The "why does this movie exist" scene

fnulare
2026-01-08T09:15:04Z

Hello,

I just rewatched the final boss fight of the spectacularly amazing 2010 movie Kickass, and I remembered something I've been meaning to float by movie-knowers...

As I see it, this boss fight is the reason this movie exists. The way I picture how "hollywood"-movies are made is that there is a writers room or producers meeting where nothing happens until someone brings out the weed, schrooms and/or coke which lets real brainstorming take place. And suddenly BAM! You have a single amazing thing happen: the Event.

Once that is settled they work backwards to building a believable story that leads up to that event.

The Event for Kickass is having a grown man beat the pulp out of a young girl without anyone really noticing or making a big deal out if it.

This creates some constraints (remember its 2008/9 at the time of writing), for example:

the girl can not be seen as a helpless victim.

the man can't win in the end.

the beating must be reasonably justified within the story and not just pure sadism/misogyny.

the beating must look very unrealistic.

From those premises they created a a scenario that would make it possible and wrote out a whole film.

I often find myself having an A-ha!-moment when I find the Event in movies, it's one of the reasons I watch them.

This is in my view one of the biggest reason why sequels are bad: the Event has already been had in the first movie so there isn't really anything of value left to the story.

I'm up for talking about things like:

how far away I am from the real method of making films

what defining Events you see in this or other movies

how and why sequels in general or particular are good/bad

who went as Kick-Ass or Hit-Girl for Halloween

....

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Votes: 27

Comments: 27