Jim Carrey stars in the forthcoming Kick-Ass 2. It is a sequel to the extremely violent superhero-comedy film Kick-Ass. One imagines Carrey read the script before agreeing to play the part. His character appears to be an uber-violent good guy who beats bad guys to death with an ax handle when he isn't siccing his vicious German Shepherd on them.
Again: I am guessing all this was apparent in the script and he didn't get handed massive rewrites on the set.
Despite knowing what he was getting himself into, Jim Carrey no longer wants to do promotional work for the film:
To this, Devin Faraci writes:
So he doesn't think the film is bad, it's just that post-Sandy Hook - and post his own newly extreme stance on gun control - he can't lend his face to the pre-release publicity campaigns (which are probably beginning right now for long lead press).
That's... totally reasonable.
Except, of course, it's not. It is, in fact, totally facile. If I'm understanding things correctly, Jim Carrey's recent timeline looks something like:
- January 2011: Gabby Giffords shooting;
- July 2012: Aurora shooting;
- November 2012: Carrey shoots scenes for Kick-Ass 2;
- December 2012: Sandy Hook shooting;
- Present day: Jim Carrey haz a sad.
Let's just put this out there: Jim Carrey is a hypocrite for signing on to, and cashing the check for appearing in, a film that he now decries as too violent. And he is a coward for refusing to do press for the picture.
Let me describe what press junkets for these films are like. In order to gin up free media exposure for a film, the stars go to a hotel where they sit in a suite and do a series of interviews all day long, sometimes for several days. And the questions are almost always brutally similar: "How did you get involved with the project? How did you prepare for the project? How did you get along with CASTMATE X?"
Unless there's a controversy. Then they're brutal and similar.
And this is why Jim Carrey is a coward. Carrey has decided that he is really super serial about being anti-gun despite starring in a picture that is extremely violent* and features kids using guns. Carrey has also decided he's really super serial about joining the anti-vaccine movement, which has, among other things, killed a bunch of kids who caught whooping cough because herd immunity is down.
As a result, Carrey has decided that he has no interest in hearing the following questions repeated for 10 hours a day in multiple cities:
"If you're so opposed to gun violence, why did you agree to be in this movie? And if you're worried about kids dying, why do you preach that vaccine truther nonsense?"
So he fled. He abandoned the studio that paid his fee, he abandoned his coworkers who were counting on his help to promote the film, and he abandoned a chance to make a reasoned, articulate stand for the causes he supports. He's a coward.
Then again, maybe I'm being too hard on him. Maybe he'll address all of this in Dumb and Dumber To.
*We can debate whether or not Kick-Ass and its sequel constitute a critique of over-the-top cartoonish comic book movie violence or an embrace of it. But it is extremely violent.