I think it's very admirable, in a superhero movie, to be able to take a few risks.

It sometimes is better to write in a more directed, focused way when the pages are aimed at something already, a mission statement or a basic spine that represents the theme or the concept that you've agreed on, and writing partners are great for that because you can sit there until you get it.

For years I was doing the excruciating weightlifting of writing scripts - but then I stayed thin and someone else got all the muscles.

It really started after The Long Kiss Goodnight sold for just a sinful amount of money. People were angry that I took the money. People offer you $4 million for a script - what are you going to say? "No, I'd rather sell it for $100,000"? But it engendered so much anger, I lost friends over it. And no one talked about the creative content of anything I did any more. They all just assumed I was this guy with a formula, a hack formula.

An action film can have too much action; picture an equaliser on a stereo, with all the knobs pegged at 10. It becomes a cacophony and is, ultimately, quite boring.

I do think the challenge, in a way for me, is to write a narrative film and when you finish watching it you feel like it's a collage. You tell the narrative, you tell the story, but you feel like you've created this tapestry. But it also has a shape, a story. So I think there's a middle ground that I try to strike... away from where everyone else seems ready to go, which is, setup, payoff. You know, He's afraid of water, oh, and at the end he's swimming in water - oh, my God. I hate that stuff.

The worst of the action films are the ones where everything is one shout from beginning to finish. And there's no differentiation between beats, like small or big, or quiet or expansive. It's all just one loud shout.