With “X-Men: First Class,” “Kingsman” and “Kick Ass” under his belt, director Matthew Vaughn has done his fair share of superhero filmmaking.
Recently, the helmer sat down with Screen Rant for an interview in which the topic of superhero fatigue came up. Debates still rage to this day if such a concept is real, or if it is merely an easy label to slap on bad, tired or formulaic superhero films.
Vaughn says he’s somewhat hopeful about the future of the genre thanks to both the new management at DC and a hope that Marvel will slow its roll:
“I think at least DC is under; I think James Gunn and [Peter 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.”
Vaughn also says part of the problem is these superhero movies rely far too much on VFX and CG animation which stuff things up and makes you “feel like you’re watching a video game”. He says the one key exception is the “Guardians of the Galaxy” films because he feels for Rocket and Groot.
He also says he was shocked by the box office results of “The Flash” which he both enjoyed and found well made:
“What really freaked me out was that I really enjoyed The Flash. 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?
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 Muschietti got enough credit for what they pulled off.”
He also added that he thinks “maybe we all need a little bit of time off” from the superhero genre, though hopes someday someone will “make something so great that we will get excited again”.