Director Chris Mckay Speaks At Length About Nightwing Movie

by Joseph Marcas
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Justice League is just a couple of months away from its worldwide debut while Aquaman is wrapping up production and ready to move into post-production for release next year. Flying under the radar is the upcoming Nightwing movie that will be featuring former Batman sidekick, Dick Grayson/Robin, all grown up and fighting crime all on his own.

Director Chris McKay, who’s most recent works include The Lego Batman Movie and the upcoming Lego Ninjago Movie, was being interviewed by Collider’s Christina Radish when he really shared a lot about his approach to the film, what he thinks about the character, and what fans can expect from the final product.

The first thing the McKay talked about was what he thought about Nightwing as a character. One thing that fans will appreciate about McKay is that he’s not just a director who signed on for a pay check, but rather someone who grew up with the character that understands him really well. He says:

“I’m a big comic book fan, and being able to do the story of Nightwing, to do a Dick Grayson story, which is a character that every single person in the world knows, but has never really had a lot of screentime. They make a billion Spider-Man movies and a lot of Batman movies, and they’ve tried The Hulk. When they were making the Tim Burton movies, they were always like, ‘Oh, maybe we’ll do Robin in this now. Maybe we’ll save Robin for Returns. Nope, we’ll save it for the next one.’ With Christopher Nolan, people were like, ‘Is he gonna do Robin?’ When they made Batman v Superman, they were talking about it. I’m a big fan of underdog stories, and he is one of the biggest underdog stories in comics. And he’s a character that I grew up with. I like the arc.”

McKay went on to discuss one of the aspects of Nightwing that really separates him from other comic book characters:

“You always thought Robin was the dork and were like, ‘I don’t want to be like Robin. I don’t want to play with Robin. I wanna play Batman.’ But Robin was there as a window character for little kids like me to understand Batman’s world and see into Batman’s world. There’s no other character in comics that went through this real-time transition. Every other character lives in a rough version of the age that they’re in. Very few characters actually grow up in the comics and become something else, and go from being a boy to being an adult, and have their own life and become their own thing.”

But what can fans expect from the movie itself? McKay talked about his aversion to using a lot of CGI, opting instead to rely on traditional live-action sequences when production begins:

“It’s gonna be a fucking badass action movie with a lot of heart and emotion. It’s gonna be a crazy, fun ride. Whoever gets cast as Nightwing, and any of the other actors around, are gonna go through a fucking boot camp experience because it’s gonna be a lot. I’m not gonna do a lot of CG. It’s gonna be all real shit. It’s gonna be real stuntwork, and they’re gonna need to do all of the stuff on camera and do it credibly. For the cast and the crew, it’s gonna be a visceral experience, and for the audience. It’s not gonna be like a lot of these movies where there’s a lot of CG and flying, and things like that. Everything he does is gonna have to be real. His superpower is being really fucking good, as a human being, at fighting and gymnastics and shit like that, so you’re gonna see that on screen. It’s gonna be fun!”

McKay has definitely given fans a lot to look forward to and at this point it would appear as though the character and the movie are in good hands.

 

 

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