Yawn...

When in the hands of a great director a comic book franchise can transcend it’s genre. Look no further than Christopher Nolan’s classic The Dark Knight for proof of such. Unfortunately, most of the time these properties don’t turn out the way fans hoped they would. The later X-Men films are good example of rushed productions, bad scripts, and studio interference. While Brett Ratner’s X-Men 3 was bad, the schlockiness really came to a head with the laughable X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The movie may be regarded as completely terrible by most sentient beings, but general love of the character Wolverine was enough to put butts in the seats. The film made $373,062,864 million worldwide, a sequel was greenlit, and the search for director to helm it has begun.

What major Hollywood filmmaker would want the stigma of directing the sequel to a terrible film? The answers might surprise you. How but David Slade of Hard Candy, and Twlight: Eclipse fame? Better yet is Hugh Jackman’s pick, prestige director Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, The Wrestler). Slade being the studio’s choice seems logical given his ability to handle action and recent success taking over a franchisee with Eclipse. While Aronofsky’s career seems to be moving in the complete opposite direction with the upcoming Black Swan.

I have no doubt that both of these directors could create an awesome comic book film, maybe even turning the Wolverine franchise around if the script was good. Slade’s 30 Days of Night was great and lets not forget that Aronofsky was once attached to the Robocop reboot and the pre-Nolan film, Batman: Year One. It’s not that Wolverine is beneath the filmmakers, but I’d rather see them given the opportunity to create their own franchise from the ground up.

Darren Aronofsky and David Slade.

My issue with both of these or any other established director taking control of Wolverine is simple. It’s a prefect job for an up and coming filmmaker to prove himself as a blockbuster director. The first film may have been bad, but the character is iconic and the source material is solid. Imagine if the studio took a chance on the likes Jonathan Levine (The Wackness), or Duncan Jones (Moon), or even Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow). Each has a unique style and more importantly has done much with lower budget pictures. Plus, their motivation might be higher given the stakes. How interesting does the prospect of Jackman suiting up again seem now?

Of course this type of filmmaker still can turn out a crappy blockbuster. X-Men Origins: Wolverine‘s director Gaven Hood (Tsotsi) was extremely talented and look how that turned out. While I feel much of that could be blamed on Fox it’s still Hood’s name on the credits. Of course none of this changes the fact that Wolverine may just be in need of a long shelving, or I hate to use the R word, but here it is: Reboot….

…Nah, I’m still behind Jackman. He seems to still have what it takes, and I’d hate to see him go out on such a downer. Hopefully, Slade and Aronofsky have the foresight to realize that Wolverine comes with too much bad mojo and will go on to create something original. As for Fox, hopefully they will follow the Sony example and hire someone like new Spider-Man director Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer). One things for sure, nothing can be as bad as X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Can it?