Boring news day. Here's a boring interview with Bryan Singer from AICN. It's boring.
QUINT: Last time I talked to you you were here at the Con with the first X-MEN. Now you've done two more superhero movies and are back again...
BRYAN SINGER: I know! It's weird. I never expected to be so intertwined with the comic book universe.
QUINT: Since you did it with SUPERMAN and we're both huge JAWS fans, how about JAWS RETURNS and make the real JAWS 3 now?
BRYAN SINGER: I would never touch JAWS! That's something that's too... No, no, no... I have fantasies about it, especially since lately they've been advertising this shark movie (maybe he meant Shark Week on Discovery?)... at all the bus stops, there are all these shark poster... It's got me in a shark mood... but, no, no.
QUINT: C'mon, you can get Brody and Hooper back...
BRYAN SINGER: I couldn't do it! I could do it! I couldn't do it to Steven! He's my idol!
QUINT: So, what'd you think of the overall reaction to the film? I know it's really hard to find anything positive online. People seem to be quick to call anything that's not a record breaker a failure. I saw that happen with KONG.
BRYAN SINGER: Well, there's great affection for the picture and I feel... You know, it comes in all different ways. Sometimes it comes with the domestic box office, sometimes it comes in the international box office. Sometimes it comes in letters from your idols who have never written to you before and from their families. Sometimes it comes from coming down here and having a few people say, "Why didn't you do this?" and a few people who say, "Thank you so much." I can only make a movie I think someone will watch 10 years or 20 years from now and say, "Oh, I'm affected by it!" Or a movie that maybe a woman who doesn't come to these kinds of movies will actually watch and get choked up about. That's kind of the idea here.
QUINT: And it seems that across the board people agree on Brandon Routh as Superman.
BRYAN SINGER: Well, that was the key. That was the key. I had to introduce this guy and if that didn't work... And sometimes it takes a certain kind of movie. And by the way, in terms of people's perceptions on domestic box office, this is going up in the face of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, a sequel, but secondly... the last time a SUPERMAN movie was out was a long time ago and its cumulative domestic gross was $15 million.
When I first made X-MEN 1, it was a comic book, but it was also a Saturday Morning Cartoon. People were like, "What?!?" It took a while to get everybody excited. It didn't just explode.
QUINT: I've also noticed this trend in box office that is pretty different from how things used to work. Back in the day, even great sequels usually didn't match, much less surpass, the box office of the original. Now, I'm noticing that box office on sequels tend to reflect more on the film that came before it. Look at the box office for the MATRIX sequels (RELOADED was huge, REVOLUTIONS was half as big) and LORD OF THE RINGS, with each successive film making more money than the one before it. The box office seems to be genuinely affected by the film that came before it. Look at PIRATES and X2...
BRYAN SINGER: And X3! Look at the opening of X3! Jesus!
QUINT: I think that once you have that audience in place you'll hit it big. That why I keep telling people that a SUPERMAN sequel only makes sense for Warner Bros. It's a good time to have franchises right now... SUPERMAN RETURNS will make its money back no matter what...
BRYAN SINGER: It already has!
QUINT: ... and they'll want the franchise to keep going.
BRYAN SINGER: Yeah. You know, we come out here, we come out foreign, we have the DVD and we build. Suddenly now this group of people, and it took them a while, but they've all finally seen SUPERMAN RETURNS. And now, when you make another one, if they don't like it, then it's not as easy to sell them on another one. My average feedback has been very positive. I feel very good about the picture.
25 comments:
I don't like Bryan Singer.
I didn't like him when he was the director of the loathsome "The Usual Suspects," but then I kind of pretended it was somebody else when "X-Men" came out and was a reasonably good superhero movie.
I had weird, vague problems with "X2" and "Superman Returns" which I couldn't nail down, irritating octopunk to the point where he actually gave up and said "Maybe you don't like superhero movies," which is not the case.
Then I saw "X-Men The Last Stand," and I loved it completely...and I realized that my problem isn't with superhero movies. My problem's with Bryan Singer.
Brett Ratner may be a jerk or a hack or whatever (I've only seen one other movie of his) but he's unpretentious and he understands that a comic-book movie must first and foremost be AN ACTION MOVIE.
Action, action, action. I know that there are really good comic books with the characters leaning in doorways or sitting on beds moping and talking, figuring out what it all means or how they feel about each other, but that's not why we read comic books, is it?
I get the feeling that Bryan Singer doesn't really like action sequences and regards them as some kind of necessary evil. Anyway he's not very good at directing them. The battles and fights in X3. by contrast, are so good! It's almost a Sam Raimi level of insane carnage.
And someone needs to explain to Singer that we don't need three or four entire sequences of James Marsden and Kate Bosworth discussing their relationship and who is going to fly the seaplane. This isn't "About Schmidt"; it's a comic book.
The shuttle/airplane/stadium sequence in "Returns" was totally fantastic...but in "X-Men The Last Stand" the ENTIRE MOVIE is like that sequence. And the conversations are reduced to a few clipped sentences, as they should be (as they are in comic books). That's the point of hiring Patrick Stewart and Ian McClellan and Halle Berry and Hugh Jackman and Anna Paquin. These are very, very good actors who can get the essence of the scenes across with a few glances and clipped remarks. I mean, he's not Richard III; he's Wolverine. (George Lucas used to undersand this.)
Anyway, now that I've figured out what the problem is I can go back to enjoying superhero movies and stop wondering why they keep leaving me cold.
I think I enjoyed Superman Returns more than you, Jordan, but I do agree with a lot of what you say. I thought the film was overlong and, truth be known, I kind of dozed off during the last 15 minutes. Also, there just wasn't enough action (hence my dozing). Yes we were given the requisite montage of Superman helping people (e.g., Robocop), but there were LONG stretches of film where not a lot happened (i.e., Hulk). I was not the least bit interested in Lois Lane's life, for example, and I thought her character was kind of bitchy. I anticipate doing a lot of scanning and scene skipping when I get this on DVD.
I did like X2 though and thought it moved at a more even pace.
Yeah, X3 kicked ass and zipped right along. Would the Bay Bridge really be long enough to reach Alcatraz?
Yeah, you could tear out a section of the bridge and get to Alcatraz, if I'm remembering right.
That whole thing was amazing! I wish I'd seen it in the theater.
I'm glad you liked my points. I think octo's going to be even more frustrated with me...
Well, you could capitalize my name to earn a few points...
Wow, I can't believe you didn't see it on the big screen! Superhero films are made for the big screen experience. I saw Batman Begins on IMAX and it was amazing. Even better was Attack of the Clones on IMAX.
Regarding the whole "overlong film" comment - I felt the same way about Pirates of the Carribean 2. It was a lot of fun but waaaaaaay to long (like the first one). V for Vendetta could probably use a little excising and from now on I'll skip the first 45 minutes of King Kong ("Get to the damn island already!").
Now Octo's going to be frustrated with me as well...
It's his own fault for living 3 hours in the past.
Why didn't Wolverine stab Phoenix with the drug, rather than his claws?
Why did Magneto feel it necessary to move the whole bridge?
jpx: It's even worse. I saw a bad telecine print transferred to AVI and then seeded on bittorrent. It must have been unreal on the big screen.
My best ever IMAX experience was "Saving Private Ryan." I still think about that night and what a trancendental experience that was.
Return of the King on IMAX was good too.
octo, I'll capitalize your name the day YOU capitalize it.
Octo and I caught Matrix Reloaded on IMAX, which was pretty sweet but not as impressive as I thought it was going to be. You really appreciate Lucas' attention to detail when you see his stuff on IMAX. There was detail in Clones that really can only be discerned on the IMAX screen. On the one hand you ask, "What's the point if no one can see it?" but on the other hand you think, "It's so cool that there's imperceptible detail because it makes the whole Star Wars universe more real."
Jordan, you need a lashing for watching X3 that way - you must have some of the best movie screens in the world in New York! shame, shame, shame!
Dude, there's no caps in the "X said..." thing. Formatting, not my doing.
I know I’m supposed to hate saying I told you so, but I totally told you to get your ass to the big screen for X3.
(Man, I love saying I told you so.)
Yeah, OCTO, you did, in so many words; and I didn't do it. I'm not sure why.
I make a big show of always taking OCTO's advice, and this just proves it; when I fail to do so, I suffer terribly.
Yeah, Octo can be a bastard that way. Once he stole my River Raid Atari cartridge and I hadn't even played it yet. I guess that doesn't really have anything to do with this discussion, but jeez, that wasn't cool!
Also he once gyped me out of some Star Wars cards.
(Khan-like) "Octoooooooooooo!"
That's right! Doubt me at your peril.
I’ve been rolling this around in my head while you guys have been gabbing away and I’m wondering if Singer’s low-impact action skills are the whole reason you don’t like him, Jordan. That argument doesn’t seem like you, but maybe I'm used to you fighting for theme and characterization instead of action.
I remember when Jordan and I saw the first X-men flick, which was the second time for me. When Professor X is telling Logan “but that’s only the surface of the school” and the screen dissolved into a shot of the X-jet in its underground hangar, Jordan leaned over and said “this kicks so much ass.” Because Singer’s talent is getting it right: distilling the appeal of the characters and setting of a story and getting it to the screen without those stupid arbitrary story changes Hollywood loves to make. Remember, before it came out, we all thought X-men was going to absolutely suck balls.
Quoting you again, Jordan, when I was telling you to go see X3 because it was unexpectedly good, you said Ratner had it easy because Singer had already done all the hard work.
I thought Superman had its draggy parts. And I said right away that I would’ve liked one more big action set piece. But for all the too-young actors, bitchy Lois, James Marsden’s weird face, etc., I haven’t really heard anyone characterize it as a failure. Singer had a HUGE challenge in front of him to make that story big enough and good enough, and I think he pulled it off. Not flawlessly, but I’ll give him the point.
Some overlong scenes don’t make a movie My Dinner With Andre. Your descriptions of people doing a lot of hanging around in the first two X-movies don’t really ring true for me. Singer’s action scenes aren’t his strong point by any stretch, but the second movie is leagues past the first one because they gave him a lot more money. And while I wanted more of it, the plane rescue in Superman was perfect, and was directed by him.
If you blow the vibe, there’s no movie. Look at Fantastic Four. Ounce for ounce, there might even be less action in Superman than FF, but I can’t even remember. It’s like comparing chili con carne to watered-down chicken broth. Ninety percent of the comics out there, the ones I’ve never bothered with, they’ve got lots of fighting and not enough characterization. And most of the good comics out today are fairly dialogue heavy.
Speaking of heavy dialogue, someone leant me the Phoenix Saga recently and I just couldn’t bear to read it, the writing was so dense. After Jean Grey offs herself, Cyclops is holding her in his arms and says “You must have known all along how this would end, that your Phoenix powers would come back. You hoped the Shi’ar Imperial Guard would kill you, but if they didn’t, you knew to pull the knowledge of these ancient Lunar artifacts from the minds of the Skrull and Kree observers, so you could find the underground laser gun and use your powers to turn it on yourself! Oh, Jean, Jean…(choke!)” Seriously it’s like three panels of this stuff, his voice trails off in grief at the end but only after he’s recited this freakin’ essay. Singer let us off easy.
Hey JPX, don't forget the time I killed your guy in Jungle Hunt, made you move a peach tree, and threw fish eggs on your shirt.
Also don't forget where "JPX" came from. I just told that story again over the weekend. Cracks me up.
...or more recently invited me to spend time with you on the East Coast but in the usual Cross-bait-and-switch we ended up doing childcare.
I guess I made you sit through Underworld so we're even. But wait, that was in the spirit of the Horrorthon!
Don't even get me started on the whole "JPX" thing, you Jungle Hunt, character killing, bastard!
Wait, I threw the fish eggs and that was on Gary's shirt!
How about the time I made you sit through House of the Dead even though you were falling asleep, or shot that arrow at you in the backyard and you rolled out of the way just in time, or when you were trying to climb out my bedroom window and I notched an arrow and aimed it at your face to speed up your exit?
Oh wait, those were all you, too.
You bastard.
If you gentlemen are finished...
Yeah, it was good to see the Xavier school and its underground tech done realistically (since we'd been subjected to so much Tim Burton FAO Schwartz/Dr. Seuss style comic book cinema). It was good to see a cast of real actors playing superheroes realistically. And the X-Men storyline is always appealing.
But I liked X2 a lot less than X-Men. I found it slow and pretentious compared to the first one. "Characterization and theme" are just not the opposite of "Action" (look at any Chuck Jones cartoon).
The problem with Singer is a) he's technically not that good (on the camera/lights/cutting/framing/sound level) and he seems to feel that his job is to graft "depth" onto the material, which means the kind of stuff I've been complaining about in these posts. "Usual Suspects" is a classic example of this: a crime movie made by a man who's not interested in any of the conventional mechanics of crime movies (by which I mean, he's no Michael Mann and he could never make "Heat" and he's no WIlliam Friedkin and could never make "The French Connection") but instead we get this unbearably pretentious and talky "study of the nature of evil."
Themes don't come into movies because the characters have realizations that they constantly voice about what it all means. Themes come into movies like sadness comes into the blues; like a watermark or a DNA strand.
Watching "Superman Returns" at my house the other night with Brendan (who had seen it), we skipped to the plane scene, grooved on it, and then I thought, Let's skip ahead to the next "good part."
And then I discovered that there IS no "next good part."
How the heck are you watching all these movies at home?
I'm jealous.
Now that's the Jordan argument I've been waiting for!
That all makes sense. Your comment about him grafting depth reminded me of this thing I said once about how Event Horizon and Paul Anderson suck:
"Great example: they're approaching the Event Horizon, and there's all this choppy turbulence and no visibility. So the music is swelling and they're getting closer and they can't see it, and everybody's acting like they're in imminent danger, BUT THEY KNOW EXACTLY WHERE THE SHIP IS. The pilot is reading off a descending distance count, 500 meters, 400 meters -- so why the fuck is there all this dramatic tension? It's like Anderson thinks you can just inject suspense into a scene like a big syringe of cream filling. I don't buy it, and I'm annoyed that he tries to sell it."
My cream filling hypo is what you've got Singer holding, but it's labelled "depth." Me, though, I'm on the other side of the Singer pretention fence.
And I forgot the main part of this story, which is that I'm really psyched you enjoyed X3 so much. It was really good, definitely Rattner's best. He's never been that bad, really, just not good enough. I feel like so many directors we track tend to get worse instead of better, it's nice to see the trend inverted.
"...we skipped to the plane scene, grooved on it, and then I thought, Let's skip ahead to the next 'good part.'
And then I discovered that there IS no 'next good part.'"
That totally cracked me up. Yes, that movie peaks way too early.
"And I forgot the main part of this story, which is that I'm really psyched you enjoyed X3 so much. It was really good, definitely Rattner's best. He's never been that bad, really, just not good enough."
Whoah, I pulled a Han Solo! "Those guys must really be desperate, this could really save my neck. Go get the ship ready."
"Really ready!"
Oh, and by the way I watched "Spider-Man" the other night and liked it a lot! I'm going to see "2" again soon.
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