Longtime comic book scribe Mark Millar is the architect of the X-Movies over at 20th Century Fox, and I’ve already told you what he said about the X-Force rumors from my sit-down with him. Here is the rest of the story, where we talk about his upcoming film Kick-Ass 2 and its chances in a summer of “blows to his soul” as far as complete cinematic disappointments, as well as the unintended benefit of the Jim Carrey controversy. Also, seeing as how I came directly from Marvel’s Ultimate Comics panel that heavily implied that the Ultimate Universe would be coming to an end, I had to ask one of the originators of the whole line for his two cents. Check out what he had to say below.
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CRAVE ONLINE: I have to ask – is it ‘Miller’ or ‘Mill-AR’?
Mark Millar: You know, back home, it’s “Miller,” but Americans say “Mill-AR,” which sounds so much more sophisticated. I actually kinda like it. I’m trying to get that to catch on back home.
CRAVE ONLINE: Then I’ll keep saying it that way. Now, the first Kick-Ass film was a scrappy underdog sort of movie, and now with a sequel coming, it has notoriety, but not an overwhelming “Franchise” sort of presence. Does it still have that feisty, hungry feel to it?
Millar: Yeah, I think so. If you think about it, every movie that’s been out this summer has cost between 150 and 200 million dollars with a gigantic marketing marketing campaign behind them and a current, major movie star in them – at least one, probably two. We’re coming from a totally different place. Ours is a punky kind of redheaded stepchild of all these superhero movies, but that’s exactly where I’m most comfortable. I like that.
I think this summer has been a really disappointing summer. Every single movie that’s come out every week, I’ve really been desperate to see. Six months ago, when I heard each of these was happening, I was like ‘I cannot wait for that!’ I’ve never had such a succession of blows to my soul as this summer (laughs). Iron Man 3 was the last one I enjoyed. I loved Iron Man 3, and I was like ‘yes, this will set us up for a great summer and I’m really looking forward to it.’ I was looking at the list and I was like ‘we’ve got something awesome every week! This is going to be amazing!’ I was actually saying to my girlfriend ‘we’ve got a record-breaking year, cinemas are going to do amazing.” And one by one, every one’s been a complete disaster. I mean, the movie I enjoyed most this summer was probably Behind the Candelabra. How did that happen? When there’s a Superman movie out, the Liberace movie shouldn’t be your favorite film that summer. It was the same with everything. I remember, just like everyone else, going to the cinema and looking at each other, walking out kind of sad.
CRAVE ONLINE: Exactly. Superman should NOT be a depressing film.
Millar: Oh my God, you know? Every one of these films, in their own way, I felt a little bit let down by. We’re coming from quite a nice place, because our original plan was to come out in the early part of summer. We were trying to get finished to come out for April, but there was just no way it was happening. A version that was as precise as we wanted it to be just couldn’t quite get done from then – and we had to stay away from the middle of summer, we’d get pounded by $200 million monsters, you know? But in a way, I think it’s quite good, because as all the giants lumber and fall over, we’re like the little scrappy guy at the end who hopefully cleans up, you know? It’s kind of like Ted – the marketing is exactly like Ted. Universal has been really smart. They’ve kept all the money back, all the PR – they gave MTV a trailer a few months back, everybody loved it as a little taster. Jim Carrey comes out and does his thing, and awareness is suddenly huge, which is great! (laughs)
CRAVE ONLINE: Almost like that was planned.
Millar: Really, my friends were congratulating me and saying ‘well done!’ This was never planned. Then, at the end of summer, they’re throwing a shitload of cash and just drowning everything out for four weeks, so it feels like a big movie. I’ve seen the movie so many times now, and I’m the harshest judge, but actually, it was great. It was really, really good. So for a film to feel like a good night out after a summer of things not working out, I think we could be in a really nice place. I think the anticipation for Kick-Ass 3, the final one – that’s going to be the last one, I don’t want to do any more after that – it could be huge for that, because I think people are going to love this one. The first one was a cult hit, we just made our money back. $100 million on a $20 million launch, but there’s also PR and all that. Made its money on DVD, a nice profit on DVD, but this one, I think is going to explode. The tracking is really high among men and women, which is interesting. The first one, women didn’t want to know it, and they all discovered it on DVD and now they know it. It’s really interesting. The tracking for the States is huge, which I’m really surprised at. I didn’t think it was as big as it is. I think it’s going to hit big. What’s nice is we’ll get to do a third one. It’s almost impossible not to do a third one, because these are so cheap, these movies.
CRAVE ONLINE: So how far are you along on Kick-Ass 3?
Millar: I’ve just finished it, actually, and it’s kind of weird. It’s like the last episode of M*A*S*H*. It just feels like that, because you’re saying goodbye to these things that have been part of your life. I mean, Kick-Ass is based on me. It’s part of my secret autobiography, because at that age, that’s exactly me. I wanted to be a superhero, I had a costume, I made a plan. My friend and I were going to do it when I was 15. Our plan was to be the Batman and Robin in Scotland, where there’s no crime. Imagine a shitty comic of that, you know? It was always in the back of my mind. I thought ‘what if I had done it?’ I realized I probably wouldn’t be a very good fighter, and I’d probably get my ass kicked the first night out, and get stabbed. That’s what I wrote into the first issue. He goes up and tries to start a fight and just gets stabbed, and that’s what would happen. The story wrote itself from there.
CRAVE ONLINE: You’ve said recently that the books you write are very hardcore, and you have to soften them up for movies.
Millar: Yeah, they have to get a little softer. Even just a ten percent shave off the top.
CRAVE ONLINE: The amount of violence you employ – take The Secret Service, where there are 50 couples on the beach getting married, and then they get mind controlled into murdering each other on the spot –
Millar: That’s in the movie. Yeah. Matthew [Vaughn] loves all that shit.
CRAVE ONLINE: That was so disturbing, I had to put the book down and take a break. What is it about the old ultraviolence that draws you like that?
Millar: It’s just so interesting, you know? I think the job of the writer is to make you turn the page and want to see something new. I think you owe it to your readers, especially when books are so expensive at $2.99, to show them something they haven’t seen before. Violence is visually very interesting. Sex is very interesting, and chat isn’t. Just two people sitting around a table can be amazing in a film – the opening scene of Reservoir Dogs is a great scene – but as a comic, that would suck, because you’ve only got 22 pages and you have to make it so visually arresting, whereas the minute you see someone nailed to a wall, there’s something visually interesting happening. One of my favorite comics is a thing called Marshal Law that Pat Mills did with Kevin O’Neill, and the opening scene in one of the issues is a guy who looks like Superman sitting on a toilet shooting up heroin, and I’ll never forget it. Even 25 years on, it still stays in my head. I loved it when I saw it. I think that’s your job as a comic guy. You have to give somebody a visual and a few words that they’ve never seen before – somebody described it as ‘headlines written by poets,’ and I think that’s a brilliant description of comic writing, because you have to employ a minimum of words but make it really cool.
CRAVE ONLINE: At the Marvel Ultimates panel I just came from, it sounds a lot like they’re about to end the Ultimate Universe.
Millar: I haven’t heard that, no. It’s been a couple of years since I worked at Marvel.
CRAVE ONLINE: Sure, but since you were instrumental in starting it with Ultimate X-Men and all, I wondered what your take on that is.
Millar: I think it’s probably a good idea, because they’ve Ultized the Marvel Universe so much anyway – Nick Fury’s a black guy now, the Avengers are a militaristic superteam and everything. I think it feels like the Ultimate Universe, so the Ultimate line almost has no reason for existing. The whole idea was, back in the 1990s, a lot of these stories were very, very complex and hard for non-comic readers – even me, I’ve been reading comics since I was 5, and I was really struggling with some Marvel stuff because it was so referential to other Marvel books. So the idea was to start everything on the ground floor again, and it’s been done. People now have an access point for that, so mission accomplished.
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