'Deadpool' Director Tim Miller Knows How to Fix Marvel

While Marvel Studios is still the king of the box office and remains a dominant force in popular culture, the last couple of years have shown chinks in the studio’s impenetrable armor.

Photo: Empire

The underperformance of films like Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania and the critical reaction to Secret Invasion have led many to pontificate that the era of superheroes dominating media is ending and superhero fatigue has set in.

How Tim Miller Would Fix Marvel

While many reasons for Marvel’s recent troubles have been suggested, the original Deadpool director believes that he knows what Marvel should do next.

“I would like to see them expand to other genres. Even if you’re a Marvel fan, there’s horror in the Marvel Universe, there’s other types of tropes. Deadpool was the reason behind it, and I’m hoping—and I’m sure it will—that they just keep expanding the rationale,” Miller explained.

Tim Miller

“The brilliant thing that Fox discovered that allowed me to make the Deadpool movie was we can make R-rated superhero movies, and nobody else is doing that and nobody else really thought they could do that, and Deadpool got lucky and opened up that genre. So then you could do it in other films; you could have a film like Joker because suddenly everybody realized that you could have an R-rated movie.”

The Proof is in the Pudding

The wisdom in Miller’s observation seems evident in Marvel’s recent successes. While films that have trotted familiar ground like Quantumania or Thor: Love and Thunder have received mixed reactions, more outside-the-box projects like Vampire By Night, WandaVision, or Loki have been massive successes.