Earlier this month the folks over at GQ magazine got the chance to sit down with comic book veteran Mark Millar and get his opinions on some of the more popular upcoming super-hero movies such as
Green Lantern, X-Men:First Class, The Amazing Spider-Man, & The Dark Knight Rises.
Millar is a name most of you should be familiar with as he is the man responsible for
Kick-Ass, Wanted, Wolverine: Enemy of the State, and Superman: Red Son
On Green Lantern:
"I'm excited. I've always felt Green Lantern was the untapped franchise. The power is a bit weird: to be able to think stuff up with your ring and giant green plasma versions of your thoughts appear. That's kind of tricky. But the interplanetary police force aspect is a pretty cool. It's like Star Wars with loads of aliens who are all superheroes. You can see the toys. This is DC's Iron Man, I think. The casting had to be perfect with a really charismatic, cocky lead to play Hal Jordan, who's a test pilot and a sort of irresponsible playboy. The first time I saw Ryan Reynolds was in Van Wilder: Party Liaison and I remember thinking there was something about this guy that I really liked. He was also in Blade: Trinity which was not a great movie but he's amazing in it. I genuinely think he can be Harrison Ford for our generation, with a bunch of franchises, the way Ford had. I think Green Lantern is going to be amazing."
The Amazing Spider-Man:
I hate any kind of change, so my first reaction was, "Oh no, they're rebooting the Spider-Man series." Then I saw the pictures and immediately thought, "this is brilliant." If you look at the talent involved: Garfield's amazing, Emma Stone's great, Rhys Ifans great as well and Mark Webb, the most interesting of the lot. I went to see (500) Days Of Summer thinking, "This is going to be s***" but I loved it. It'll be interesting to see what he brings to Spider-Man. If he can do action it'll be great because he's terrific at the character stuff.
On Tom Hardy As Bane:
"It's great. In the comics Bane's just a muscle man. I think he'll bring something to it. He's a proper actor and Nolan's a great writer. They'll flesh it out and make it interesting. Hardy's the hottest new actor around, everyone wants to get him in their film. He's one of the guys I wanted for Nemesis. But now he's been in a Batman film I don't know how likely that would be. Nolan never puts a foot wrong. The Dark Knight was being filmed next door at the same time as Wanted in Chicago. I shamed myself on that set. I remember walking over and having a grown-up chat with Nolan: "My film's just over there". I was acting professional and pretending I was on the same level and then I saw Batman's Bat-Pod. There was nobody around, it was Sunday morning, 9 o'clock. I thought, "I'm never going to get to do this again." So I sat on Batman's Bat-Pod. It's huge. Then Emma Thomas, Nolan's wife, who I'd just been talking to, walked round and saw me. She said, "What are you doing?" I said, "I don't know." I felt about ten. She said, "Can you just get off that please?"
On X-Men: First Class:
"Matthew Vaughan hates flying so he literally wanted to be able to get a taxi in the morning from his house in London to the set. So they filmed it all in the UK and did a couple of weeks in America for exterior shots. It is the most gruelling shoot I could imagine because Fox needed to have it out this summer. He knew that going in, it's not a surprise, but it's been quite hard work for him. Kick-Ass was so relaxed because it was all made with independent money, there was no studio and it was a bunch of guys who all knew each other really well. Matthew worked with these guys on everything back through to Lock, Stock. It sounds amazing though - really great. He's really happy with it - he says it's going to be unlike anything anybody's ever seen X-Men-wise. I'm hoping to get a wee advance look at it…"