Are you ready for Travis Bickle: Superhero?
James Gunn's SUPER appears to be a return to the writer-director's disreputable Troma roots: a low-budget revenge flick about Frank D'Amico (Rainn Wilson), an unstable man who commits himself to costumed derring-do after his drug-addict wife (Liv Tyler) dumps him for a two-bit thug (Kevin Bacon). It's the gritty flip-side of KICK-ASS. Rather than risk life and limb to apprehend violent criminals, Frank (aka The Crimson Bolt) trains his righteous fury on the true scum of the earth - like people who ditch in line at the movies.
Sandwiched between big-studio presentations at Comic Con on Friday, SUPER quietly won over the Hall H crowd with a combination of star power (Wilson, Tyler, Ellen Page, Michael Rooker and geek-deity Nathan Fillion joined Gunn onstage) and shockingly funny footage. Shot on a miniscule budget rounded up by veteran producers Ted Hope and Miranda Bailey (who were also on the panel), SUPER's tone veers from TOXIC AVENGER goofy to TAXI DRIVER dark. Though we've no trouble sympathizing with D'Amico as a wronged man, his indignant, hyper-violent response to this humiliation is as troubling as it is hilarious.
Take for instance the confrontation with the line-cutter: Frank, in costume as The Crimson Bolt, approaches the man and orders him to move. When he fails to comply, Frank promptly cracks his skull open with a massive wrench. And when the man's date tries to halt Frank's assault, he punches her out. I'd say the reaction in Hall H was evenly split between guffaws and gasps.
Whereas KICK-ASS had a bright-and-peppy quality that kept audiences from examining the troubling undertones of the narrative, SUPER is right in your face with the desperation of a sad-sack driven to near-psychopathic behavior. In a lot of ways, Frank reminds me of a classic Roger Corman protagonist; there's a real day-of-the-loser quality to SUPER's premise. And it looks like the supporting characters - particularly Page as the adorable sociopath Libby - are as damaged and perverted as the film's protagonist.
This could be Gunn's moment. After years of trying to inject his mischievous sensibility into studio productions, he's finally gotten down-and-dirty with a script that's 100% him. SUPER looks like a genuine, heartfelt movie about outsiders and fuck-ups incapable of conforming to societal norms. I don't know exactly what Gunn's trying to say here, but I'm honestly looking forward to wading through the unrepentant gore to figure it all out.
