We should be writing more great roles for women, period. Another problem is that movies are generally made for 14-year-old boys, and 14-year-old boys want to watch 25-year-old action heroes.

You see the assets of your actors and you see their strengths and you try to play into them. It's like I feel part of my job is as a coach. I'm putting a team on the field and you want to formulate how to make the best game out of these players.

There's a level where the themes of a film are very relevant to me and also the idea of finding out how relevant one genre is to another. I think that westerns and samurai films and superhero films have a lot in common. It's just that the scale of the visuals in tentpole films can sometimes overwhelm the drama.

There's a level of immersion that is perfect and there's a level that, for my taste, starts to actually exceed what the screen can provide. At that point, you're kind of overexceeding yourself.

I'm a huge comic book collector. When I was a kid, I had both Marvel and DC. I was my own librarian. I made card files. I had origin stories of all the characters, and cross-referenced when they appeared in other comic books. I was full on.

Movies aren't just supposed to be a representation of reality. They're supposed to be an art.

If you respect the events and respect the real life tragedy, you can drive your film to address it in some mature way.