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§ So X-Men: Days of Future Past lived up to predictions and crushed at the box office, making $111 over the holiday weekend, making it the fifth largest Memorial day opening, and surging to $302 million worldwide. (I should note that the $111 was below this optimistic Variety report’s $120 mil. Does that make it a “disappointment”?) I saw the film on Saturday and loved it. Quicksilver turned out to be the COOLEST thing in the movie (Although he still looks like a 90s raver, not a 70s disco boy.) And we now sit here and boggle at the reality that there have now been SEVEN X-men movies. And they don’t all fit together, as this spoiler-filled post from io9 lays out. As in, some much loved X-men were killed int his continuity, but given all the tangled threads of this franchise, I’m sure someone can find a way to bring them back, or age them appropriately.

§ Edgar Wright’s departure from Ant-Man made for some frowny faces. Latino Review quickly tracked down reasons for the departure: a new script by “low level writers” that was not satisfactory to Wright and collaborator Joe Cornish.

The script came in this week and was completely undone. Poorer, homogenized, and not Edgar’s vision. Edgar met with Marvel on Friday to formally exit and the announcement went out directly after.

Edgar & Joe were upset by the sudden, out of nowhere lack of faith in them as filmmakers. Fiege had always batted for them but this felt like it came from the higher ups.

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Wright’s fellow auteurs showed their support as best they could. James Gunn, director of Guardians of the Galaxy, wh [posted the above Instagram in happier days with Wright and Stan Lee, had a wise and even handed analogy on Facebook:

Sometimes you have friends in a relationship. You love each of them dearly as individuals and think they’re amazing people. When they talk to you about their troubles, you do everything you can to support them, to keep them together, because if you love them both so much doesn’t it make sense they should love each other? But little by little you realize, at heart, they aren’t meant to be together – not because there’s anything wrong with either of them, but they just don’t have personalities that mesh in a comfortable way. They don’t make each other happy. Although it’s sad to see them split, when they do, you’re surprisingly relieved, and excited to see where their lives take them next.

It’s easy to try to make one party “right” and another party “wrong” when a breakup happens, but it often isn’t that simple. Or perhaps it’s even more simple than that – not everyone belongs in a relationship together. It doesn’t mean they’re not wonderful people.

And that’s true of both Edgar Wright and Marvel. One of them isn’t a person, but I think you get what I mean.


Joss Whedon Tweeted a show of respect for Wright with this image of him holding a Cornetto, the Brit ice cream snack treat that is a running gag in the Wright/Cornish film universe.

Wright himself had previously tweeted a picture of Buster Keaton with a Cornetto, but later removed it.

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This could have been a reference to Keaton always looking sad, or a reference to Keaton’s statement that joining MGM was the worst mistake of his career. Either way, Wright should move on, although giving up an idea he had for 8 years is a bit of a kick in the bollocks as the Brits might say. As this story from two years ago reminds us, Marvel Studios hasn’t always had a great time with directors, as Patty Jenkins also left Thor 2 before production.

Nonetheless the show must go on! A new director of Ant-Man is reportedly already set.

§ FINALLY as part of the Friday news dump, it was reported that Drew Goddard was leaving the Daredevil direct-to-Netflix TV show. Stephen S. Knight, who created the Spartacus TV show, has stepped right in. No reason given but maybe it was Goddard busy schedule what with directing the Sinister Six movie for Sony. And out of all this, the news that there is still going to be a Sinister Six movie may be the most alarming.

1 COMMENT

  1. I hate to think that this is another herald to Marvel’s movies aspiring to be nothing more than entertaining fluff. I mean, the Avengers was great fun but the X-flicks, even The Last Stand, try to be about something more.

    Mike

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