Disses Brett Ratner’s ‘X3’ Revealing His Version Would’ve Been 40 Minutes Longer
As long as someone will listen to him, “Kick-Ass” creator Mark Millar will talk and more than likely, it will be bullshit. He spent much of last year telling anyone and everyone that “Kick-Ass 2” was a sure thing. No one really believed him anyway, but earlier this year screenwriter Jane Goldman tweeted, “Saw a few erroneous reports today that I’m currently writing Kick Ass 2 script – sorry if anyone’s disappointed, but not true.” She went on to add, “Currently writing for 2 other projects, then on to lovely Matthew [Vaughn]’s next thing (right now, looks unlikely to be [‘Kick-Ass 2’]) when ‘X-Men’ post-prod’ ends.” So once again, Millar’s hubris gets the best of him but it appears that of all the behind-the-camera talent on the comic movie, he’s the only one who really wants to do it.
Speaking with Bleeding Cool, Vaughn didn’t particularly think too highly of the idea of a followup.
“Everyone says we’re doing ‘Kick-Ass 2’ but… the weird thing about ‘Kick-Ass 2’ is I’d love to do it, because I enjoyed it so much, but I’m a big believer that if you’re going to do a sequel it’s got to be as good as the first one if not better. I just don’t know how I could…My business brain just says do ‘Kick-Ass 2,’ shoot it and get it out there and it would make a lot of money but I really do love that movie,” he said. “It was a special moment to me making that film and I don’t want to spoil it. I’m not saying it’s as good as ‘Pulp Fiction‘ but I think it would be weird if Tarantino did ‘Pulp Fiction 2.’ Everything that made ‘Kick-Ass’ original and fun, if you do it again, it would be crass…”
Of course, the word “crass” means nothing to Mark Millar, but it’s nice to see a director carefully considering a sequel and not just leaping after it because of the payday it’ll bring (*ahem*Todd Phillips*ahem*). It’s also nice to see him being so candid. When asked by Bleeding Cool about the rushed production period of his forthcoming “X-Men: First Class,” Vaughn didn’t hide the chaos that came with territory of churning out the movie in just 10 months. In fact, it was coming together so fast, he had no idea who was on his crew.
“I got hardly any time to prep, had 5 DPs on this film, four different ADs. Every day I didn’t know who my crew was I was ‘Hey, what do you do? Are you the DP?’ It was good for me, because I’d so relied on my AD and DP, that little triumvirate when you make a film, but here I was sort of on my own, naked…at first it scared the hell out of me but I got used to it,” he explained. “I was, as a director I feel far more confident after this one….John Mathieson [the credited DP] came on half way through the shoot. We got through it. Normally I was far more collaborative with DPs, here I become bit more of a megalomaniac…somebody’s got to take control…. we seemed to get away with having different DPs.”
The irony here is that Vaughn was originally going to direct “X-Men: The Last Stand” but backed out due to the tight timeframe he was being given by Fox to turn around the film. But as well all know, Brett Ratner took the helm of that one and Vaughn is not at a loss for words for what he would’ve done differently. “I storyboarded the whole bloody film, did the script. My ‘X3’ would have been 40 minutes longer. They didn’t let the emotions and the drama play in that film. It became wall-to-wall noise and drama. I would have let it breathe and far more dramatic elements to it,” he said.
Well, by accounts so far, Vaughn got through the rough shoot of “X-Men: First Class” and has delivered a winner. We’ll find out soon enough when it opens on June 3rd.
