“Kingsman” director Matthew Vaughn knows a thing or two about bringing comic books to life on the big screen as the filmmaker behind acclaimed outings such as “Kick-Ass” and “X-Men: First Class.” In a recent interview with ScreenRant, the director shared his thoughts on the current era of comic book movies. He said poor visual effects are negatively impacting superhero movies, while also sharing his belief that Marvel needs to take a “less is more” approach.
“I genuinely don’t know what’s happening with the superhero [genre] in the sense that, I do think, maybe we all need a little bit of time off from it,” Vaughn said. “Maybe someone will make something so great that we will get excited again… Superhero films are films. It’s a film that has superheroes in it. I think what happened was that they became superheroes, and the film part wasn’t that important.”
“When you’re making a superhero movie, you sort of have to work harder because you’ve got to make people believe it,” he continued. “That’s why ‘X-Men: First Class’ was pretty grounded. We set it in the Cuban Missile Crisis; they had relatable human problems. And it wasn’t relying on the CG. I think CG’s fucked up everything as well, because you feel like you’re watching a video game. You’re not with the characters. Apart from ‘Guardians’… I still think Groot and the raccoon are fucking pieces of genius that I feel so much for them. So I’ll be intrigued. I think at least DC is under… I think James Gunn and Safran, they’ve got a good chance of popping, and hopefully [Kevin] Feige will go back to less is more and make less films and concentrate on making them great.”
For the record, Disney CEO Bob Iger has already said publicly that Marvel got carried away with too many film and television projects in a short period of time. Recent Marvel offerings like “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania”bombed at the box office amid the studio’s increased output due to streaming, where eight original series debuted on Disney+ in the span of a year and half.
“[Marvel] had not been in the TV business at any significant level. Not only did they increase their movie output, but they ended up making a number of television series, and frankly, it diluted focus and attention,” Iger said. “That is, I think, more of the cause [for disappointment] than anything.”
While Vaughn is hoping for a comic book movie slowdown, he did express surprise over Warner Bros.’ “The Flash” flopping in theaters over the summer. The tentpole, starring Ezra Miller in the title role opposite Michael Keaton’s return as Bruce Wayne/Batman, only grossed $108 million at the domestic box office and didn’t even cross $300 million worldwide.
“What really freaked me out was that I really enjoyed ‘The Flash,'” Vaughn told ScreenRant. “I thought it was a really good film, right? And it died at the box office, right? And I’m like, ‘Wait, hold on, this is a good movie. What happened?’ And I don’t know whether that was superhero fatigue; you’ve just seen it done. So even now that we’ve made it well, there was some really, really complicated, hard and quite special, unique filmmaking in that film. Which I don’t think [Andy] Muschietti got enough credit for what they pulled off.”
“I think there’s been so many bad superhero movies as well that it’s like the Western. You make so many then you get bored of the genre, not because the genre is bad but because the films are bad,” he added. “I was old enough, sadly, when ‘Batman and Robin’ came out, and it was terrible. I was a big Batman fan, and we were like, ‘Ah!’ And then superheroes stopped, and then they came back. Now, I’ll be intrigued to see how ‘The Marvels’ does.”
Up next for Vaughn is the star-studded meta spy adventure “Argylle,” releasing Feb. 2, 2024, from Apple and Universal Pictures.
