Hit Girl

Skills and abilities

Hit-Girl has been trained to take a bullet (while wearing a bulletproof vest), as well as in hand-to-hand combat and fighting with both blunt and bladed weapons. She has also been taught about guns, inventors of guns, and even action movies and action movie stars. The nature of Hit-Girl's training has made her particularly brutal and remorseless in combat. Her physicality and skill set are, with the possible exception of Mother Russia, virtually unmatched by any character since Big Daddy's demise, making Hit Girl the most powerful and skilled character in the Kick-Ass universe.

Personality

Mindy has a very hardened, almost nihilist personality, as she is desensitized to blood, violence, and death. She curses regularly and makes crude jokes, often adopts a sarcastic demeanor towards her crime-fighting partner/apprentice Kick-Ass, who describes her as resembling a mix between John Rambo and Polly Pocket. Despite her emotionally hardened nature in costume, she has a very fun, warm and loving personality towards her father, Damon. Mindy has an interest in Hello Kitty, comic books, Clint Eastwood and John Woo movies. Mindy is considerably more mature than her age would suggest, as she has proven herself to be more focused and level-headed than her counterpart Kick-Ass. This is apparent in both the comic and film versions of the series. For example, when Kick-Ass tells her that her father was just murdered, she responds by saying "Finish the job, mourn later". However, when the villain Johnny G is finally dead, she turns to Kick-Ass and asks him for a hug, covered in tears and blood.

Comics

She has appeared in the comics Kick-Ass, Hit-Girl, Kick-Ass 2, and Kick-Ass 3.

In the Hit-Girl comic, Hit-Girl takes on Kick-Ass as her crime-fighting partner, training him and using him to hunt criminals with her. She also gets him to teach her how to be a normal kid, and get along with other girls somewhat older than herself.

Films

The character appears in the 2010 film adaptation Kick-Ass, and the 2013 sequel Kick-Ass 2.

Jane Goldman, one of the two co-writers of the first film's script, said, "We just really wanted Hit-Girl to be a character who, in a sense, simply happens to be an eleven-year-old girl, in the same way that Ripley in Alien could have been a guy but the part happened to be played by Sigourney Weaver." Goldman said that Mindy "is genuinely dangerous, she's genuinely mad. It's not her fault: she's been raised in this environment where she doesn't know anything different. She's unwittingly part of a folie a deux." When asked if Hit-Girl could be considered a feminist heroine, Goldman said "Yeah... she's a feminist hero by token of the fact that she pays no attention to gender stereotypes. I think she also doesn't want special treatment because she's a girl." Romita compared how Big Daddy raised Hit-Girl to how parents of juvenile professional athletes raise their children. Romita added "They become unconscious athletes, almost to a fault. They become hardened. It kind of works the same way. If you treat someone so intensely, ... why couldn't they? I don't believe the 'unbelievable' part."

Casting

In the summer of 2008, 11-year-old actress Chloë Grace Moretz saw posters of Angelina Jolie in the film Wanted while driving with her mother in Los Angeles, prompting her to ask for a role that she described as "an Angelina Jolie-type character" and "like an action hero, woman empowerment, awesome, take-charge leading role". One month later, she was offered the role of Mindy McCready/Hit-Girl.

Matthew Vaughn, commenting on the maturity of Moretz, said that because she has four older brothers, she was no stranger to much of the language in the script. Her mother read the script and permitted her to use the profanity in the movie. Moretz said that it was entertaining to illustrate the differences between Mindy and her superheroine identity "for me, 'cause it's almost like an alternate personality". Lewis Wallace of Wired said that Mindy "gets all the good lines, capping every Tarantino-scale bloodletting with a foul-mouthed joke". Christopher Mintz-Plasse, the actor who portrays Red Mist, said that "we (Kick-Ass and Red Mist) don't have any of the action in the movie. It's all Hit-Girl". Vaughn said that Hit-Girl is a part of "the ultimate father-daughter relationship, where Barbie dolls are replaced with knives, and unicorns become hand grenades".

To prepare for her role, Moretz took months of training in learning how to handle guns and to use butterfly knives and swords. Moretz stated that the shooting of the action scenes was arduous. Goldman said that the aspect of the film adaptation that excited her the most was adapting Hit-Girl's storyline to the film. Millar said he expected the character to receive mostly negative reception, "But the movie was so well made, I think, that people were quietly charmed by her for the most part. The only really negative thing we saw came from Roger Ebert and others from his generation who were upset, but there were those especially here in the United Kingdom [who] went crazy for her". Millar added he and Vaughn "were quite surprised about that. We were expecting the worst, that people were going to say she was amoral and we [in turn] were going to get killed for her. But it was much more of a case where people were positive about Hit-Girl even saying she was empowering female character".

Controversy

In January 2010, an uncensored preview clip of the film was attacked by family advocacy groups for its display of violence and use of the line "Okay you cunts, let's see what you can do now", delivered by Chloë Grace Moretz, who was barely twelve years old at the time of filming. Australian Family Association spokesman John Morrissey claimed that "the language [was] offensive and the values inappropriate; without the saving grace of the bloodless victory of traditional superheroes". Several critics, including Roger Ebert and the Daily Mail's Christopher Tookey, accused the film of glorifying violence, particularly violence by young children, while Tookey (among other critics such as Tim Robey) also claimed Hit-Girl was overtly sexualised, saying said that Hit-Girl was "made to look as seductive as possible". Tookey's view on Hit-Girl was strongly criticized, with many commentators — including Andrew Collins, the film editor of Radio Times — wondering why he had found the character sexualised and with many others sending abusive messages.

In response to the controversy, Moretz stated in an interview, "If I ever uttered one word that I said in Kick-Ass, I would be grounded for years! I'd be stuck in my room until I was 20! I would never in a million years say that. I'm an average, everyday girl." Moretz has said that while filming, she could not bring herself to say the film's title out loud in interviews, instead calling it "the film" in public and "Kick-Butt" at home. Christopher Mintz-Plasse expressed surprise that people were angry about the language, but did not seem to be offended that Hit-Girl violently kills many people on-screen.

Solo film discussions

In January 2015, Millar revealed to IGN that there was a planned Hit-Girl film with Gareth Evans directing but that it was cancelled.

However, in June 2015, Matthew Vaughan discussed a possibility of rebooting the Kick-Ass franchise with a Hit-Girl & Big Daddy prequel film to revive interest in the franchise. He stated that, "If we make that, hopefully that will be the sorbet for the people that didn't like Kick-Ass 2 and then we can go off and make Kick-Ass 3. I think we've got to do this prequel to regain the love that we had with Kick-Ass."