Art & Creativity Quote by Matthew Vaughn

Vaughn’s line cuts through a decade of fan discourse with a producer’s blunt pragmatism: fidelity isn’t a virtue, it’s a strategy, and it has a cost. By setting up a binary - ignore the comic book and make a great movie, or stay very close to it - he’s really talking about risk management. Studios want the pre-sold brand heat of comics, but movies live or die on pacing, character economy, and tonal coherence. The “great movie” clause is the tell: he’s not dismissing comics so much as admitting that what reads as mythic on a page can become cluttered, inert, or unintentionally silly in live action if translated too literally.

The subtext is also a quiet jab at the false comfort of “faithful adaptations.” Being “close” can function as camouflage: if it flops, blame the audience or the source; if it hits, credit the IP. Vaughn suggests a harsher truth: a film has to earn its own authority. That authority can come from radical reinvention (his own work on Kick-Ass and X-Men: First Class is basically a case study in selective betrayal) or from disciplined reverence that understands what to keep, not what to copy.

Context matters: Vaughn’s career sits in the rise of the modern superhero-industrial complex, where fan expectations are instantly measurable and instantly weaponized online. His binary is less a theory of art than a warning label: pick a lane, because half-faithful, half-original usually reads as fear.