Jim Carrey is being courted to play Colonel Stars in Kick Ass 2, perhaps change his career trajectory

News is emerging that Jim Carrey is being considered for a role in the sequel to 2010's Kick-Ass. While it's far from official casting news, I have to say that as a fan of both that movie and Jim Carrey, I really want to see this work out. Seriously. If I don't see Jim Carrey do something awesome soon, it will make me and all of his other devoted fans super, super sad. And who doesn't want to see him play a cool role in a comic book movie? The last time he did that was in Batman Forever, and believe me when I tell you this: No one wants to remember Batman Forever.

On the other hand, The Mask was based on a Dark Horse comic, culty like Kick-Ass, and that was very well-received. So, we know that Carrey can rock this. Anyway: Kick-Ass 2.

The role Carrey is being courted for is said to be "The Colonel," or, more likely, Colonel Stars (pictured above) aka Sal Bertolinni, a mobster-turned-good guy -- and born-again-Christian -- who joins forces with Lieutenant Stripes to form Justice Forever, a league of good guys that extends an invitation to Kick-Ass to join them. They end up having a bit of a run-in with villain Red Mist.

If you, dear readers, could hear me banging my fist on my desk, you'd probably be taken aback by how badly I want to see Jim Carrey do a role like this. There are few concrete details about official talks, but there is this picture of the actor in a Kick-Ass costume, singing with Conan O'Brien (who is wearing a Superman costume). He is said to be a fan of Matthew Vaughn, who directed the first movie, though those reins will be handed to Jeff Wadlow for the sequel. So, this means nothing except that Jim Carrey liked the first movie and the guy who made it, who will have nothing to do with the second one. [Update: Vaughn is still producing. Sorry for the error.] Thank you, Internet. Now you've got everyone all excited about nebulous speculation. At least it sounds like Universal -- an actual film production studio -- really is trying to get Carrey on board with this.

And heavens to Betsy, would I like to see him do that. I've been a fan of Jim Carrey since I was 14 years old. That is "this many" years. (I'm holding up an undisclosed amount of fingers, perhaps multiple times.) When you're a fan of someone for that long, you stick with them, like a sports team. When The Cable Guy came along, I was in the proud minority of satisfied fans. When The Truman Show and Man on the Moon came along, and so did the Oscar talk, I was ecstatic. Then when The Grinch Who Stole Christmas came along, I saw it and felt bad about it. And when The Majestic came along... I didn't see it. Then there was the hipsterific Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind... and then there was The Number 23, and I just couldn't anymore. Fast forward to Carrey being web-creepy about Emma Stone, and I'm just upset now. Because I still really am a fan of this guy. (I Love You Phillip Morris was great.)

Carrey has made some incredibly smart cameo and bit appearances in things like Drunk History, 30 Rock, The Office, etc., just popping up in really cool projects, reminding everyone how wonderful it is to see him, then leaving before he wears out his welcome. But we want him to hang out for a while! And a wicked supporting role in a movie like Kick-Ass 2: Balls to the Wall sounds like the best move for Jim Carrey -- room for him to be a little over-the-top, silly, strange, still a bit of a softie (like Colonel Stars)... and totally kick-ass.

Jim Carrey courted for 'Kick-Ass 2' [Deadline]

• [foobar]

  I hear the guy who played Mr. Freeze is available too.

  • [Thad Boyd]

    Michael Ansara?  That guy was great!

• [dole]

  Any truth to the rumor that Millar prematurely wrapped the KA2 series because Universal wouldn’t buy/greenlight the movie sequel, which they wound up doing anyways?

• [Stefan Jones]

  I watched Kick Ass just recently. It was much funnier and sweeter (given its ultra-violent nature) than I’d expected.

  I look forward to the sequel.

• [Rob Stevens]

  If you didn’t see “The Majestic”, you should. Highly underrated, and it’s nice to see Carrey not doing slapstick.

  • [jandrese]

    Lets not forget his work on Spotless Mind either.

    • [Rob Stevens]

      Sure, I just pointed it out as the author said they didn’t see it. (Sorry, don’t know if Jaime is male or female!)

• [Thad Boyd]

  They end up having a bit of a run-in with villain Red Mist.

  You mean the Motherfucker.

• [Substance McGravitas]

  If I don’t see Jim Carrey do something awesome soon

  You have been don’t seeing Jim Carrey do something awesome for a very very long time now.

  • [Rob Stevens]

    Best fake commenter name EVER.

• [Andy Cmbl Smth]

  I can’t tell whether Jamie’s saying she didn’t see Eternal Sunshine or she just didn’t like it, but really? Putting it next to The Number 23? I know there’s a large amount of subjectivity in stuff like this, but I’d have difficulty coming up with something I didn’t like about it, and it’s on IMDB’s top 100:
  http://www.imdb.com/chart/top and generally was received pretty well:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Sunshine#Critical_reception

  I don’t know, I think writing it off with one word as ‘hipsteriffic’ is a bit harsh.

  • [Donald Petersen]

    Yeah, wouldn’t have thought “hipsterific” would be the word to describe that movie.  I wasn’t a hipster when hipsters were hip, let alone now (and the high-schooler in me still kinda wishes I could be kidding about that, but I’m not), but whether or not anyone hip ever decided it was hip to think Eternal Sunshine was hip, I thought it was a damned good movie, with a typically engaging and dazzling and satisfying Charlie Kaufman script, and featuring Carrey’s best performance of his career, if anyone were foolhardy enough to ask me.

    But I didn’t bother with The Majestic or The Number 23 either, so that part of the argument is still valid, AFAIC.

• [Rick]

  Jim Carrey was brilliant in Batman Forever, which was a fun and entertaining movie. His screechy performance in The Mask was contrived and mediocre, although blandly enjoyable. You won’t be surprised that I also greatly enjoyed (the off-topic) Mystery Men with Ben Stiller, William H. Macy, Jeanine Garofalo, Peewee Herman, etc.

  • [Jerril]

     He definitely stuck out in Batman Forever; he was clearly making the best of a bad project.

    • [Thad Boyd]

      Tommy Lee Jones was good too.

      A recent retrospective on ComicsAlliance observed that he played a great Joker; the problem was that he was supposed to be Two-Face.

• [shadymacshuyster]

  Man, the hipster backlash around here has reached an all-time high, hasn’t it? Reminds me of the Onion article “Two Hipsters Angrily Call Each Other Hipster”.

  ESotSM is one of the greatest movies of the last ten years, IMHO: original, beautifully shot and directed, and wearing genuine heart on its sleeve. To have it dismissed as “hipsterific” and imply that it’s a step on the decline of Carrey’s work (when it’s probably one of his best-ever performances) strikes me as jumping on a hipster-hating bandwagon. Get over yourself, hipster.

  • [shadymacshuyster]

     Damn it, Andy Campbell Smith beat me to it.

    • [mccrum]

      It’s worth saying twice that this gem isn’t to be dismissed easily.

• [Halloween_Jack]

  So, you’re dismissing  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as “hipsterific”, but you’re looking forward to Kick-Ass 2? I can’t tell you how sad that makes me.

• [cjporkchop]

  If doing another movie would make Carrey too busy to keep spouting anti-vaccination garbage, I’m all for it.

  • [ocker3]

     That was McCarthy

    • [David Cannon]

       No, he was as complicit in spewing anti-vaccine garbage as his ex-wife, and as such I can no longer enjoy anything he’s done as an actor, no matter how brilliant, without thinking of all of the children with preventable pertussis or measles because of this jerk, not to mention the autism-spectrum children subjected to the quackery they also promoted together.

      Unless he has publicly renounced his earlier statements somewhere, I assume he’s still a contemptable anti-vaccine wackaloon, as demonstrated here, for instance (via Orac): http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/04/23/fire-marshall-bill-discusses-vaccines/.

• [Eric Peterson]

  did kick-ass change nicholas cage’s career trajectory?

  • [mccrum]

    Yes, but unfortunately made it go downhill faster.

• [Leto_Atreides]

  Will Hit-Girl become Hit-Woman?

• [Jim]

  In movies, 1 > 2 is almost always true.

• [Daneel]

  His best performance was in The Dead Pool. It’s been downhill ever since.

  • [Thad Boyd]

    You know, he WOULD make a good Deadpool.

• [daneyul]

  Can we stop the hate on Batman Forever yet?  The next one, Batman and Robin–yeah, that was god-awful–just terrible–and Batman Returns was pretty bad as well. (That one started with promise, but crossed the line into unwatchably stupid pretty quick).  But the 3rd in the series was going for the less dark and broody, more fun batman that many prefer, and managed it quite well.    Had a great cast (including Val Kilmer damn it) and was entertaining start to finish. 

  • [Jerril]

    Two Words: Mood Whiplash.

    The people that preferred camp Batman weren’t the people who liked the first two movies (esp the first – the second was a little surreal). Turning on the camp shook off the established fans and the folks that were looking for campy had, in many cases, already written off the films.

    If it had stood by itself or as the third in a campy series, that would be one thing. But it didn’t. And as an addition to the continuity, it was a bad one.

    Val Kilmer was fine; Jim Carrey was good; Ahnold was largely guilty of not knowing anything except the TV series and therefore being extremely campy (as in, perfectly fine for the film he was in), etc etc.

    When a series suddenly turns around and changes styles with no lead up, no in-universe events to explain the change or at least offer some plausible deniability, it’s jarring. And quite a lot of people don’t like it, and aren’t going to stop “hating” on it when it happens, because it strongly suggests the director didn’t give a crap about anything established up to that point, where the fans cared quite a bit.

  • [Donald Petersen]

    Nope, can’t stop the hate just yet.  I distinctly remember being in one of the Arclight Cinemas in Hollywood during the summer of 2004, when the trailer for the movie version of Phantom of the Opera came on.  The audience watched in silence until “A Joel Schumacher Film” came up on the screen, upon which the audience actually erupted into laughter.

    I haven’t seen that kind of spontaneous derision before or since.

• [Clifton]

  On the other hand, The Mask was based on a Dark Horse comic, culty like Kick-Ass, and that was very well-received.

  Why are you trying to hurt us? Just remembering that wretched movie is excruciating.  Like most of  his movies, it seemed to consist largely of him mugging at the camera smugly.

  And yes, I agree with a number of other posters up-thread: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a rare, truly brilliant movie, poignant and often piercing, and a good example of what Carrey can do when he’s got a good script and is well directed. The Truman Show is another good example.

  A movie based on a comic book, though, seems to be asking for the other Carrey.

• [Martyn Drake]

  Having only just gotten around to watching Scott Pilgrim (which came out a little while after Kick-Ass), I have to say out the two movies I liked Scott Pilgrim the most despite it making as much sense as a talking dog.  Kick-Ass doesn’t make much sense (the physics of Scott Pilgrim’s world are .. weird), but visually, Scott Pilgrim kicked Kick-Ass’ ass big time.

  I think I’ll pass on Kick-Ass 2 as well intentioned as it may be.

  Now, if only Warner Bros. got to make Millar’s Red Son and to perhaps remake Wanted closer to the comic rather than what we actually go – I’d be happy.