Michael Fassbender has taken a long break from movies, seemingly enjoying fatherhood, marriage, and racing at Le Mans. But the actor does have two films in theaters now (or one on streaming anyhow), Taika Waiti’s “Next Goal Wins” (read our review) and David Fincher’s “The Killer” (read our review). In a new Happy Sad Confused podcast conversation, Fassbender discussed both these projects, his time on the “X-Men” franchise, the “Alien”/Prometheus” franchise, and much more.
Interestingly enough, in a bit, I don’t ever recall hearing. Fassbender admitted he had had conversations with Lucasfilm for a role in the new “Star Wars” trilogy. The HSC host tried to coax the answer out of him: who had he auditioned for, or what role was he up for? It had been enough time, and he could say, right? The host even put it to him: those conversations circled around the role of Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren, right?
“Who is Kylo Ren?” Fassbender said, either not taking the bait or just not knowing. “Honestly, I can never remember the names. No, no, no, it wasn’t. No.”
So, what part was he up for? Maybe Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron? Fassbender wouldn’t say and joked around instead. “It was Yoda’s grandfather; he never made it into the actual movie,” he said, cracking himself up before he could even finish the answer. File under: unknown for now.
Fassbender obviously starred in two “Prometheus” films for Ridley Scott’s “Alien” spin-off franchise. But when asked if he knew the direction of the story for the mooted third film, which he would star in, Fassbender sadly didn’t know.
“I have no idea; I didn’t even know after ‘Prometheus’ whether we would be going on another journey,” he said, “What I thought was brilliant about launching the Alien franchise in a totally different and bringing A.I. into it, I thought it was fantastic. And this idea of creation, where we were created from, and this A.I. has now become obsessed with the idea of creation and God; I thought it was super interesting. I thought it was such an inspiring tangent that [Ridley] took there.”
Fassbender discussed the “X-Men” films, a franchise he appeared in four times. “X-Men: First Class” (2011), “X-Men: Days of Future Past” (2014), “X-Men: Apocalypse” (2016), and “Dark Phoenix” (2019). And he played spoiler again. Happy Sad Confused danced around the idea that ‘Dark Phoenix’ wasn’t well-loved by critics or fans (true, it was a bomb). And asked if he was satisfied where it landed, given that dud of a last film, Fassbender refused to slag the last movie in the series. Overall, he seemed happy with what they came up with.
“I think we had a great run, and I thoroughly enjoyed it,” and by the time ‘Dark Phoenix’ was over, I was like, ‘I was lucky, we had a fantastic run of it.’ But you know, I enjoyed the time, and it came to its natural conclusion.”
Lastly, an interesting factoid. Watch every fight scene in David Fincher’s “The Killer.” Fassbender says the filmmaker intentionally took out every grunting and physically punishing sound out of the final mix.
“What’s super interesting [about those fight scenes] is David [took out] all of the grunting sounds, which makes it even more disturbing,” he explained. “So watch the [big fight] scene again, and you realize there’s no ‘urgh, argh!’ gah!’ you can just hear the impact hit, and it makes the fight quite intimate.”
A good conversation as ever, so check it out and take a tour through various projects, including his latest with Michael Fassbender below.