MARVEL: Feige Rightfully Laughs Off The Clickbait You’ve Read About James Cameron

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Over the weekend, a story gained traction on the net that was really a nothing burger. During a recent interview, director James Cameron made a cheeky comment about how he’d like to see the current superhero movie boom subside to make way for a greater variety of blockbusters. In doing so, he mentioned that he’s a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but added that we could use a break from the constant barrage of comic book tales about super-powered dudes trying to save demolished cities.

Here are his exact words:

“I’m hoping we’ll start getting Avenger fatigue here pretty soon. Not that I don’t love the movies. It’s just, come on guys, there are other stories to tell besides hyper-gonadal males without families doing death-defying things for two hours and wrecking cities in the process. It’s like, oy!”

A perfectly innocuous comment, with playfully cheeky wording about males and their gonads, right? Well, to see how this quote was covered, you’d think Cameron actually stood at a podium and said “The Avengers suck. All comic book movies are lame. It’s time to get over it, people!” The amount of pure click-bait that made the rounds with incendiary headlines about this harmless comment was stupefying.

It’s almost like reporters nowadays have no sense of history! It’s like they’ve all forgotten that James Cameron once wrote a treatment for a Spider-Man movie long before Marvel Studios was even a thing! And it would’ve starred Leonardo DiCaprio.

That’s right. People forget that in the mid-90s, long before the X-Men and the Sam Raimi Spidey trilogy made superhero films cool again at the turn of the century, Cameron tried very hard to get a Spider-Man movie made but couldn’t because Marvel wasn’t able to get the logistics in place for various reasons.

So Cameron is a geek, through and through, and he loves superheroes.

But, still, the rising tide of nonsensical hate-mongering by other sites led someone from Vulture to ask Marvel honcho Kevin Feige if he had a response to Cameron’s apparent “dig.” Feige’s response?

“Uh, he loves the movies! [Feige stands tall and pumps his fist in the air] That’s awesome! Wow, James Cameron loves our movies! That’s exciting!“

As you can see, Feige thankfully didn’t take the bait. Sure, he could’ve “fired back” in some passive aggressive way, but he knows that this whole thing is a nothing burger, so he chose to playfully focus on the part that means the most to him: One of the most successful directors of all time publicly stated that he loves the Marvel movies.

That’s actually quite a feather to have in your cap if you’re a producer.

Something similar happened last year when Steven Spielberg made comments that some decided to view as “slamming” comic book movies, and yet here we are with recent news that he’s developing a Blackhawks movie for DC!

It’s a shame that negative headlines have to be made to generate clicks, because it’s creating an awful lot of resentment amongst new age fans towards old school, legendary filmmakers who simply want to see the blockbuster landscape broaden some more.

Sorry to burst your hate bubble, folks!

SOURCE: IndieWire / Vulture