4. Kick-Ass (2010)
"How come nobody's ever tried to be a superhero?" This is perhaps the most memorable line of dialogue - featured excessively in trailers and plastered across the marketing material - in Matthew Vaughn's superhero movie tribute
Kick-Ass, a rare comic book movie that manages to have its cake and eat it, too. Our hero is Dave Lizewski, a nerdy kid who purchases a body suit and sets out to become a superhero in real life. He finds, of course, that doing so isn't quite as easy as he thought it'd be: he's nearly killed the first time he tries to prevent a crime.
Kick-Ass is interesting for one major reason: it purports to be a movie dealing with the idea of an average guy setting out to become a superhero in "real life," whilst still embracing the conventions of a heightened reality. That's to say, the world in
Kick-Ass isn't really a good representation of our own, but because Dave is portrayed as being a regular person, we accept the increasing levels of mayhem. The movie is bloody and violent, but in a comic book-ish way. That's to say,
Kick-Ass succeeds as both a deconstruction and as unashamed comic book flick: impressive, to say the least.