Five Movies Whose Directors Deserve Marvel Movies

Picking a director for an upcoming movie based on their past work doesn’t always pan out. Bryan Singer, for example, totally failed to bring the sense of energy and “cool” that he invigorated the first two X-Men films with to Superman Returns, while Brett Ratner dropped the ball around the same time and almost killed the X-Men film franchise before Singer could ever get back to it.But the other side of that is the Joss Whedon of it all—the idea that sometimes you CAN look at somebody’s body of work and say, “You know what? This guy. This guy right here.” It clearly worked out, both creatively and financially, on Marvel’s The Avengers, and we got to thinking recently: Who are some filmmakers who don’t obviously stick out as superhero candidates, but whose resume has one or more projects that seems to point them in the direction of a big-budget, big-effects tentpole film?Shane Black reportedly got the job directing Iron Man 3 on the strength of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and, whatever people might think, that’s not the kind of job that you can luck into by being friends with Robert Downey, Jr. That property is way too valuable for Marvel/Disney to screw around with, especially after Iron Man 2 left such a bad taste in many audience members’ mouths.And while Black has yet to prove himself to a mass audience, the people at Marvel seem to be incredibly high on Black and on the footage they’re seeing. What other films could inspire such confidence?