A vote of confidence from an X-Men veteran
When a festival moderator asked directly whether Parsons deserved the chance to helm an X-Men installment, Janssen answered without hesitation. “Absolutely,” she said. The endorsement followed earlier praise she had offered for both Parsons and his co-creator Curry Barker. Janssen described the pair as two young men who built their audiences independently on YouTube, took their careers into their own hands, and produced movies that are, in her words, “incredibly creative and entertaining” for very little money. She noted that their work is “analog, they’re not AI driven or CGI heavy films.”
What struck Janssen most was the practical approach Parsons took in filming “Backrooms.” Rather than relying on digital effects, the filmmaker used real-life labyrinthine sets to create the disorienting environments that gave the work its unsettling feel. Janssen’s verdict on the finished film was direct: “Backrooms is like Stanley Kubrick on crack.”
Her support for Parsons and Barker is not merely personal praise. Janssen sees their success as carrying a wider significance for the film industry. “It just opened a door, not just for them, but for other people to say, ‘We don’t have to go with this old-fashioned system where we make a movie for $300 million,’” she said.
An industry questioning its own norms
Janssen’s remarks at the festival come at a moment when the entertainment business is increasingly debating the viability of massive production budgets and the dominance of digital effects. Parsons and Barker represent a new breed of creators who bypass traditional studio gatekeepers, building audiences through online video platforms before moving into feature filmmaking. Janssen’s own career trajectory lends weight to her observations about the industry’s changing economics.
A Dutch native, Janssen moved from the Netherlands to the United States in 1984 to begin a modeling career before transitioning into screen acting. She gained recognition through film and television work that included a James Bond picture in the mid-1990s and a long run as Jean Grey in the X-Men series starting at the turn of the century. Before her X-Men tenure, she had already appeared in a “Star Trek” television episode and declined a recurring role in the franchise to pursue movie parts. In 2008, she took on a United Nations goodwill role, showing activity beyond traditional acting. Her path from model to franchise actor to director gives her comments on emerging filmmakers a basis in hands-on industry experience.
On the question of her own potential return to the X-Men franchise, Janssen was open but non-committal. The conversation at the festival did not revisit a prior comment she had made about Marvel.
A different future for the franchise
What this means for fans of the X-Men universe is still unclear. But Janssen’s endorsement of Parsons — a director who built an audience from scratch, shot a film on practical sets, and proved that a $300 million budget is not necessary to create something that resonates — suggests she sees a different future for the franchise. One that starts with a young filmmaker and a labyrinth, not a green screen.
The rise of creators like Parsons reflects a broader shift in which independent artists build audiences through online video rather than studio systems. Janssen’s public support of such work signals that established actors see value in unconventional routes into film. For audiences, this endorsement matters because it shows established Hollywood figures questioning long-standing production norms and pointing to cheaper, practical methods as legitimate alternatives.
