Matthew Vaughn on Superhero Movies: ‘Maybe We All Need a Little Time off From It’

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Matthew Vaughn on Superhero Movies: ‘Maybe We All Need a Little Time off From It’

Director Matthew Vaughn thinks that the superhero genre may need a little time off for now.

Speaking to Screen Rant, Vaughn — best known for directing films like Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class, and the upcoming Argylle — was asked about potentially hopping back into the superhero genre. For Vaughn, though, he thinks people need “time off” from it more than anything.

“I genuinely don’t know what’s happening with the superhero [genre] in the sense that, I do think, maybe we all need a little bit of time off from it,” Vaughn said. “Maybe someone will make something so great that we will get excited again…Superhero films are films. It’s a film that has superheroes in it. I think what happened was that they became superheroes, and the film part wasn’t that important.”

Superhero movies require harder work, says Vaughn

Vaughn also touched on his work on X-Men: First Class, reflecting on how keeping it grounded was key to making sure it worked as a superhero film, which he says you usually have to work harder on.

“When you’re making a superhero movie, you sort of have to work harder because you’ve got to make people believe it,” he continued. “That’s why ‘X-Men: First Class’ was pretty grounded. We set it in the Cuban Missile Crisis; they had relatable human problems. And it wasn’t relying on the CG. I think CG’s fucked up everything as well, because you feel like you’re watching a video game. You’re not with the characters. Apart from ‘Guardians’…I still think Groot and the raccoon are fucking pieces of genius that I feel so much for them. So I’ll be intrigued. I think at least DC is under…I think James Gunn and 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.”

Finally, Vaughn also acknowledged that there had been a ton of “bad superhero movies” prior to the boom of the MCU, so he’s curious to see where things go from here.

“I think there’s been so many bad superhero movies as well that it’s like the Western. You make so many then you get bored of the genre, not because the genre is bad but because the films are bad,” he added. “I was old enough, sadly, when Batman and Robin came out, and it was terrible. I was a big Batman fan, and we were like, ‘Ah!’ And then superheroes stopped, and then they came back. Now, I’ll be intrigued to see how The Marvels does.”