Bryan Singer’s X-Men and X2: X-Men United were pretty damn good comic book films perhaps even setting the foundation for the popularity of superhero films today. Sure, he might have mucked it up a little bit with X-Men: Apocalypse but what he did with those and also Days of Future Past were highly commendable. He managed to introduce a ton of beloved comic book characters to the big screen wonderfully with the likes of Professor Xavier, Magneto and of course, Wolverine. One would assume he had a great deal of respect for the comics while making those films but it seems that he felt that those comics didn’t really have a place on a film set at the time.
In an interview with MTV News‘ Josh Horowitz, Hugh Jackman who played Wolverine (duh…) revealed that director Singer banned comic books while filming X-Men. He discussed the reasoning for Singer’s thoughts on the matter revealing that he “really wanted to take comic book characters seriously, as real three-dimensional characters,” but felt that “people who don’t understand these comics might think they’re two-dimensional.”.
Singer’s view on the matter is understandable as comics were at the time not something the “popular kids” were into. In terms of literature and art, comics weren’t low-brow by any means but there weren’t exactly held in high regard by the general public as something along the likes of Hemingway or Fitzgerald. Things have changed since then and we can attribute that to much of the popularity of comic book films such as Singer’s X-Men films, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films and of course Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy.
Say whatever you want about Singer’s initial views on comic books on set but he sure as hell made a huge impact providing some great films. If it wasn’t for his work on X-Men, we may not have gotten our beloved Wolverine or even the slew of comic books films today including the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Source: MTV News
