Nathan Fillion in a girly wig. Ellen Page being an idiot. Rainn Wilson. Three reasons right there to get your knickers in a twist over James Slither Gunn’s bloody, sly, genre-muddling Super. Scripted long before Kick-Ass but only now making it to screens, it’s of that same ‘bloke becomes superhero’ mould – but is by all accounts filthier. Yes, filthier than a 10-year-old muttering the C word.
Branded an “effed up, low-rent Watchmen” by Wilson, Super follows the comedy crusader’s everyguy Frank. When Frank’s wife (the smokin’ hot Liv Tyler) goes on a drug-slicked bender with Kevin Bacon, Frank transforms himself into superhero Crimson Bolt in an attempt to win her back. If only he was actually any good at rescuing people.
Okay, awesome check list… Page blowing a bloke up with a grenade? Check! Fillion feeling fey as the Holy Avenger? Check! Tyler actually being injected during a druggy re-enactment scene? Uhhh… check! Director-writer Gunn may have branded shooting the thing a “hellish experience” (tight budget purse-strings meant they rushed through a whopping 50 set-ups a day), but Super has ‘runaway cult hit’ status stamped all over it. And not just because it has Nathan Fillion in a girly wig.
Via Total Film
