Logan director James Mangold has described Marvel‘s multi-movie universe building as “the death of storytelling”.
“I don’t do multiverses,” said the director in a new interview with Rolling Stone, after being asked if Joaquin Phoenix’s version of Johnny Cash would appear in his upcoming Bob Dylan movie A Complete Unknown.
Mangold directed Phoenix to an Oscar nomination as Cash in 2005’s Walk the Line. His upcoming Bob Dylan biopic stars Timothée Chalamet as the folk icon. Some hoped that Phoenix would make an appearance as Cash in the new film, but the director was always against the idea of a crossover and cast Indiana Jones 5 star Boyd Holbrook instead.
“It’s weird that I’ve even worked in the world of IP entertainment because I don’t like multi-movie universe-building,” Mangold added. “It’s the enemy of storytelling. The death of storytelling. It’s more interesting to people the way the Legos connect than the way the story works in front of us.”
“For me, the goal becomes, always, ‘What is unique about this film, and these characters?’” he continued. “Not making you think about some other movie or some Easter egg or something else, which is all an intellectual act, not an emotional act. You want the movie to work on an emotional level.”
Mangold’s comments came ahead of the release of Deadpool & Wolverine, which sees Logan star Hugh Jackman once again step into the role of the adamantium-augmented X-Men character.
In a three-star review of the film, NME wrote: “Despite the A-list distractions (no spoilers here), Deadpool & Wolverine is really all about Reynolds and Jackman. In fact, it’s really all about Reynolds – with Jackman doing a heroic job of playing the surly straight man trying to keep up with Reynolds’ sweary killer clown. The first two Deadpool films were funny and violent and original, but this one shows Marvel’s most gloriously inappropriate superhero at his very best and worst.
“Where does the MCU go from here? With an endless loop of multiverse MacGuffins to fall back on, it can probably keep going as if none of this has happened. But if the superhero era really is finally starting to wind down, Deadpool & Wolverine will always be remembered as the film that started dancing on the grave first – to a Madonna song…”