We’ve talked about the sales technique of Avi Arad already, and it’s not great. Perhaps on a shopping channel somewhere, but not in the movie industry pitching big projects to their potential audience. However in this case he is good for something, clearing up a lot of unknowns, and I expect we’ll hear more and more from him as those projects he “talked about” begin to come forward.
Empire caught some words with him lately, and he had some interesting comments on X-Men 3 and it’s new director.
“We are incredibly excited about Matthew,” said Avi. “We love his sensibilities. I thought Layer Cake was incredibly stylish, with a lot of characters. In some ways he had stylistically the look of X-Men, it was very crisp.”…”It√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s no less a leap than it was for Bryan [Singer, previous X-director, now shooting Superman Returns]. With movies of this size, it√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s hard to wing it. He’s very confident, that’s what I like about him. ‘Yeah, I can do that!’
“Just when he had started,” continued Avi, by way of example, “we had some conversation about one of the characters and he says ‘I know how to introduce him’ and I said ‘let’s hear it’ and it was a really smart thing that’s going to be in the movie. It’s a love-fest.”
Well good words for Vaughn there, and I like what he said about the comparisons of Layer Cake, you can see some of the things that would have attracted them to him. Intrigued by the comments on the new character? Well there’s more:
“It won√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t be a female Angel. I don’t know where that came from…It just has to move forward. Obviously we have Wolverine, and Magneto, Professor X, Storm, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Rogue, all these characters, but then you need to freshen up the story and make it new.”
“It should never be this one story. The main characters are more important than Jean Grey,…This is a bigger story. Everybody’s expecting Dark Phoenix, but Dark Phoenix would never be the main show. She’ll be one of the characters, that’s it. There are a lot of stories to tell.”
He does suggest that the next movie needs to be big, but there’s nothing more that gives us other than:
…In movie three, it is probably philosophically the most interesting and provocative for all of us.
Well we’re still guessing like mad…
If the comments were pure sales and there was no news in there, think he would say that Dark Pheonix won’t really be featuring in it and really play it down to the point she sounds like a side character? Especially considering all the fan talk of her.
There is news there, you just have to read through the sales speak and get into it.
Does Avi think that Vaughn would be dumb enough to tell him if he didn’t think he could pull it off?
I’ve been wanting to say that earlier Franklin, now I am glad you did. *winks*
It’s best to simply disregard every quote attributed to Avi in an article about a Marvel comics movie — he’s a salesman all the way through, so over 90% of what he says is bullshit.
Thus, after you take out all his quotes, you find that there is no news here to report.
“Everybody’s expecting Dark Phoenix, but Dark Phoenix would never be the main show. She’ll be one of the characters, that’s it. There are a lot of stories to tell.”
I’ve got to say I didnt like that statement very much. I am already disappointed.
After seeing Layer Cake’s trailer sometime ago I have faith in Matthew Vaughn to direct X-Men well.
However Bryan Singer had a great script for X2 penned by Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris. Since they have moved with Singer to Superman the screenplay is being written by Simon Kinberg (xXx: State of the Union, Fantastic Four) and Zak Penn (Elecktra, Last Action Hero, PCU, Behind Enemy Lines, and Inspector Gadget).
You can stick as many great characters in there, but without the script to support them up the director can do only so much.
I also don’t like Avi saying “you need to freshen up the story and make it new.” Things like that usually end up very badly.