Tim Miller Weighs in on the State of Superhero Movies

What's up everyone, welcome back for a brand new edition of Collider Dailies. You know me and Steve, you're not here for us, you're here because yesterday we teased a Collider Dailies first. We are very honored to have our very first guest on the show, and have that guest be Tim Miller. Hello, welcome to Collider Dailies and thank you so much for doing this with us. I am honored to be here, but I do have a question. Why is my head giant and yours is not? Is that a planned thing? Is it to make me feel important before the interview starts? Can I just say that that's how it's supposed to work if that's how you want it to work? Our mastermind Adam behind the scenes will be manipulating everything so it looks perfect in the finished product here. So my head will be shrunk down to the size that's commensurate with yours? Unless that hurts your ego, then we won't do it. I got ego to spare, no worries. All right, so according to Steve, free reign here. We got a whole bunch of questions we want to ask you, so should we just start our Hurl in the Mirror way? Yeah, let the deluge of questions that I won't completely answer begin. I feel like you can answer the first one. I have the honors of giving you the first question, and it's something I love asking pretty much any filmmaker in this industry. What is one of your favorite movies of 2023, and can you also name something about that movie that gives you hope for the future of this industry in filmmaking? It has to be 2023. Yeah, we should open it up a little more because Tim is what we call hard to please. Yes. A recent movie. Okay, I'll say Dune because it is, I think it embodied what the cinematic experience could be. And I'll be honest, I watched it on TV in the theater and in the theater four times. It's just such a different experience to watch it in the theater, and it's such a beautiful movie that you can only appreciate it to the fullest extent on a giant screen. So that's been my favorite movie for a while now. This is a rock solid choice right there. Yeah, I think the audience needs to realize, and I said it already, but Tim, would you say that most movies you have a tough time with? I would, but I feel the need to qualify because there are movies, and I'm not going to name them because it'll be shitty, where I really love story and I love spectacle, but I love story more. So when I go to the movie, I expect that the story will be a fulfilling, well thought out version of whatever story is meant to be told. Sometimes that's not the case, but that doesn't mean that the movie doesn't have merit. And so there are movies that are more spectacle driven than they are story driven, and it's hard to appreciate the spectacle the first time around. The second time, I'm not waiting for the story to show up, and so I can completely enjoy it. I have a question for you. You obviously helmed Deadpool, and that was a juggernaut, amazing, nothing but positive things to say. But the last few years, the comic book movie genre, superhero genre, has shown signs of slowing down, and I think there's a sense of audience fatigue. So do you think that the comic book movie has reached its peak and it's on its way down, or do you still think there's a lot of life left in the genre? I think there's tons of life left in the genre, because as a comic book fan, as you are, Steve, you know that superhero movies, or superhero comics, are only kind of the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot of other stories to be told, just like there's all kinds of movies. Men and Women in Tights are not the only kinds of comic books to be made, The Goon being the most obvious one I'm associated with, right? So I believe that there's so many different types of stories, and I still get my monthly poll, I still get a box of comics, and half of them are superhero stuff, and the others are different kinds of stories, from science fiction to period pieces to horror, and so I think that there's tons of room, if you say comic books. If you say superhero movies, I do think that there's a limit to how much people can enjoy. That said, I don't know that we've reached that limit, because there's so many good stories to tell, and so many different kinds. You know, The Authority is my favorite comic of all time. There hasn't been a version of that made, I'm sure Warner Brothers is working on it, but it's so adult and so violent. The Boys probably comes pretty close on television, but it hasn't been done on a feature yet. I'll build on my first question to you, do you have a favorite recent superhero movie? And also, why does that movie stand out from the large majority we get now? I'm not going to say recent, I'm going to say, because it's been for a long time, Winter Soldier is my favorite comic book. It was just done so well, and the movie's engaging, and it feels like the real world, but it also feels like a comic book. So I love that. But I love them for different reasons, you know, Taika Waititi's Thor, the first one, was so cool for a variety of different reasons that Winter Soldier didn't have. So that's what I mean by I think there's a lot of room to maneuver inside that. And I feel like, you know, there's a lot of superhero content coming out now, it's not just the movies anymore, there are these big Marvel productions that feel like the same production quality as a movie, the same epic scope as the movies often have. So there's just a lot more content out there. I'm going to sneak in one follow up question, Steve. Do you have any horror comic recommendations? You know, I'm not as big on horror because it scares me. I don't quite understand people why they enjoy being frightened. You're frightened in the safety of a theater. That's the only place you could go through stuff like that and be safe and sound and enjoy the entertainment value of it. But you still feel it. I mean, I watched When a Stranger Calls when I was young and it fucked me up for my entire life. I mean, I'm still uncomfortable and alone at home at night. I mean, honestly, I will. It's hard to admit, but, you know, I've barricaded the bedroom door on more than one occasion. But I would stick with ones that have kind of a different layer that I am familiar with, like Aliens or Alien, the first one, which is really a horror film mixed with a sci-fi film. And that one scared the living fuck out of me. So I like the Alien comic books are great. You do the exact opposite of me. You barricade the door. I purposely crack the door open, like just waiting for a bathroom light to randomly turn on paranormal activity style. No. I had when I was a kid, my parents built a house and each kid got one thing in their bedroom. This is going to sound like such a little suburban rich boy thing, but I got I asked for a fire pole in my room. So I had a fire pole that went from my bedroom down to the kitchen, which was great when I was a kid. But I'm doing an interview. So and but then my parents left us alone a lot. So I would I would barricade the fire pole and I would even put a sword. I had a cavalry saber and I put a sword leaning against it. So if anybody opened the fire pole, the sword would fall on them. And I forgot to dismantle that one morning and almost killed my father because he would shake the pole to call me down to breakfast in the morning. You need to make a horror movie and work this into it. It just goes inside. This is going to be the last. Anyway, this is the last superhero thing. What do you hope actually Marvel and DC do in the coming years as a comic book fan? What would you like to see them do to? That's it. What would you like to see them do? I think it's time to expand to the full breadth of. Hold on a second. I'm doing an interview here, so could you fuck off? Thank you. As a producer of Best Circle, ladies and gentlemen, the the I would like to see them expand to other genres, even even if you're a Marvel fan, there's there's horror in the Marvel universe. There's other types of. Tropes and, you know, Deadpool was the the version where I mean, it was the reason behind it. And I'm I'm hoping that and I'm sure it will that they just keep expanding the rationale that 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 and Deadpool's got lucky and and opened up that genre. So then then you could do it in other films. You could have a film like The Joker because suddenly everybody realized that you could have an R-rated movie. I have the next question and I'm going to. Sorry, I needed to get my voice together. You know, I'm a big fan of Love, Death and Robots for anyone who hasn't seen it. It's on Netflix, which leads me to my question. If someone has actually never seen Love, Death and Robots looking at you, Perry, what is the episode that they should start with and why? The well, so much of that depends on who you are, right? Generally speaking, I think I get a lot of people go fuck that episode with the fighting pit creatures, which is Sonny's Edge directed by Dave Wilson. That was kind of the most memorable one from the first season. We actually did some some analysis about, you know, which ones to lead, which stories to lead off with, because I really thought that the order was very important going into the season. And and in season one, I directed what is probably the most banal of the short stories, which is which is Ice Age. I mean, it's it's it's a live action with, you know, there's a prehistoric civilization in the freezer. It's Topher Grace and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. And it's funny and it's clever and it's cute, but it's not. There's not violent. There's no sex in it. There's no anything like that. And and because it's live action, I think there's a lot of people that would watch it just for that reason that might be afraid of animation. So it was a very, you know, it was an enticing first hit that that made you want to come back for more crack, hopefully. So it depends it depends on who you are. I mean, the show is geared towards people that want to see Sonny's Edge or or The Witness or Hibaro or Bad Traveling, these really challenging things. But but we also tried very hard to if if you don't like this one, you will like this one. And if this one's not for you, then maybe try this one instead. And they're short enough so that if you if you find yourself watching one you don't like, you know, the experience is not going to be forever. And the next one, you might might be your favorite story. So I really like the fact that they're all different. The thought of someone being afraid of animation hurts my heart a little. I get what I get why you say that. There are some I mean, some people just go, I just don't like animation, you know, and especially if the vast majority of animation is for kids or is dancing animals. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's hugely popular. And I spent many a happy hour with my daughter watching those movies. So it's not about that. But that but that tends to be the Western view of animation. I'm happy to say that's changing. I definitely I definitely feel like it's been changing. I'm curious. You've done three seasons. Has Netflix ever really told you how the show does? Or is it sort of like, well, you've gotten to make three seasons. I guess it must be doing at least OK. Um, I think most people, most people that make shows with Netflix would say the experience is somewhere in between, you know, a little bit about how it's doing. But I would always I like data. I like to know these things because I feel like there's patterns to be seen in how people watch things and how many people watch them and when they watch them and what's around them. And you don't have a whole lot of control about that. Like, for instance, the last season, Stranger Things came out a week after we did. It's hard for me to believe that the same people that watch Stranger Things don't watch Love, Death and Robots. And it's hard for me to believe that the minute Stranger Things comes out, they don't go. They don't go and gobble the whole season. But those are the kind of data points that I would love. I would love to know. Can I ask you what's what's the status of Moore? No. OK, I accept. I appreciate the blunt answer. Here's here's another potential future season tease or really like anything that excites you in the future. Is there any up and coming director out there that, you know, you're just really excited about, whether it's someone you might want to loop into the Love, Death and Robots family or just see where their career goes from here? Um, this is going to sound so shitty and selfish, but I would never tell you because if an agent if an agent watched your show and that guy or girl was not represented, they're going to eat my agents all the time. They go, Tim, who's who's the up and come? I'm like, dude, I'm not going to tell you because you're going to fucking sign him. And then it's going to be hard for me to hire him. So I will not I will not tell you. But but I do I do love what's happening in the world with I mean, it began, honestly, it began when when Blur began. But the democratization of technology and the fact that, you know, anybody can buy 3D software that's super cheap and a super cheap computer. Not anybody. OK, a lot of people. It's within reach now. And they can create really amazing pieces. And I'm constantly getting the studios full of artists and they're constantly passing around. Did you see this fucking thing? Or look at this thing that somebody did over here. Or these two people in their bedroom did this little this amazing little short. I think that's great. It was just so hard to do back in the old days because I'm old. You just needed a lot of you just needed a lot of time and support to to do that kind of thing. And I'm so glad that more people get the opportunity to play with sort of high end toys. I've seen some unreal shorts that are just fucking amazing. I know you don't like horror, but I'm going to highly recommend VHS 85. I feel like the VHS films are always like the perfect opportunity to discover up and coming filmmakers making incredible things with limited resources. Is it is that the is it is it a a site on the web? I haven't it's on. They're on shutter. All the VHS movies are on shutter. I'll check it out. And they're good. There's some like dust, you know, that you see consistently you see new stuff come in. And you know, that's kind of what I hope that Love, Death and Robots can be. It's not supposed to be just a venue for Fincher and me or I don't that sounds arrogant. It's not supposed to just be for established directors. We have a lot of younger directors in the mix. And I'm really proud of that. Jennifer, you Nelson, who decides or who is the supervising director? There's a director I love. She's, she's, she's so great at mentoring some of the younger directors, because the thing about the show is everything has to feel like it's at a level. And and so but you have directors come in with different levels of skill in different areas like I, I'm my weaknesses, music. So I have an editor who's great with music who can help me. I have a lot of weaknesses to be honest. I have a lot of weaknesses to be to be honest, but but we try and sort of plug those holes. And Jennifer does such a great job of mentoring, whereas I get frustrated. Why can't they just make it awesome? But she helps them and it's and it's a really it's a really great process. Perry, do you want to take the next one or is it me? That we can move to the next one after what you wanted to ask. I will say one, if you haven't seen Astartes by this guy named Shama, he's a New Zealand artist. He did a series of Warhammer movies called Astartes. It was like, amazing. I'm gonna look that up. You obviously run Blur Studios and I'm curious what is going on over there that you're excited about? Well, the big one, I can't tell you, but yeah, the you know, we continue to do a lot of work in the game industry, which we all love. We do the high end story driven cinematics for games. And so and we have for 25 years now. So we're pretty tight with the whole game community. And I'll just say that we're, that relationship is continuing and we're expanding on that relationship. I think Love, Death and Robots is another great opportunity for us to, it was our beginning of the move into controlling our own artistic destiny a little bit more. And we certainly want to do more of that. It's hard if you're just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring to have a consistent creative community. And especially in Los Angeles, it's the cost of living, the way the world works with tax incentives. It's really hard to run a studio here. And so you, the more we can control what we're doing and the why of it, the better. Both from that business perspective, but also creatively. Otherwise, every filmmaker experiences the process of going around hat in hand. It was really interesting. Steve did a thing for Pac Rim the other night and Guillermo was there. And one of the biggest filmmakers of our generation and Guillermo's like, well, for every film I make, there's five I pitch and don't make. There's, I've made 12 movies and I've done 38 scripts. Right. So there is always this process of, which honestly can be kind of exhausting to make one film I've got or to make one project I've got six in development or eight in development. And then one of them gets traction for some reason. That is usually not because I'm an awesome filmmaker. It's usually because a movie star is interested or something else happens that pushes it forward. What about the state of the industry? What was that, Steve? I said, there's a cat meowing by me. Oh, no. Like your natural state, Steve, literally always. And I'm kind of jealous of it. What about the state of CG in the industry and maybe specifically how the pandemic impacted it? Have you seen that sector of the business change at all? Yeah, and I have. I mean, I was essentially, this is blur, you can't see much of it, but it's a big 25,000 square foot warehouse space right across the street from the new Amazon building. And it used to be bustling with 120 artists. And we're not requiring people to come back to work because people don't want that. I personally miss that. Maybe we have, I don't know, maybe 15 or 20 people in here right now. We're going to get a smaller space because why be in this large space when your lease is up? Which means I have to give away, see all my comic books back there on the floor? I'm going to have to give some of them away because we're moving to a smaller studio. Don't worry, I can come by. I can come by. You want to come by, Steve? You should come by. Tell me if you have any specific ones from, let's say, late 70s to early 90s. You do not have to worry. I will be coming by. Okay. Do not worry. I'm going to get some kind of raffle system for, not the money-based thing, but for the artists and the art books too, you know? Anyway. Don't worry, I'm coming by. I, here's where I feel the biggest problem is, is if you've been in the industry for, you know, 7, 12, 10, 15 years, you're fine working at home. You know the deal. You know what you need to know about working on larger projects with groups of people because animation is a team sport, just like other filmmaking. But all of us sort of learn by being around it. And the camaraderie that you get from burning on a project late at night, or the knowledge you get from walking past someone's desk and seeing a new technique that they're using that you didn't know, or just shooting the shit in the kitchen and learning about people and how they work is just so valuable. And if I was a young person coming into the industry and what I had to look forward to was working in my bedroom for the next 20 years, I don't know that I would want to stick around for it. I get choked up thinking about it. That when I started out, things like Seagraph that just showed me that there was this amazing community of artists out there that I could be a part of. And it's great. And invariably, we've lost some of that with the pandemic. And I hope it comes back. But at the moment, I don't know if it will. And I think studios that are forcing their artists to come back, it's a different problem. So I don't know. I'm hoping to entice them back. Do you think it's also, can I do a follow up? Do you think it's also a result of, have you noticed any of the artists that were working at Blur have moved to places that were much cheaper to live and are just doing their work like in Iowa or some other place that's not LA because of the cost of living? Oh, absolutely. And I think that right, I don't want to start controversy because of that. But I think it's tricky when you think, when you're in New York and you're an animator and you're paid for the cost of living in New York and you move to Idaho, I don't know how long the industry will say you should get paid as much as you got paid in New York. Or things would just naturally even out. We're in that period of time where you don't really know. There's other studio owner I was talking to that was in a country in Europe that had a fairly low cost of living. And they almost cornered the market on really great artists that wanted to be in the industry. And they treated them well. In fact, their facility was nicer than Blur. They had a masseuse and a band room. But those artists can now go and work remotely in the London facility and get paid three times as much. And it's harder to keep the artists there. Because they can, it used to be that if you want to stay home close to your family and where you grew up, this is what you had to do. And it's hard to say that artists having options is a bad thing. So I'm not saying that. But I do think that this way of working loses a lot of what I thought was the best part of the industry, which is the community. To put a positive spin on what it looks like going forward before Steve takes us home here, is there any particular emerging filmmaking tool or technique that really excites you? Like a new thing that you and the team are so psyched to get your hands on? Well, it's been coming for a long time. But real-time technology that was developed for games has been making its way into the film world for quite a while now. We're a little late to the party. But I really feel like that's going to ultimately be a game changer. And you know, we talk a lot about, everybody's talking about AI and what it means to the industry. And I am alternately terrified and elated. But where I land on most of it is, there's still a lot of stories that I would love to tell that are prohibitively expensive to tell, even in animation, even with all the advances that we've already made in these techniques. You can't tell them, at least not at the level of quality that I'm interested in. And so there's whole areas of the science fiction and fantasy universe that are kind of off limits because of those restrictions. And I don't feel like they're going to be restrictions for much longer. Every year erodes what you can't do even further. But I feel like the real-time technology just takes so much of the cost and expense out of the hardware side of the equation and puts it on the people, which is where you want it to be. I want to spend money on artists, not CPUs. So anyway, I feel that people go, well, soon what we do will be, so much of it will be done by AI. I don't necessarily think that's true, but even if it erodes some of the things that they do, my answer is, well, let's just get more ambitious about what we're doing. There's stories that if you want to tell a story in the middle of a fantasy city that's full of strange creatures, that's fucking expensive, right? But you can do that with real-time technology. Games has showed us that you can do that. Now, as soon as you can do it to the level of fidelity, which I think is there already, really, it's going to open up new stories and new pathways for sure. I like the sound of that. So I'm curious, what can you say about what you are working on now? Well, Best Served Cold is the one that's out there that you know of. So that's the one I'm most excited about. And that's the movie that I hope to be making very soon. You've talked to Rebecca about it. When I mentioned Dune, I mean, fuck, she was so amazing in that movie. And I think she's amazing in everything she does. And she's a wonderful person as I get to know her more. But that's the thing that's next on the agenda, is Best Served Cold. And this is not something directors kind of attach to things and detach. But I've been working on this for a long time. Probably 12 years now, at least. Not this particular one, but working with Joe. We tried to do the first law as a series. And then we switched to, I said, what if we did a trilogy of films? And I'll cross shoot him and it'll fucking kill me. But it'll be great. And we can release three movies back to back. Why wouldn't you want to spend $300 million on that? Come on. And then we landed with Best Served Cold as a really great introduction to the world of the first law. And there's 10 books. And if you haven't read them, I highly recommend the Audible books, because the gentleman that reads them, Stephen Pacey, is amazing. He's also the narrator in The Drowned Giant, the love, death, and robot story. I did it in season three. So anyway, that's the one I'm looking forward to next. It's a great world. And Joe's, it's Kill Bill meets Game of Thrones is my quick pitch. And Joe's style of writing, it's not, it's called grimdark, but it really has a lot of sense of humor and humanity to it. That's, that makes it sort of different from most of what you've seen before. Always here for an audio book recommendation, sold. We'll start with the Blade itself. It's the first one. I've listened to the, to all 11 of those books. I shit you not. 11, 12 times through the whole series. Yeah, it's a little, it's a little pathetic. You're saying you're a fan. I'm a huge fan. And of Joe Abercrombie, you know, he's, he's a friend. He's the greatest guy to work with. And Joe wrote the script and he's involved in, in everything. Talk to him every day. But there's so many, I could give you, we could do a whole other episode on book lists, which I send out. I don't read. I also very rarely read things. I'm always on the hunt for good audio books. Like I love a good narrator or a good production value in an audio book. So give me all those, I'll take them. Well, just off the top of my head, just if you, Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth, amazing. I've been on a huge Adrian Tchaikovsky tear, Children of Time and all those books. I literally lost a year. I can't believe how fast he writes them. I can't like as fast as I read and I read a lot. I can't, I can't even get close to getting through the amount of books he's written. John Scalzi, anything John writes is great. Old Man's Award is a good place to start. Neil Stevenson, boy, it takes a commitment to get some of Neil's books. But his last one, Terminal Shock was amazing. And Snow Crash. Oh, Snow Crash is so good. Yeah. Well, you know what? If you like Snow Crash, you'll really like the last one, Terminal. Okay. Yeah. On the list it goes. This is going to be the last question today. Okay. So it obviously came out that you worked on the Borderlands reshoots. And I'm just curious, what can you say about what you did? And what can you say about the film? You know, it was an interesting experience to come in and do reshoots on a movie that's not yours. And it is both, it's a freeing experience where you feel like I'm just here to help wherever I can. But my main reason, other than, you know, I have a huge affection for the video game industry, and I want to see every video game adaption succeed is, you know, I'll be honest, I wanted to work with Cate Blanchett. And I wanted to work with Kevin and Jamie Lee Curtis. And Ariana Greenblatt, the young lady who plays Tiny Tina, is amazing, which everybody knows from the Barbie movie. So it was just a great experience all around. And I was feeling a little rusty. So I was happy to get back in the saddle. And the movie gets up and moves, you know. It's a good ride. I like hearing it. I won't say, I won't ask any further questions on that. I will just say, I do appreciate you coming on today and giving us a little bit of an update on things. It is an honor to be here. Yes, I'll reiterate that. Hopefully I didn't say anything that will get me in trouble. No, we'll do some bleeps. I'm joking around. We're not going to do any bleeps. I think you could make up a panel of your average internet listeners and see if anything is memeable. Because you always see the headline taken out of context. Like our last one, Steve, it was Tim Miller says the Terminator universe is dead, or something like that. From our Comic-Con one. Oh, I mean, listen, you can make up, I've learned, that you can basically take anything that anyone has said and create a headline that just gets people to click when it's not an actual honest article. Yeah, I wish there was less of that. We do as well, believe me, we really do. But yeah, listen, I'm just going to say, thank you sincerely for being our first guest. And let me know when I should come by Blur and pick up comic books. Okay, well, it's the least I can do for all the free movies you've allowed me to come see in IMAX. Tim, again, thank you so much for being here. And the door is always wide open for a return to Collider Dailies whenever you feel like it in the future. To everybody out there watching this episode, thank you so much. And stay tuned, brand new Collider Dailies coming your way bright and early tomorrow.