With Wolverine reappearing in cinemas, Logan director James Mangold takes a timely swipe at multiverses.
In what seems like a timely moment, director James Mangold has offered a criticism on the narrative mechanics of modern superhero films. Just as Deadpool & Wolverine hits cinemas, resurrecting a character that Mangold created a pitch-perfect ending for in 2017’s Logan, the filmmaker has criticised the use of shared universes and multiverses, dubbing them as ‘the death of storytelling.’
Speaking to Rolling Stone magazine (via The Hollywood Reporter) ahead of the launch of his latest film, the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, Mangold had this to say about the tendency of superhero films to revive past characters or use connective Easter eggs via multiverse or shared universe narratives: “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?’ 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.”
He iterates that he doesn’t do multiverses.
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While he doesn’t go as far as saying it, it must be difficult for an artist like James Mangold to construct an acclaimed concluding story for a character like Logan, only to see the same character pop back up in Deadpool & Wolverine a few years later, drawing potency away from the ending he created.
(We imagine that Mangold – like us – is aware that the version of Logan in the upcoming Deadpool sequel isn’t the same one that featured in Mangold’s film, but that only adds credence to the point that he’s making…)
Furthermore, he’s likely not alone in his assessment either. Since the arrival of the multiverse, Marvel has struggled to retain the same interest in its output, with plenty of fans feeling the same way.
Mangold does have a toe in that arena though, given that he’s committed to making a Star Wars movie for Lucasfilm. The franchise is one of those interconnected universes that Mangold isn’t keen on, but given that his story is set a long, long time before modern Star Wars continuity, we hope that the Lucasfilm brass won’t be sending him notes asking for references to other movies in the same franchise.
Given his comments above, they probably won’t have too much luck anyway.
