days is the differences in phrasing.

For example, movies don't have ratings here. They have "classifications."

In fact, there's a little promo that plays before most movies that indicates the importance of making sure a particular film is suited to your children. The tagline is "Check the classification." There is a corresponding website run by the Australian government.

At first I thought it was just Australia trying to be different. I thought "What's wrong with the word 'rating'? Go jump in your lorry and piss off."

Then I got to thinking that "rating" is not a particularly accurate term in the first place. Forget for a second that you have grown up coming to think of film ratings as G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17. Doesn't the word "rating" seems like it should have a lot more to do with how good the movie is than the eyes for which it is intended? "How do you rate that film on a scale of 1 to 10?" That kind of thing.

Neither is "classification" perfect, though. It sounds more to do with genre than appropriateness. I'd say "classification" might be "horror" or "horror comedy" or "horror comedy musical documentary."

So what is the right term? I'll have to think on that.

For now, though, let me explain what the classifications are here in Australia. They're not so surprising, except for some seemingly meaningless distinctions that make them a bit eccentric. There are longer explanations of the classification, but I'll just give the briefer ones that appear when you hover the mouse over the classification on the website.

G - General - "Suitable for everyone."
My comment: No surprises there.

PG - Parental Guidance - "Not recommended for children under 15; may contain some material that children find confusing or upsetting."
My comment: This would be comparable to our PG, but it seems stricter. I don't think anyone would say that our PG movies would provide a challenge to children all the way up to 15. 

M - Mature - "Not recommended for children under 15; may include moderate levels of violence, language or themes."
My comment: Moderate levels of themes -- so, this one has a moderate dose of redemption, while this one has a smidge of overcoming obstacles? I understand the distinction they are trying to make between PG and M, but it would seem more useful if they would change the age cutoff. When both have the same age cutoff but each has a different description of why it's not recommended, it tends to muddy things. Also, "mature" seems too advanced a term for what they are really trying to indicate here. Our equivalent is probably PG-13.

MA15+ - Mature Audiences - "Restricted - unsuitable for persons under 15; may contain strong content."
My comment: Now things are getting a bit screwy. This would also be like our PG-13 except for the term "restricted," which doesn't come into play in our rating system until you get to R, whose cutoff is age 17. Plus, what's the meaningful distinction between the descriptors "mature" and "mature audiences"? Is the first group not a group of movie viewers, but maybe savings bonds? In the fuller description it also says that persons may be required to show proof of age in order to purchase a video game or attend a movie with this classification. So where does that leave us for ...

R18+ - Restricted - "Restricted to adults."
My comment: Okay, so this is our R, and it changes the age to clearly indicate 18. But because the term "restricted" is being used a little loosely -- coming into play as soon as age 15 with the MA:15+ classification -- it begs the question of what does it really mean to "restrict" a person. Especially when there is this classification ...

X18+ - Restricted - "Restricted to adults - contains sexually explicit material."
My comment: This would be our NC-17 ... except that it's actually our XXX. The website goes on to explain "This classification is a special and legally restricted category which contains only sexually explicit content. That is, material which shows actual sexual intercourse and other sexual activity between consenting adults. X18+ films are only available for sale or hire in the ACT and the NT." To translate that last part, only available in the Australian Capital Territory (which includes the country's capital, Canberra) and the Northern Territory (which includes such cities as Darwin and Alice Springs). This means that pornographic movies are part of the conventional classification system, which the NPAA in our country doesn't deign to do. But it's also not as straightforward as it appears to be; I live in Victoria, and I have noted pornographic movies for sale in a video store in downtown Melbourne. Though who knows; maybe the movies I assumed were showing "actual sexual intercourse" were not doing that after all. And where does this leave NC-17? There basically isn't an NC-17 in Australia, unless you consider it to be R18+, which I don't think you do because such films as Hostel and Evil Dead are R18+

Doing a little more searching, it appears that our R's in the U.S. split up between MA15+ and R18+. For example, Kick-Ass and Drive -- both definitely R's in our country -- are MA15+'s here. Each of those movies have at least one scene of such extreme violence that you can't imagine a country, in good conscience, allowing a 15-year-old to see them. Yet Australia does.

It's one of many conundrums about this country, apparent contradictions built into its fabric. In some ways, this is a very conservative country. There is a famously long list of films that were banned in Australia upon first release, including Pink Flamingos, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Salo. The uncut version of Human Centipede II: Full Sequence is still banned, as is A Serbian Film (though I'm pretty sure that's banned in the U.S. also). On the other hand, language standards are considerably more permissive than in the U.S. The local "alternative" music station (called Triple J) regularly plays songs containing profanity, and even DJ's themselves say the word "shit" on the air (just heard this yesterday). Regarding Kick-Ass in particular, the use of the C-word -- considered by some (including me) to be possibly the most universally offensive word in the English language -- permanently removed it from possibly being given a PG-13 in the U.S. Here, some Australians call each other this word in an "affectionate" way -- which may be how Kick-Ass was allowed to get "only" an MA15+.

I'll try to make note of more of these classifications as I see the movies.

As for my alternative term to "classification" and "rating," well, how about "flag"? How is the movie "flagged"?

Eh, I guess I'll leave this one up to the professionals.

Kick-A** was bad-a** after all

It's obviously perilous to predict your opinion about an upcoming movie, as I do every Friday, and as I did eight days ago with Kick-Ass. There's a good chance you'll be wrong, and you'll have to write a crow-eating blog post like this one.

Contrary to what I wrote last Friday, Kick-Ass was, most assuredly, bad-ass.

In fact, waaaaay too bad-ass for the South. I saw it in Savannah, Georgia on Thursday night.

About 12 hours before I saw it, I heard a morning DJ on the local radio station talking about a woman who had watched the entire movie with her kids, then demanded her money back. They likened it to eating the whole steak dinner, then asking for a refund. If there's one thing I'll fault Kick-Ass with -- and there may be only one thing -- it's failing to indicate the film's true level of brutality in the ad campaign. Apparently, the risque title wasn't enough for parents to keep their kids away. Parents needed to know that a 13-year-old girl kills several dozen people and utters the dirtiest word in the English language -- so dirty I'm not even going to write it here. (It's that one that feels like a kick in the stomach when someone calls you it, especially if you're a woman.)

And speaking of that title, when I got to the theater, I laughed at the lengths to which they'd gone, to protect us from the title of the very movie we were seeing. I understand censoring the poster -- it was a version of the one above, but with (if I remember correctly) ASS spelled A#$. (Wish I could find that online -- it was priceless.) I also understand censoring the name on the marquee, which read a very chaste "KICK A." Both of those iterations of the title are in the public domain, and anyone could be offended by them.

But my ticket stub was the coup de grace. Even on the stub it was censored: It read Kick-A**. Which is ridiculous, if you are merely trying to shield the general public. Wouldn't it stand to reason that the only people reading the name on the stub would be the people who had actually purchased the stub? Yeah, someone might see an errant stub on the ground, but the writing would be so small that they'd have to pick it up in order to register their shock.

This bums me out, because years from now, when I look at this stub, I sure hope I can remember what movie it was that I saw. Was it Kick-Arm? Kick-All? Kick-Ant? How about Kick-Axe? (Actually, that last one is a pretty good title -- it's like a mixture of "pick-axe" and "kick-ass.")

Ah, the South. So religious.

But instead of making this entire post about whether "ass" should really be considered a dirty word anymore, I thought I should devote at least a little time to ... praising this movie through the roof.

I don't want to give away too much -- for those of you who haven't seen it, you've got some wonderful surprises in store, which I don't want to ruin. But I should at least start by saying that this movie is absolutely not super cutesy and jokey like I worried it would be. And there's that advertising campaign again.

Like that angry parent described above, I was tricked by the ad campaign into thinking Kick-Ass would be not only a comedy, but a comedy appropriate for kids. No one is more glad than I am that it's not. In fact, this movie is raw, dirty, gross, shockingly violent, and yes indeed, both funny and sweet at times. But the humor is incidental. There are no bits that were designed for a big comedic payoff, and the actor I thought gave the greatest indication of the film's potential for silliness -- Christopher Mintz-Plasse from Superbad -- is in fact not comic relief here, not in the slightest. There's a scene in the ad where his character, Red Mist, is driving a tricked-out car and delivers one of those misleading lines: "That's right, we're superheroes. Love us." It's about the most whimsical his character gets in the whole movie.

And let's say a thing or two about Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz), the aforementioned foul-mouth tween. I haven't been this excited to see a tiny warrior flash some crazy moves since Yoda busted out his light saber in Attack of the Clones. I don't want to mislead you into thinking Kick-Ass warrants comparisons to Episode II in any way other than that -- this film is much, much better. And Moretz is one of its keys, as much the film's emotional center as the title character is. One of my favorite moments (small spoiler alert) that perfectly encapsulates the film's tone, a mixture of jauntiness and hardcore violence, is when Hit Girl and Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) have just finished compacting a car, with a nasty lowlife still inside of it. The guy is scrambling and screaming, and then he pops into a spray of blood inside the car. The compactor spits out the car in a nice cube that comes clanging to the ground. Hit Girl looks at the cube, shakes her head, and says "What a douche."

And when I laughed, it wasn't because the film was cutesy or silly. It was because it was wrong in all the right ways.

Or, to put it another way, it was bad-ass.

I wanted Kick-Ass to be bad-ass

My first awareness of the existence of a movie called Kick-Ass was this poster you see to your right.

I came across it at the local multiplex, and was drawn in by its gravitational pull.

There was something so promising about it. Some dude in a green jumpsuit, who looks like he might be a younger version of Green Day's Billy Jo Armstrong, seems like he just emerged from a nasty brawl in which he was both the provider and the recipient of some serious ass-kicking.

The minimalism of this poster encouraged me to dream myself away into what this movie might be. With that cut on his face, and that vacant stare like he might be a little insane, the protagonist seemed like a real anti-hero, someone antisocial and unstable and possibly in the need of being institutionalized. He'd have to be somewhat likable, but likable in the way Christian Bale is likable in the Batman movies -- he's not completely there and is definitely a bit off. In fact, it was easy for me to imagine Kick-Ass as a superhero movie Christopher Nolan might make, with a total absence of laughs and warm fuzzies, and a surfeit of brutal truth. Plus, I liked the title for being just naughty enough to push the status quo.

O poster, why must you toy with me so?

I went a couple weeks before I saw the trailer, and the trailer corrected any misplaced hopes I may have had. It immediately became clear that the titular hero was some cheery teenager with wide eyes and plucky ambition, not some broken soul stumbling out of the night to bash someone's teeth in. Less than ten seconds into the trailer, my hopes were dashed. Next to appear was Christopher Mintz-Plasse from Superbad, who is dangerously close to becoming overexposed -- a strange thing to say about a guy who does not conform to anyone's idea of a matinee idol. He and his slacker jokes about being dangerous superheros just pushed the film even further into spasmodic nerd territory, away from the brooding vigilante territory I wanted. I was a bit intrigued by the idea of Chloe Grace Moretz as one of this ragtag pack of superheros, as the actress literally just turned 13 two months ago. But her presence also had the reverse effect of reminding me that this movie might be for kids, not for 36-year-olds.

I have since learned that it might be more bad-ass than I think. The movie got an R rating, after all, and both the violence and the language are supposed to be pretty hardcore. In fact, I understand that Moretz swears like a trucker throughout.

But that doesn't change the fact that this movie is in the action-comedy genre -- not something I was expecting from that poster. Maybe I should have recognized that from the admittedly whimsical title, plus the tagline "I can't fly but I can kick your ass." But I didn't. I've heard some people say it does for the superhero movie what Zombieland did for the zombie movie -- that is, be both a joyous example of the genre in question, while at the same time lovingly lampooning it. Still, I didn't want this movie to be starring a bunch of kids whose voices crack like the pimply teenager who rips ticket stubs on The Simpsons.

Since Kick-Ass won't fulfill my desire for a movie about an alienated loner who beats people up so he can feel something, maybe I'll go for a true comedy this weekend. After all, I still haven't seen Hot Tub Time Machine.