Parenting & Family Quote by Dennis Muren

You can hear the polite astonishment of a craft insider watching a studio gamble actually pay off. Dennis Muren isn’t praising Ang Lee just for competence; he’s praising him for being the wrong hire in the most productive way. “You don’t hire Ang Lee to do a typical children’s movie” is industry shorthand for: Lee brings adult-grade attention to psychology, rhythm, and image-making, and that sensibility is almost guaranteed to complicate the packaging. The line flatters Lee while quietly side-eyeing the safe, assembly-line instincts that usually drive “children’s” fare.

The real tell is the delight in mismatch: “getting Ang together with a comic book.” Muren is circling the cultural moment when prestige auteurs began treating pulp as serious cinema, and when comic-book material was still capable of feeling like a risk rather than an inevitability. Coming from Muren, a legendary visual-effects artist, the admiration has extra bite: he’s not marveling at spectacle alone, but at the creative chemistry between a director known for intimate emotional textures and a genre frequently dismissed as pre-sold fireworks.

The repetition of “But” gives the quote a conversational, slightly incredulous cadence, like someone still processing how unlikely the pairing seemed on paper. Subtextually, it’s a defense of ambitious hybrid filmmaking: kids’ stories and comic-book worlds don’t have to be flattened into formula; they can be elevated, stranger, more specific. “Whoever thought of” nods to the often-invisible role of producers and executives, but the real compliment is that the choice resisted the obvious.