In a recent interview, Mangold was asked if Joaquin Phoenix would appear in his new film to play Johnny Cash, a man who was alive during the events of Mangold’s new film.
Mangold replied “I don’t do multiverses. But beyond that Johnny Cash was like, 30.”
“I love Joaquin, but he’s not 30, or whatever Johnny was at that moment. They’re both young people in that moment in life. It’s weird that I’ve even worked in the world of IP entertainment because I don’t like multi-movie universe-building. I think it’s the enemy of storytelling. The death of storytelling. It’s more interesting to people the way the Legos connect than the way the story works in front of us. For me, the goal becomes, always, ‘what is unique about this film, and these characters?’ Not making you think about some other movie or some Easter egg or something else, which is all an intellectual act, not an emotional act. You want the movie to work on an emotional level.”
So I have a lot to say about this.
I don’t disagree with everything, but I think he makes a lot of bizarre arguments.
First of all, he’s conflating “multiverse” with “shared universe” and those are two very different things.
Stakes are very important to me in any story, and one of the most important stakes in fiction is death. If death is impermanent, then it completely screws with the stakes and disrupts our ability to care. And the Multiverse is very dangerous in this regard, because it allows you to “replace” a character who has died - which not only creates an “assembly line” vibe, but it makes death impermanent.
So I do agree that the multiverse, when used irresponsibly, can be detrimental to the stakes of a story.
However, a shared universe is different. A shared universe is simply multiple stories in the same continuity. Whether or not death is impermanent is completely contingent on the stories themselves.
Any book or movie series that has more than one chapter is a shared universe.
Harry Potter is a shared universe (and it was before Fantastic Beasts).
Heck, the Godfather is a shared universe. Are you really going to tell me the decision to make Godfather Part II is the death of storytelling?
Mangold is attacking the emphasis on the universe rather than the individual parts, but there’s nothing wrong with the concept of a shared universe in my book. Lumping those things together and calling it the death of storytelling is a bit unfair. If anything, it’s another level of storytelling because you have to be aware of multiple stories at once. Does that not require more creativity?
Captain America: Civil War has to be a compelling meaningful story on its own while organically introducing Black Panther Spider-Man, and Baron Zemo, while paying off the search for Bucky, while giving Agent Carter’s death the respect it deserves, while continuing the arcs of Cap, Falcon, Scott, Wanda, Vision, Tony, Clint, Rhodey, and Black Widow — while having lasting stakes. Does that not make for a creative challenge? At least in so far as writing is concerned, does that not require more thought and imagination than, say…copy-pasting the story from a book someone wrote about a musician? No disrespect to simple stories, but can we acknowledge the talent required to make a complicated story like Civil War work?
Second of all, Mangold is creating a false dichotomy.
He’s declaring you can either only care about how the pieces fit together or only care about the pieces.
This is also nonsense. Every Marvel fan cares about both. We come for the universe and the references — but we stay for the individual quality.
It’s the reason why movies like Iron Man, The Avengers, Guardians, Civil War, and Ragnarok rise above others. If we cared about connections more than individual quality, we would all love Thor: The Dark World more than Iron Man. Iron Man has no Infinity Stones in it and yet it’s more beloved.
I support being invested in the thing itself. The bigger picture shouldn’t distract from that.
But then again, the part of it that’s the “bigger picture” is all arbitrary, isn’t its it? Mangold speaks of a film as though it is a single thing, but what about all of the scenes that make up a film? When you’re setting up a scene, you’re not only focused on how that scene can be emotional and effective. You’re also focused on making sure that scene is consistent with the rest of the movie, whether it’s the lighting being consistent with another scene, or the set looking like a location, or a character throwing a baseball with the correct hand, etc.
When you make a movie, the movie itself becomes a shared universe for all of your scenes.
And what about TV? I’ve never heard anyone criticize TV for making people care about the next thing or the bigger picture. Are you really going to tell me that Lost didn't care about making viewers form emotional connections with the characters?
Also using the term “legos” feels a bit condescending.
Third of all, acknowledging shared universes as “intellectual” also rubs me the wrong way. I would have thought his argument would be that caring about shared universes makes you shallow or superficial. I assumed he would use a negative character trait. Instead, he calls it intellectual, as if to imply that being intellectual itself is a bad thing.
Fourth of all, making something fit into a universe or a continuity — it’s not just about trivial easter eggs or fun references. It’s also about consistency.
You can argue that watching a movie only for easter eggs is less meaningful than watching it for the character arcs (and of course you can do both).
But consistency itself is a fundamental element of writing that separates quality writing from hack writing.
Contradicting is bad writing. I’m sorry, it just is. Not only is it lazy, but it’s detrimental to the story. It creates confusion and breaks people’s immersion — it’s far more than just an intellectual thing - it can affect your emotional investment.
Going “easter egg hunting” and “not condoning contradictions” are two very different things.
But the irony is, James Mangold understands all of this, because he exercises the same mindset in his interview.
Because consistency applies to more than just fiction. It applies to real world history as well, like, say, a biopic about a musician.
Mangold’s first objection to putting Johnny Cash in his movie wasn’t the “cinematic universe bad” argument but rather he cited a contradiction to the source material. Mangold said that Phoenix was the wrong age to play Johnny Cash at the point in time his movie takes place. In other words, he said “Phoenix’s age would contradict the lore.” Those weren’t his words but that’s basically what he said. So it seems a little lacking of self awareness on his part to criticize people for caring about a bigger picture when his objection to including Phoenix in his movie was because the latter’s age contradicted the bigger picture.
But anyway, what do you guys think of Mangold’s comments?