Kevin Smith wouldn’t touch a Marvel or Star Wars project with a ten-foot pole.
Though the filmmaker himself is a fan of both franchises, Smith says their respective fanbases are too “rabid,” and he doesn’t want to walk on eggshells to avoid ruining diehard fan’s childhoods — a lesson he learned while working on Netflix’s He-Man reboot Masters of the Universe: Revelation.
“It’s a fool’s errand—you’re going to piss somebody off. Fandom is rabid and tribal,” Smith, 52, told The Guardian when asked if he’d consider directing a Marvel or Star Wars flick in the future.
“When I worked on Masters of the Universe, I took a lot of heat from people who felt like I had ruined their childhood. Going near a Marvel or a Star Wars would make me insanely reticent.”
Hesitancies aside, Smith says the market for directors for those films is already oversaturated.
“They’ve got a billion people to make those movies, but nobody’s making Kevin Smith movies,” he added.
Smith Defends Martin Scorsese’s Comic Movie Criticisms
Like Smith, many stars have grown tired of the comic book franchise questions: will you direct? Will you star? What do you think of the latest MCU or DC film? Among those is legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese, who has been openly critical of the hyper-popular Marvel franchise.
Scorsese went so far as to publish an op-ed in 2019 on his feelings about the comic book films, likening movies such as Captain America and Spider-Man to “amusement parks”—and Smith jumped to his defense.
“…In our very tribal culture, somebody like Martin Scorsese referring to comic book movies as amusement parks and theme park rides gets a bunch of people who have made comic book movies their lives for the last 10 years very unhappy,” the Jay and Silent Bob creator told Forbes, stressing that fans need to curb their expectations. “You’re asking a guy who made Goodfellas what he thinks about [Spider-Man], what do you think you’re going to get? He’s a very serious filmmaker, and he’s a man who’s of a certain age and stuck in his ways. You should not be surprised that’s his response.”
“For every old filmmaker who’s like, ‘I don’t get it,’ there’s a bunch of young filmmakers who are like, ‘I get it and I want to do it.’ We don’t have to ostracize the people that maybe don’t get or aren’t into the same movies we are,” he added.
