CraveOnline: How is working for autonomous Marvel different from working under the studio collaborations? 

Zak Penn: Pretty much night and day. Marvel, everyone there has read every comic. They’re big fans of it. We’ve kind of moved past the normal fights that you have and just talk about what would make a cool movie. Here’s the thing though. Once you get into the process of making a movie, compromise is like your life. Everything is a compromise. Even if everyone has the best intentions setting out on a movie, you can make a total piece of sh*t. I’ve learned this the hard way. It is really damn hard to make a good movie. If you ever manage it, be proud of yourself. It’s so damn hard. Even though we all have the best intentions, it still might suck but it is at least a relief to not be fighting with people as much. We’re all kind of on the same page. 

CraveOnline: But you’ve also done basically original stories based on comic book mythologies, not adaptations of standalone stories. 

Zak Penn: Well, I actually think there’s two. There’s superhero movies which are often quite different than what generally get referred to under the umbrella of comic book movies. Some of the comic book movies, and I do think Bryan Singer deserves some of the credit for pushing whatever phase we’re in now where comic book movies are not only dominant, but where movies like Dark Knight are getting nominated for awards and the top directors are drawn to comic book material. Part of that is that Bryan Singer brought a very science fiction film orientation towards material. Instead of treating it the way my parents think of comic books, which is comic strips and that campy sensibility, I think a lot of the comic book movies getting lumped together are actually science fiction movies that just happen to be based on comic books. I think that’s an important distinction because that’s what we do well in Hollywood. We do a lot of things badly, but nobody else makes The Matrix like we make The Matrix. Nobody else makes The Fly. That’s what we’re actually good at. Dark Knight was 10 steps away from a snuff film. Sincerely, it’s kind of a torturous movie to watch. It’s completely violating the conventions of family entertainment. One of my pet peeves, and I’m not saying X-Men 3 doesn’t have its faults, but I remember reading this review saying, “It’s just another piece of mindless popcorn entertainment where there’s no stakes and it’s just a bunch of guys in tights running around fighting crime.” It’s crazy. It’s a movie who gets too much power and tries to murder everybody and then commits suicide. This is mindless popcorn entertainment? A kid even tries to cut his wings off. I’m not trying to say that to make the movie better. The movie should be judged on whether it succeeds or fails but I really think there’s a notion in people’s heads of what comic book means. They’re literally 25 years behind the discussion. That was settled 20 years ago when Frank Miller was having The Dark Knight kill people in the future. That conversation was done. That tome has expanded just in the way other media expanded. 

CraveOnline: What about the fans who say you’re not getting close enough to the original comic books? 

Zak Penn: To me one of the canards that’s kind of bullsh*t about the fanboy aspect of it and the faithfulness to the source material. That whole dialogue about how faithful you are to the source material is a con job. People who say they’re completely faithful to the source material, and you’ve seen them online talking about how faithful they are, including myself when I do it, that’s part of the marketing. We don’t want to piss off these people here. It’s not that there’s some sort of thing written in stone near the Hollywood sign that says, “If you find good source material, be faithful to it.” You try to make the best movie you can no matter how it gets you there, whatever story translates. Some material clearly translates better than others. This whole thing that fans get into a lather about, and I understand it, about who was faithful and who wasn’t, who went online and talked to us and who didn’t? What they don’t realize is if there weren’t a lot of them, nobody would give two sh*ts about what they think. It’s all about what opens the movie.

CraveOnline: If it’s so important though, why do the studios change anything? 

Zak Penn: Let me give you an example. Dark Phoenix is an excellent example. One of the first things I read that really hit me was the Dark Phoenix saga. I was like eight or nine when I read it and it just blew me away. In the comic book, she’s possessed by an endless fiery bird of death that has lived in the universe forever. I don't know why it didn’t bug me when I read it. It didn’t. There’s no way that that crazy fiery cosmic bird fits in the universe that Bryan Singer created in X-Men 1. What I keep trying to tell people when we’re working on it is forget about being faithful to the comic book. We just need to be faithful to the last movie. It’s enough of a struggle to fight the studio executives about not making stupid changes just from one movie to the next, much less from the comic book. I think that’s something people get all caught up in is how faithful is it, who’s doing what and why? I just think you know what? The movie doesn’t change the comic book. The comic book is still sitting there. You can still read it. It’s never going to be truly faithful. The only thing you should judge it by is you did a sh*tty job of it. That is definitely true. We blew Elektra. That blew chunks. It should’ve been an R-rated movie and it should’ve been done like Sin City.