Debate of the Day: Is Jim Carrey Being a Douche About Kick-Ass 2?
Something weird happened yesterday when Jim Carrey, one of the stars of this summer’s Kick-Ass 2, went public with his feelings about how he could no longer support the violence contained within his film. What changed his mind? Sandy Hook of course.
I suppose this is treading into dangerous water here, but this just leaves me with a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. I’m not sure whether it’s Carrey indirectly crediting movie violence for somehow leading to events like Sandy Hook, or the fact that a well-known actor is bashing a film he was paid likely millions to star in and help promote.
If anything, I suppose this will only create more “buzz” surrounding the film (“it’s so violent even its own actors are disowning it!”), but if Carrey is cashing the check they paid him instead of donating it all to some sort of anti-violence charity, I believe that makes him something of a hypocrite. A man is entitled to his opinions, but it’s hard to say things like when while driving around in the new Ferrari your salary from the film paid for. But who knows, maybe he is making such a donation, and it’s just been kept out of the public eye.
And yes, part of me is still irritated the way a part of me always is when people start linking violent media to horrible tragedies. To me, it only serves to distract from the real cause of issues like this when people go around saying “well it COULD have something to do with it.” Yeah, well the other twenty million people who saw Kick-Ass and played Grand Theft Auto and didn’t kill anyone would disagree.
I don’t know, what do you make of this?
I agree with you. If he has such a bad conscience about the film now then he should take that big check they paid him with and give it to the families of the victims of Sandy Hook. You and I both know that he wouldn’t do that. He has strong feeling about the subject now but that doesn’t mean he will put his money where his mouth is.
Also, I guess he has a limited memory. Did he think that violence only occurred at Sandy Hook? Or is he selectively forgetting all the other senseless violence that has happen before and after Columbine?
Just another wash-out that believes that people think more about their opinion than they ever really did.
It doesn’t read like bashing to me so much as him simply feeling uncomfortable with the movie’s violence level now. It sounds like Sandy Hook made an impression on him. I’m also not reading a statement of causality into what he’s said so far, personally.
I say let him have his opinion. He already earned the money by acting in the movie, so I don’t feel that he’s a hypocrite for having a bit of a change of heart. Especially since he’s not badmouthing the production.
I guess in the end it’s hard for me to be upset at violence bothering people, even in cases where it doesn’t bother me. I also haven’t seen this movie yet.
Isn’t one of the points of his character is to stop evil, and sometimes that means having weapons equal to or more powerful than said evil. If guns were never invented we would go on knifing each other or blowing each other up anyway.
He read the script a year in advance of Sandy Hook. He read the script after the other acts of gun violence around the US. He knew what the movie was about and Mark Miller even posted about this on his own website. If Jim cared as deeply about his view as he is trying to say then he should give up his paycheck to a charity. The money didn’t stop him from taking the part.
Meh. I’ve always thought Carrey was a bit of a useful ‘political idiot’. I suppose — for my two cents — this only confirms it.
+1 to E. Lee
I can no longer in good conscience support the career of an actor who isn’t capable of discerning the difference between fictional violence and real life tragedy. What a complete tool. Does he really think Sandy Hook was the first time anything bad has ever happened in the world? Must be nice to be sheltered to the point where you can afford to be that naive and ignorant.
This really is quite bizarre. Was he simply unaware that he was involved in making an ultraviolent movie for several months? If not, why should he feel uncomfortable about that only after Sandy Hook?
Funny because I thought the same thing you did. If the man is taking the money from the film and not donating it, he’s a hypocrite. Overall, my feeling is that he was pushed to take this stance because people were pointing out the hypocrisy of Hollywood being against violence while profiting off it. Perhaps I am being too cynical and he really means it. Only time will tell there.
I’m sure he means it J. Morales, he just doesn’t want to pay for it.
I’m all for people having a change of heart and being brave enough to admit it. But the older I get, the more I realize the “silly uncle Jim” I loved as a kid is slowly edging his way into insanity, and not the funny tutu-wearing kind.
Wasn’t the incident at Sandy Hook a mentally unstable gun-nut son of a teacher targeting innocents? Since I’m assuming KA2 doesn’t tackle this exact scenario, I’m struggling to see the correlation between comic book superheroes and real world tragedy. I don’t think anyone even looked at the previews and said “Oh, Sandy Hook” – until he said something. There’s like 80 degrees of separation between the two – its such a forced, irrational connection, no wonder everyone’s kinda scratching their heads going “okay, Mr. Carrey…. that’s nice.”
It doesn’t have anything to do with violence in movies, it has everything to do with the fact the Carey is a gun control activist. He believes that all guns are bad, mkay. His belief is that if all guns were outlawed and taken from good honest law abiding citizens and removed from all media that all gun violence would cease to exist. He lives in a cocoon surrounded by high walls locked doors and armed security guards for his protection only.
I vote douche.
Sandy Hook was not the first school shooting and sadly it wont be the last. To say that it sparked the issue of violent in media is clearly false.
This is a sequel to a film who’s defining moment was a 12 year old girl brutally and awesomely murdering the mob. All of them. Jim knew what kind of movie he was making.
+1 Joy.
Also, if Carrey is such a anti-gun activist Im surprised he even made KA2 in the first place.
What is worse is when the 60 year old senators who have never likely been within 40 feet of an xbox suddenly start making public statements as to how its all gaming’s fault that kids get killed in schools and is turning the youth of today into potential homicidal maniacs.
All he had to do was read the book, it is all laid out in there. It’s a bitch move. You don’t get paid then talk shit about the work, and in a way, belittle everyone involved. Hard for me to believe he didn’t read a script beforehand.
@Remy (and a few others)
Opinion of the matter aside, it seems that he shot the movie, then Sandy Hook happened, THEN he had a change of heart. The legitimacy of the decision is somewhat up for debate I suppose, but it’s not like he didn’t know what movie he was doing. More like he changed his attitude since then.
@ the topic
Carrey hasn’t made a movie this violent ever before. It stands to reason to me that he would have a change of heart about doing it after a similarly-themed national tragedy. It’s not like he wasn’t paying attention to 9/11, Columbine, or anything else, but presumably Sandy Hook was the first of those types of events to occur in the wake of his having worked on the type of material in Kick-Ass 2.
He is, in the end, a comic. He doesn’t want to hurt people. Personally, I’m finding it hard to criticize his change of heart, at least in full.
WOW. marketing stunt. “This movie has allot of violence?!” I am there
He’s a douche, but if it balances anything in the multiverse, at least Madonna (you know…the fake one) recently proclaimed that “Guns don’t kill people..etc”. Do two bleeding hearts cancel each other out?
Of course he is. Columbine happened well before this film, yet near enough that everyone remembers it so if he’s against violence on screen he could have easily made that known prior to filming. The guy’s career has had its ups (mostly early on) and down (The Number 23 is on my all time worst 10 movies list), and now he’s just trying to stay relevant.
Yeah now that he has cashed that check he is about about no violence . Dude is like everyone else in Hollywood. They don’t have a clue.
In case you all forgot, Carry posted that rant back in March about how people that don’t want to give up their guns are idiots, blah blah blah, and then did the little thing mocking gun owners and spoke out about gun violence in entertainment… all around the time the first trailers for Kick-Ass 2 were starting to make the rounds. He took some flack about his part in violent entertainment, to include the hyper-violent vigilante in the movie (if it were any other property, I’d think it was meant as a parody/satire of gun owners), and here we are months later with it coming up again…
I’m agree with him about the “normalization of violence”.