Dave Lizewski is about to kick Chris D’Amico’s ass.
The two are face-to-face in a monstrously-sized hangar, with superheroes and super-villains surrounding them at all sides. Lizewski, with black body armor strapped to his aqua-colored wet-suit. D’Amico, clad in black leather belts, straps, boots and everything, with so much ferocious hair jetting out of his mask that Robert Smith would be jealous. The stakes are high. Tension is, too. Sweat trickles down from every forehead in the room, the heat swelling up and coating the entire area in a thick layer of danger.
“What’s the matter, Chris?” Dave asks his old friend and new nemesis, once known as the superhero Red Mist. “You sh—ing your shorts?”
D’Amico stiffens his jaw, straightens up. “Yeah,” he answers menacingly, “and I’m going to wipe my ass with your face.”
Welcome back to the wonderful world of
Much has changed since last we saw Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the feel-no-pain vigilante. He’s joined a super-team called Justice Forever. He’s upgraded his combat skills thanks to rigorous training from the purple princess of pain, Hit-Girl, played once again by Chloe Grace Moretz. And he has deadly new foes in Christopher Mintz-Plasse as The Mother F—er and his super-villain team, The Toxic Mega C—s.
As you can see, the language in “Kick-Ass 2” is just as foul as ever, thanks to writer-director Jeff Wadlow.
“[He’s] taken it a whole step higher,” Taylor-Johnson told MTV News during our exclusive visit to the “Kick-Ass 2” set last October. “It’s got all of the elements of the first ‘Kick-Ass,’ but there’s a lot of story.”
During our day on set, the “Kick-Ass 2” cast and crew were busy shooting the final fight sequence of the film. It takes place in the Evil Lair, D’Amico’s bad-guy safe-haven, equipped with video arcades, fully-stocked bars, and even a shark tank.
“These guys got all this luxury and fun around them — but what that really means is, they’re lazy,” said Donald Faison, who joins the “Kick-Ass” cast as the heroic Doctor Gravity. “So when we show up, you know who’s going to get their ass kicked, right?”
It was the first of a brutal four-day shoot surrounding the epic showdown between Lizewski and D’Amico’s gangs. Every single one of the costumed cast members was sweating bullets as they engaged in take after take of epic battle, all in the middle of what’s easily the single-largest set created for either “Kick-Ass” film.
“It’s pretty intense,” an exhausted Taylor-Johnson admitted, “but it’s been a good laugh.”
That’s important to emphasize: there’s blood-letting aplenty in “Kick-Ass 2,” but the Matthew Vaughn-produced comic book flick also packs more than its fair share of laughs. According to Moretz, there’s a lot of heart, too.
“You see this new evolution of Mindy Macready and Dave Lizewski, and you see this amazing relationship that they get together with,” the actress teased. “It’s a beautiful story. There’s even more heart to it than there was in the last one.”
“There’s a real story to tell here,” agreed Taylor-Johnson. “We’re super lucky to be here doing this.”
“Kick-Ass 2” hits theaters on August 16, 2013.
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