After "Iron Man," Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, "The Avengers" and oh, you know, every other title that arrives every six months, comic-book movies are obviously still all the rage. But it wasn't always like that. In the early aughts there were plenty of misfires, with many of them coming from 20th Century Fox: "Daredevil," "Elektra," "Fantastic Four," "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer," and "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" were all mostly moneymakers, but were all generally reviled. The same applied to lesser-known titles adapted from comics like "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," which was also a Fox property based off a comic book series written by Alan Moore that was such a bad film it practically sent him to an early grave and hastened Sean Connery's retirement (of course, we're not even counting dreck like Warner Bros.' "Catwoman").
Which leads us to "Kick-Ass" creator Mark Millar's recently appointed gig as creative consultant over at 20th Century Fox. What's his role exactly? Well, in a recent interview Millar compared his role to that of Joss Whedon's stint over at Marvel Studios which is the same type of godfather-ing, executive producer type gig.
Reading between the lines, Millar tip-toed around some of the past problems with super hero films at Fox, but also gave credit to Bryan Singer, for revitalizing comic-book movies with the 'X-Men' series.
"There have been some poor decisions in the past, but you also have to remember that there have been some excellent ones too. Bryan Singer's 'X-Men' for example," Millar said in an podcast with Word Balloon via ComicBook Movie. "I think [it] revolutionized superhero movies. It pre-dated Sam Raimi's 'Spider-Man,' and I think you forget how close that was chronologically to 'Batman and Robin'! To open with a Holocaust scene in a superhero movie was just unheard of. Fox gets a lot of flak for the films which didn't work out, and quite rightly, but you forget that they've done some really great stuff too. I'm thinking specifically of 'X-Men,' 'X-Men 2' and "X-Men: First Class.""
Notice there's no mention of "X-Men: The Last Stand," the Brett Ratner-directed X-Men movie which was the most financially successful of them all thus far, but was also critically panned.
"The team who is running the show over there now I'm very comfortable with," Millar continued. "I actually really like everything that they're doing, and they recognize more than anyone the mistakes that they've made in the past and they just want to do right by the fans. Hiring myself was a first step in a number of things that they're planning and they just really want to be respectful to the material I think. "X-Men: First Class," which I absolutely loved, just feels like planting the flag for what they're planning to do over the next few years."
"Hiring Josh Trank for Fantastic Four…it could just not be more different than the first "Fantastic Four" movie from what I've seen so far. Even just as a fan, I'm very, very excited by the level of talent they have on the directors side of things," he also enthused.
Millar wouldn't say much about Fox's "The Wolverine" being helmed by James Mangold which is currently shooting now, or "Days of Future Past," the next X-Men movie, but said there's so much talent involved with these films currently that "it's just the easiest job in the world as I'm surrounded by people who are so good." Fingers crossed for those that had to endure "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" and some of the clunkier and rushed moments of 'First Class' (which could have been great considering the concept, but Fox's super-rushed schedule for director Matthew Vaughn hurt it in several places).
Millar's next movie adaptation is "Kick-Ass 2" over at Universal and it's now shooting.
