NicholasCage

The initial storm of enthusiasm over Kick Ass has started to die down a little since its screening at BNAT 1138 a week or so ago (read our review here!) and now we can settle back into a comfortable position and wait for release and hope the hype wasn't just all noise. I don't think it is. I think the hype is appropriately earned. And this newly released red band (NSFW!) trailer only confirms this (you can watch it over at Empire or watch it embedded from IGN after the jump).

The trailer centers around the character of Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz), a 12-year-old assassin/superhero/killing machine with a sailor's mouth and a penchant for turning everyone who stands in her way into a corpse. Based on how Lionsgate has been marketing the film thus far, with a single poster for each of the four leads, I expect we'll be seeing more character-specific trailers come along in the near future for Nicolas Cage's Big Daddy, Christopher Mintz-Plasse's Red Mist and Aaron Johnson's Kick Ass.

As for this specific trailer, I really have no words. It's an orgy of stylized bloodletting that looks like it was shot with style and grace, and the opening sequence between Cage and Moretz drips with uber-dark comedy. This feels like a movie tailor-made for the geek community and how the average moviegoer will react remains a total mystery. All I know is that I'm ready for adolescent driven ultraviolence and since you're reading this, you probably are too.

It's only natural that Nicolas Cage follows up his bizarre, acclaimed work in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans by reuniting with his National Treasure director Jon Turteltaub to star in an adaptation of a ten minute Fantasia segment about an anthropomorphized mouse who abuses magic to create broom havoc. Because after all, everyone knows you follow up Herzog with Turteltaub.

Yeah, The Sorcerer's Apprentice was a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe written about 150 years before Fantasia borrowed it, but this new and improved CGI-athon is a Disney production and if you think a bunch of Disney execs sat around a big table and declared "Let's spend $100 million on a Johann Wolfgang von Goeth poem adapatation!" you are a crazy person. You can take a leap over to Apple trailers and take a peek at the new trailer yourself (or watch it after the jump), although only the title and a brief shot of Jay Baruchel (playing the part of Mickey Mouse) combating living brooms suggests any sort of relationship to the Fantasia segment.

Nic Cage recently sat down with MTV for a video interview, presumably to talk about G-Force, a movie in which he plays a CGI rodent. But the conversation soon turned to Ghost Rider, his train wreck of a Marvel comic book movie. The funniest thing about the interview is how Cage kinda sorta seems to hate the movie just as much as comic book fans do. When asked about a sequel to Ghost Rider, he quickly says he wants to "reconceive" the film franchise and go in a totally different direction.

The second funniest thing about the interview? It's a toss up between Cage's comment about the Internet or a poster featuring an insane-looking guinea pig hanging right next to Cage's serious-looking mug.

Click through for the video.