Director And Curmudgeon Terry Gilliam Really Hates Superhero Movies
By Chris Evangelista/June 6, 2018 4:00 pm EST
If, for some reason, you were hoping Terry Gilliam might helm a superhero movie one day…don’t hold your breath. During an interview with CineNando (via IndieWire), Gilliam was asked how his new film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote fits into a modern movie landscape that seems to be populated with nothing but comic book movies. To which Gilliam replied:
Tell us what you really think, Mr. Gilliam.
“I hate superheroes. It’s bullshit. Come on, grow up! We’re not going to be teenagers for the rest of our lives. It’s great to dream of great powers. Superheroes are all about power. That’s what I don’t like about superheroes. They’ve gotta beat the other powerful superheroes. Come on, a bit of peace, love, and understanding is what we need.”
I know people, superhero movie fans especially, are going to have a knee-jerk reaction to this. But I think we can chalk this one up to a case of Gilliam being Gilliam. The man has his own interests when it comes to film, and clearly superhero movies are not among them. That’s fine.
Elsewhere in the interview, Gilliam attempted to clear-up some of his comments on the #MeToo movement. When asked about the movement in the past, Gilliam described it as “silly” and said, “There is no intelligence anymore and people seem to be frightened to say what they really think. Now I am told even by my wife to keep my head a bit low. It’s like when mob rule takes over, the mob is out there they are carrying their torches and they are going to burn down Frankenstein’s castle.”
In this new interview, Gilliam struck a slightly less dismissive note, saying (via The Playlist):
“I’m kind of naïve because I just thought the world was available to everybody. And equality is very important…All that’s happening is all part of the process of bringing everybody up to, ‘Okay, the doors are open to everybody.’ Now it’s your choice to go through those doors or not. And some of those doors are very difficult to get through. But I think the world now is you can do what you want but you have to believe in what you want and you gotta work at it.”
You can watch Gilliam’s full interview below.
