There has been some buzz around the internet about the fact that Simon Kinberg is poised to take the reigns on the main ‘X-Men’ franchise and both write and direct ‘X-Men: Supernova‘ (unless we all get lucky and that name changes), especially since he was heavily involved in the writing of ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ with Bryan Singer, a film which just barely misses the award for the worst critically reviled ‘X-Men’ film of all time. However, Kinberg has been around for a lot of ‘X-Men’ films and has seen his shares of ups and downs (he was also there for the much-loved ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past,’ but again, he also started his run with the franchise with the dubious ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’), so he should not be judged on one film. Especially when the man has openly spoken about the mistakes made on ‘Apocalypse’ and what can be learned from that experience, which he very openly shared during a recent interview with Comingsoon.net:
“As the writer of it, I thought when we started the movie and when I wrote the movie that we were telling the story of a family splitting apart and coming back together. In the final movie its in there, but it’s a little buried, and the movie on the surface became about a guy who wanted to destroy the world. The guy that wanted to destroy the world is a superhero movie from 25, 30 years ago. Today’s superhero movies that we love the most –the Dark Knight movies, Guardians of the Galaxy, the first Iron Man movie, those are movies about human beings in relatable circumstances that happen to have super powers. I think Apocalypse became more about global stakes than human stakes. That’s the lesson I learned from the movie, that human and personal stakes always trump global stakes. It’s something that Bryan did, if you go back to the first X-Men movie, what Magneto’s trying to do is something global in scale, but ultimately it’s about saving Rogue. The movie is about Wolverine and Rogue, a guy who doesn’t want to be connected to anybody and a girl who’s lost. They find each other, and in finding each other they find each other with the X-Men. It was a brilliant way of telling that story. I think with Apocalypse we got away from that a little bit. Maybe we all got a little enamored in the possibility of seeing the world get destroyed and do some things in terms of scale and scope that we haven’t done in the X-Men movies. Scale and scope don’t matter. Audiences today know it’s fake, they’ve seen the world blow up a million times in video games and movies.”
Personally, I think the issues with ‘Apocalypse’ were more likely due to the fact that it was Bryan Singer’s final film as a director for the franchise (a lot of it felt like he was overly indulgent and nostalgic, and trying to make everything over-the-top and “memorable” because it was his final ‘X-Men’ film) and I put more of the blame on what went wrong on the director than the writer. And if Kinberg can admit to the mistakes he made as a producer and a writer, and make some excellent points about what makes superhero movies work nowadays and how audiences are not wowed anymore by bright flashes and CGI world destruction, then I think he is a good choice to be the next ‘X-Men’ director, and I am more than willing to give him a shot.
Are you? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: Coming Soon
