Matthew Vaughn Suggests Marvel “Make Less Films”, Praises DC

Matthew Vaughn has some pretty strong opinions about the current era of superhero movies.

In a recent interview with Screen Rant, the Kick-Ass and X-Men: First Class director addressed the use of CGI and visual effects in superhero movies, left suggestions for Marvel Studios and sang praises for DC.

“When you’re making a superhero movie, you sort of have to work harder because you’ve got to make people believe it. 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.,” said Vaughn.

“I think CG’s f***ed 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 f***ing 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 [Peter] Safran, they’ve got a good chance of popping.”

He added, “And hopefully [Kevin] Feige will go back to less is more and make less films and concentrate on making them great.”

Vaughn is rather spot on in his comment. Marvel has been releasing many film and television projects as of late. In 2023 alone, the studios has released Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and will be releasing The Marvels in a few weeks. The year before, Marvel released Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Lest we forget, Marvel also released a number of TV series over the two years including Loki season two, Secret Invasion, I am Groot, The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, Ms Marvel, She-Hulk and Moon Knight.

As for competitor DC, Vaughn has plenty of positive comments, including praises for Andy Muschietti’s The Flash starring Ezra Miller.

“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?’. And 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. And so it made me question,” said Vaughn.

“I think there’s been so many bad superhero movies as well that it’s like when the Western got, you make so many than you get bored of the genre, not because the genre is bad, but because the films are bad. 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.”

The Marvels is a sequel to Captain Marvel and stars Brie Larson as Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers, Iman Vellani as Ms Marvel/Kamala Khan and Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau. The movie is set to release in theatres on 10 November 2023.

Superheroes aren’t the only topic Vaughn touched on. Not too long ago, the director said he would want to reboot Star Wars and recast the iconic trio: Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Leia Organa. He also teased Kick-Ass 3 and revealed why he quit X-Men 3.