If you’re a comic book movie fan, then you know who Josh Trank is. Five years ago, he was very publicly and dramatically undermined as director of Fox’s Fantastic Four when Fox ordered major reshoots. There were reports and rumors he’d had erratic behavior on set. Just before the movie’s release, Trank publicly tweeted his displeasure with the finished product, telling fans that the revised theatrical version was wildly different than the one he’d intended – and not better. The movie went on to bomb at the box office. Shortly thereafter, Trank walked away from a Star Wars gig in development.
At the time, Trank was openly and vocally bitter about how Fantastic Four turned out. And he was also prone to taking shots at Marvel movies and the comic book movie genre in general. An understandable human reaction, there’s nonetheless a reason you rarely see veteran directors speaking publicly about projects that fell apart or bad blood, let alone a young guy who isn’t as established in the industry as he thinks he is. Sure, part of that is NDAs, but it’s also a bad look.
So he did what few young men crashing and burning after being handed unearned early success do: He actually went away.
For five years, to be exact. But now he’s back with his personal project, Capone, starring Tom Hardy as Al Capone in the waning years of his life. As is expected of a filmmaker with an upcoming release, Trank has been making the rounds through press, giving interviews. Naturally, with this being his first film in five years, plenty of the questions he’s being asked revolve around the debacle of Fantastic Four, walking away from Star Wars, and how that very public fall from grace changed him. To his credit: He’s grown up. Very much so.
Speaking to THR, Trank looked back on his perceived hatred of comic book movies and admitted it was never the movies that were the problem – it was him and his perception of them, colored by his own bad experience. As he’s grown up and made his peace with the mistakes in his past, however, he finds he can enjoy them for what they are. “Now, I’m able to enjoy them,” he said. “I definitely felt bitter right when Fantastic Four came out, and it was a bitterness towards that genre. I felt very bitter, and I felt outcasted from a group of cool filmmakers that are making those movies in a successful way.”
Again, it’s an extremely human and understandable reaction, but he’s since realized that the bitterness he felt wasn’t really because other filmmakers were making good films he perceived as bad, but because he knew in his heart they were making good films and he wasn’t yet on their level. “I probably felt bitter toward people who I have enormous respect for like James Gunn, who was miraculously able to make Guardians of the Galaxy both a massive four-quadrant crowd-pleaser but at the same time, a very personal, auteuristic, idiosyncratic and crazy film,” he admitted. “I just felt bitter towards all of that.”
And then, the epiphany that came to him during his time away: The reason James Gunn and others were so good at making those movies was that those were the movies they were meant to make. He wasn’t, at least, not back then with such little experience under his belt:
“At the same time, I started to realize that those movies are what James Gunn is destined to make. That’s his home; that’s his world, and he owns that. I have so much respect for it, and people like James Gunn have taken a genre that is otherwise very much easily produced in the hands of non-filmmakers to successful levels… He’s taken that genre and shown us that with the right, capable, confident mind that it can be turned into something that is unpredictable, interesting and so cinematic on every level. I also think Peyton Reed is incredible. Ant-Man is fun, wild, crazy and undeniably well made on every level. I just started to realize that what I was trying to do as this young filmmaker who hadn’t earned the right yet after making only one movie… It’s something that I can easily say now, but back then, I wouldn’t be able to comprehend this thought. I hadn’t earned the right as a filmmaker yet to say that I could change the game with superhero films…What I tried to do with Fantastic Four was so arrogant for somebody who hadn’t really gotten the handle of his own skill set as a filmmaker to do that kind of stuff with it.”
He then went on to explain that just because people thought Chronicle was a superhero movie and that meant he could handle doing a big tentpole superhero movie doesn’t mean he was ready. To him, he explained, that movie was more an emotional teenage drama with heightened fantastical and sci-fi elements – not the same as a huge studio tentpole. And he can now admit that the work of other filmmakers in the comic book movie realm is work that he deeply appreciates now, a level he wouldn’t have been able to reach back then:
“[W]hen I take a look back, I’m able to, as a film man, remove myself and enjoy the works of James Gunn and Zack Snyder… Zack Snyder is a visual genius and clearly he has a very passionate fan base, so it’s not like it’s not spoken of enough, but I think he’s incredible. These are filmmakers who I just am really inspired by, such as Ryan Coogler and what he did with Black Panther. I can definitely watch those movies now, enjoy them and be separated from them…Why I bring up James Gunn as an example of somebody I find to be very inspiring while he’s doing things that are totally different than where I’m going is that I aspire to someday end up in a place where I’ve found my own type of James Gunn home like he found and now has.”
Whether or not Trank will return to the superhero realm or even once again be interested in doing tentpoles remains to be seen. In the meantime, his movie Capone, a film that Rian Johnson described as “batshit bonkers,” hits VOD on May 12th.
