Frank Grillo played Crossbones, one of the more memorable Marvel movie antagonists who vexed Captain America before being unceremoniously killed off in Captain America: Civil War. These days, he has a beefier role as Rick Flagg, Sr. in the DCU. The character has appeared in Superman, Peacemaker, and even Creature Commandos.
Recently, Grillo offered surprising insight into why Marvel is failing: major MCU directors the Russo Brothers tended to start shooting movies when the script was incomplete, something that DCU guru James Gunn never does.
In an interview with The Morning After Pod, Frank Grillo said that “the Russo Brothers are, in my eyes, more comfortable directing on scripts that are not totally complete.” He contrasted this directly with James Gunn, who makes sure “all the scripts are done in advance.” The result of this is that “you don’t really need to fudge with it at all.”
In the interview, Grillo made it clear that he wasn’t slamming the Russos. In fact, he went out of his way to point out that their method of shooting movies from incomplete scripts was “not uncommon” in Hollywood. However, given that the MCU has been declining and that other Marvel directors take their creative cues from the Russos, it’s hard not to imagine a causal connection between Marvel shooting movies whose scripts aren’t finished and those movies subsequently becoming critical and/or commercial failures.
The Difference Between Improvisation And Movie By Committee
At this point, some old-school Marvel fans probably want to remind me that the first Iron Man had many great lines improvised by Robert Downey Jr., including the famous final line, “I am Iron Man.” If it’s possible to create a nearly perfect Marvel movie with the star going off-script whenever he comes up with a great line, then what’s so wrong with the Russos or any other MCU directors shooting a movie with an unfinished script? But that leads to one of Grillo’s other main points: that modern Marvel movies are largely made by committee.
When comparing the Russos to James Gunn, Grillo said, “It’s not like James has a committee that he needs to answer to. It’s him and Peter Safran, whereas the Russo brothers have a whole bunch of people.”
In my opinion, that’s why Iron Man was so successful: back before Disney acquired Marvel, it was easy enough for Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. to hammer out a great movie (improvised lines and all). They didn’t have to answer to the kinds of out-of-touch committees that now must greenlight everything about the MCU.
Tony Stark: “I am Iron Man.”
In other words, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has too many cooks in the kitchen, and it’s impossible for any singular vision (assuming someone even has a great vision in the first place) to prevail over all the competing voices. The DCU, as Grillo noted, just has James Gunn and Peter Safran working collaboratively to create something special. That doesn’t mean that everything they create will be perfect, of course, but it will have a more cohesive vision than anything coming out of Marvel, which hasn’t had any directors with a singular vision until (ironically enough) James Gunn left.
Maybe the success of Superman will be a wake-up call for Marvel, but right now, they seem to be putting all their eggs in one basket by hoping that Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars will reenergize pubic interest enough for everyone to stick around for their soon-to-be-rebooted universe. But what will that matter if Marvel just repeats the same mistakes that made a reboot necessary in the first place? Unless Kevin Feige and the rest of the Marvel gurus can cut the committee and go back to trusting creative directors to take big swings, the DCU is going to be the Kryptonite that finally kills the MCU.