Despite being intrinsically linked to the comic book genre for well over a decade, Marvel movies and Matthew Vaughn generally don’t tend to mix all that well.
The filmmaker behind Kick-Ass and the ongoing Kingsman universe may know his way around bringing stories from the printed page to the big screen, but he also ended up quitting three times as many Marvel Comics blockbusters as he ended up making, which is hardly the greatest batting average.
Vaughn walked away from X-Men: The Last Stand well before finally getting his shot at the merry band of mutants with First Class, and he was contracted to helm follow-up Days of Future Past as well before exiting stage left, and that’s without mentioning the announcement made in the summer of 2007 that he would be wielding the megaphone on the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Thor, which of course did not happen.
Either way, Vaughn’s back catalogue has been in and out of the comic book arena almost nonstop since he first shot to prominence with Kick-Ass, so his thoughts on the current state of Kevin Feige’s struggling sandbox are well worth listening to, as he opined to ScreenRant.
“When you’re making a superhero movie, you sort of have to work harder because you’ve got to make people believe it. 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 f*cked 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 f*cking 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, Feige will go back to less is more and make less films and concentrate on making them great.”
He’s echoing sentiments that a lot of longtime MCU fans hold, and ones that might be realized after the top brass at Disney hinted that slowing his roll and focusing on quality over quantity would be on the cards for Feige’s short and long-term future. Fingers crossed, because the spandex-clad saga could really do with being restored to its former glories on a more consistent basis.
