Christopher McQuarrie Weighs In On 'Man Of Steel 2', Turning Down 'Green Lantern'

What will Christopher McQuarrie do next? The Mission: Impossible – Fallout director has a lot of clout now, but two projects he won't be tackling are Man of Steel 2 and Green Lantern. Which is a shame, because he'd likely knock both out of the park. In a new interview, McQuarrie reveals that the chances of him directing Man of Steel 2 are unlikely, and that he actually already turned down a Green Lantern movie once before.

Will we ever see Man of Steel 2? Is Henry Cavill even playing Superman anymore? Everything seems to be up in the air at the moment. One name that frequently gets mentioned as a possible Man of Steel 2 director is Christopher McQuarrie, who just worked with Cavill on Mission: Impossible – Fallout. In a recent interview with Collider, McQuarrie acknowledged that "Many, many people have asked, many, many, many times," if he would direct Man of Steel 2, and that he "had an awesome conversation with Henry Cavill about an awesome version of Superman" while they were on the Fallout set.

And just what is that awesome version of Superman? Per McQuarrie, it's a more hopeful, optimistic Supes. In other words, the opposite of what we got in Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman. "There's a really, really beautiful version of that, and I honestly can't speak for the people who are responsible for making those decisions, except to say it's part of a giant corporate mechanism," McQuarrie says, adding: Part of my job, and what's made my being a director so much more easy in this business, was ultimately coming to terms with the fact that the people that I'm sitting across from have much bigger problems than I do...So I just sit quietly off to the side, and people say, 'Hey, would you make Superman?' And I just keep responding, 'Well, they know where to find me. They know where to call me,' but I don't expect the phone to ring. I don't expect that to happen."

I'd love to see McQuarrie tackle this material, and I'd even love if Cavill got a chance to get things right. For all of Justice League's problems, I found Cavill's brief performance there to be a highlight – he was starting to turn into the Superman we all know and love. And his fun work in Fallout confirms that the DCEU has been squandering his talents.

Oddly enough, Tom Cruise's name keeps coming up as a possible star of a potential Green Lantern reboot. McQuarrie well aware of this, telling Collider: "Every couple of months it's 'Tom Cruise is in Green Lantern, which means McQuarrie must be directing,' or 'McQuarrie is directing Green Lantern, which means Tom Cruise must be in it.'"

But that doesn't mean it's actually happening. In fact, it's not – at least, not with McQuarrie at the helm. The director says he "had a conversation with the previous regime about Green Lantern," and turned down a chance to direct a Green Lantern film because there was no script:

"On Green Lantern I was like, 'Here's how I would do Green Lantern,' and they were like, 'Ah, but you know,' and I said, 'Well, that's what I would do,' and they said, 'Well, will you direct it?' And I said, 'No, 'cause there's no script.' And they said, 'Well you write the script,' and I said, 'But I may not be the guy to direct,' like don't make it a McQuarrie movie, make it the greatest Green Lantern you can make it. We don't know what that is tonally. We don't know what any of that stuff is until we get under the hood, and I may be the worst guy in the world."

McQuarrie also says "I'm not a comic book guy. I'm a story guy...can we make a good movie out of it? I don't really have that kind of... that comic book fan, thing. Which, I think, and I'll get myself into trouble, I think that's one of the things that's kind of crippling those movies, is everybody's got these moments in a comic book that they want to see put into a movie. That's not always necessarily the most cinematic thing, or the movie has to jump through hoops to get it."

Here the filmmaker seems to be saying fan service is hurting certain properties – too often, filmmakers struggle to insert something fans recognize into their story, rather than let the story speak for itself. And he's right. If only more filmmakers would realize that.