Thunderbolts* Director Jake Schreier in Talks to Helm X-Men
Despite recent claims that Marvel was finally being steered in the right direction, a new report reveals that, as most expected, they have learned nothing. A Deadline exclusive says that Jake Schreier, who directed the currently playing (and failing) Marvel film Thunderbolts*, which was recently kinda sorta retitled, is in “early talks” to direct the MCU’s first X-Men film, which has been written by Michael Lesslie, who also wrote The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Deadline’s sources tell them that Schreir had a meeting with Marvel about X-Men that went very well, and not only is he currently their top choice to helm the movie but he had expressed is love for the X-Men when he was hired to direct Thunderbolts*, and it was understood that he would be allowed to audition for the X-Men director’s chair. While the X-Men gig isn’t a done deal yet, Schreier has apparently been turning down offers in anticipation of directing the next theatrical adventure of Marvel’s Merry Mutants, so he seems to think he at least has a good chance. Thunderbolts* is currently doing poorly in theaters, having opened very near the bottom of the MCU box office list, and is likely to be the latest bomb for the beleaguered studio, which cannot seem to learn from its mistakes. But you know what they say:
I’m in that place where not a single word of this story should surprise me, but I’m still amazed at how determined Marvel is to set itself up for failure. After Avengers: Endgame, when the quality of the MCU’s productions dropped drastically for a number of reasons, Marvel kept giving the same people who made the unwatchable dreck nobody liked new, higher-profile – and more potentially damaging – jobs. Matt Shakman, who directed every episode of WandaVision (which, to be fair, was quite good until it decided that enslaving an entire town was okay as long as you let everyone go a few months later and were a woman) was given The Fantastic Four: First Steps; Michael Waldron of Loki (which ruined one of Marvel’s best characters) was promoted to write Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness; Jeff Loveness wrote the disastrous Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, after which he and Waldron took turns being handed Avengers: The Kang Dynasty (which is now Avengers: Doomsday and being written by Stephen McFeely, who co-wrote some of Marvel’s very best films); Destin Daniel Cretton, the director of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (which not only sucked but lost money), was first going to direct The Kang Dynasty, then was moved to Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which he is now locked to helm. This is ridiculous, and while the Deadline piece tries to equate this with Marvel giving Infinity War and Endgame (and now Doomsday and Secret Wars) to the Russo Brothers, there are two caveats to that: first, Marvel did this much less often in its first three phases, and second, the Russos got those Avengers films after directing very successful and beloved Captain America movies – one of which was essentially a low-key Avengers movie – and the previous Avengers director, Joss Whedon, left the studio. There’s a world of difference between rewarding success and finding a cheap in-house hack to save money in the wrong place.
What does Jake Schreier’s likely involvement mean for the X-Men movie? Nothing good; Thunderbolts*, for all its inexplicable praise, is a lousy movie, and if this is what Schreier is going to do to the X-Men, we’ll long for the days when they were in their own little world at Fox (which was a different studio at the time; things change, huh?). Among other things, he didn’t balance the characters well at all, with some of the team members entirely lost in the shuffle to the point where you wonder why they were included in the first place. And while there is one good fight scene, most of the action is bland, so I’m not going to set my heart on an epic confrontation with the Sentinels or a Wolverine/Sabretooth claws out showstopper. Finally, the pacing of Thunderbolts* is some of the worst I’ve ever seen, and I’m not being hyperbolic; almost two entire acts are spent in the same location, with the heroes spinning their wheels instead of moving the plot forward. On the other hand, he will have help from someone with real writing talent this time. Thunderbolts* was written by one of the writers of Black Widow and Thor: Ragnarok and a first-time movie scripter, with a writer from the show Bear brought in to polish the sceenplay, but Michael Lesslie, who wrote the X-Men script, also wrote The Little Drummer Girl, a fantastic miniseries based on a John le Carré novel (which made much better use of Florence Pugh’s talents than Thunderbolts* or Black Widow did). It’s possible that a better script will allow Schreier to make a good X-Men movie. But it’s more realistic to realize that Marvel will probably force its modern nonsense into the script, with Disney taking its turn as well, so it’ll be a homogenized mess, just like almost everything that’s come down the pipe in the last six years. Jake Schreier isn’t a good sign, but the truth is that even a good sign would likely be a mirage.
Let us know what you think of Jake Schreier directing the next X-Men movie in the comments!
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