Ethan Hawke on Logan and other superhero films dominating cinema

[BeastieRunner]

Because they aren't two of the greatest film makers ever?

I see what he is saying. Movies like Logan and The Dark Knight are great within the genre. But maybe not all time great.

Again, his statement is fine. I agree with the sentiment, 100%.

When the Bergman and Bresson references come out, it enters snob territory.

He could have just left it at that quoted paragraph and called it a day.

I know a great many cinephiles that don't understand the importance of Bresson or Bergman.

Talking down your nose to people about something they like is not endearing if you want them to be on your side in the end.

[Kirby101]

Again, his statement is fine. I agree with the sentiment, 100%.

When the Bergman and Bresson references come out, it enters snob territory.

He could have just left it at that quoted paragraph and called it a day.

I know a great many cinephiles that don't understand the importance of Bresson or Bergman.

Talking down your nose to people about something they like is not endearing if you want them to be on your side in the end.

I disagree. It legitimately states what great is in cinema. I don't care if people aren't knowledgeable enough to know what it means. There is far too much dumbing down and anti-intellectualism in this country as it is.

Maybe he just wanted to state his opinion and doesn't give a shit about people who don't know who Bergman was on his side. Or maybe he thinks people who don't know might look for themselves and actually learn there are films beyond Black Panther.

I would say if people don't know Bresson and Bergman, they can't call themselves cinephiles. They are just movie goers.

You understand their importance, so if I am being snobish too, so be it.

[Jim Kelly]

You have to put the comment in context. It's a long discussion with someone who is a film critic, Rory O'Connor. He's talking to that guy about things that guy knows about--not to you. He's there at a film festival talking about film festivals and why those are important, because you see movies there that you would miss otherwise, because a lot of movies at film festivals don't get a big release. This is true. He's then saying that movies like LOGAN get all the attention and big business pushes those movies--which further excludes these movies that never get attention except at film festivals. He then says "It’s not Bresson. It’s not Bergman. But they talk about it like it is." So the PR campaign for LOGAN is positioning the movie as if it's a movie comparable to those films--but what about the contemporary director of a film that is actually in the tradition of Bresson or Bergman? The PR campaign for LOGAN before the Oscars was certainly trying to push LOGAN as that kind of movie. As an Academy member Hawke would have had to give that serious consideration for the nomnations.

[RikWriter]

Hmm. Call me jaded, but this doesn't seem like a controversial statement to me. People are trying to make it be controversial.

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It's bullshit. "Big business" doesn't give a shit if you think a movie is a "great film," they just want you to spend money on it. The Transformers movies made shitloads of money and no one considers them good movies, but they're still making them. No one at Fox was saying "let's con people into thinking Logan was a great film so we can make more money off of it." They just wanted to make the money. The director and writers and actors were the ones trying to make it the best movie they could.

[origami]

Hmm. Call me jaded, but this doesn't seem like a controversial statement to me. People are trying to make it be controversial.

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What Hawke said is true for all movies regardless of genre. All movie makers try to market their movies in a way that maximize ticket/home media sales, because all of them want to make money/profit.

Hawke, like everyone else, is entitled to his opinion. Meanwhile, the rest of us fans will continue to enjoy well-made superhero movies for their great entertainment value.

[Jokerz79]

Bringing up Bergman and Bresson was a mistake IMO simply because few filmmakers can live up to that standard. His comments were also snobbish IMO because if a film is great it's great across the board. Now outside of Dark Knight I don't think any Super film let say deserved Best Oscar but there are plenty of great films in the Superhero genre. There is also a snobbery in Hollywood these days especially the Oscars look at Best Picture Winners up until about a decade ago they were films which were crowd pleasers now they're usually smaller indie or limited released films which are almost made to be Oscar Bait.

[Forseti]

Great films by great directors have hardly ever generated box office numbers like crowd pleasing blockbusters do. It's irrelevant to blame the current superhero successes for that just because they happen to be today's blockbusters. Before that, it was something else. After that, it will again be something else.

Also: "It’s not Bresson. It’s not Bergman"? I don't like it when people judge things for what they aren't. It's meaningless and dismissive of innovation. There's plenty of great art that wasn't like something that came before. Judge something for its own merits and flaws.

[James T. Kirk]

Here is an interview with Ethan Hawke (go down to the end for the relevant part): https://thefilmstage.com/features/et...ilm-festivals/

Ethan Hawke isn't exactly known for making the best films, especially in recent years. However, he does have a point: superhero films have basically taken over everything, leaving little room for other films to be as successful. I blame the Hollywood machine for that, though. I mean, the effort that they put into superhero films, they used to put into other genres of films until recently. Now, they don't do that as much as they did in the past. It's isn't superhero films that are to blame, it is the laziness of the TPTB.

ETA: Hawke is already getting backlash online for this. Can you imagine what would have happened if he had picked on Black Panther instead of Logan?

What's the TPTB?

Of the thousands of movies that come out in a year, how many are superhero movies?

They are so few that it's difficult to say they are drowning out other movies.

I do agree they dominate the conversation but in sheer number of releases, they aren't that many.

Not counting animation, over the last 40 years, I counted around 150, give or take.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

It wreaks of snob.


How does one define a "great" movie anyway? Why is it only the "snob" definition = great?

If Logan wasn’t about Wolverine and was just about some old western style Cowboy or something it would need to be as well made as something like Unforgiven to get the ravings it got. It definitely benefited from being a film in a genre that generally makes by the numbers cookie cutter popcorn films.

[Powerboy]

They dominate the box office. If he has a problem with that, he should talk to filmgoers not filmmakers.

Exactly right. Talking to filmgoers isn't going to work and so you have people like Jodie Foster trying to bypass the audience and get the film makers to give the audience what she wants, not what the audience wants.

Hollywood is putting so much money into superhero movies because they sell. For the most part, it's what we want. So it's a circular situation. Hollywood is not going to make movies people are not as interested in and not make superhero movies to force them to watch the other movies because the ones they really want are not available. That's exactly the logic of the people criticizing Hollywood's focus on superhero movies.

And it's not even a focus on superhero movies. There are countless other movies out there. Most genres in a given year have far more movies out than there are superhero movies. It's just that superhero movies make a killing at the box office although there are other movies that sometimes beat them all but they are action movies like MI6 which is probably another category the elite hate.

But the argument from these people is essentially to treat the audience like children, dictating that they *should* like this instead of that because that is bad for them.

[QuinnFillory]

Here is an article showing another point of view: https://screenrant.com/ethan-hawke-s...mpaign=SR-DCEU

[motherofpearl1]

One man's meat is another man's poison. But I am very tired of how people think that if someone's taste is differentto theirs, then they must have no taste. Especially as Hawke's recent films have been less than epic.

[RikWriter]

What's the TPTB?

The Powers That Be.

[BeastieRunner]

I disagree. It legitimately states what great is in cinema. I don't care if people aren't knowledgeable enough to know what it means. There is far too much dumbing down and anti-intellectualism in this country as it is.

Maybe he just wanted to state his opinion and doesn't give a shit about people who don't know who Bergman was on his side. Or maybe he thinks people who don't know might look for themselves and actually learn there are films beyond Black Panther.

I would say if people don't know Bresson and Bergman, they can't call themselves cinephiles. They are just movie goers.

You understand their importance, so if I am being snobish too, so be it.

Being a snob, doesn't mean you're wrong.

My main point is what Ethan said is snobbish. But not wrong. He could have stated it better without talking down to people. But I suspect he didn't care.

I know lots of hyper-intelligent people that don't talk down to people. It's not that hard to be nice.

Case in point: what you said was well thought out and didn't talk down to me.

[AJBopp]

One man's meat is another man's poison. But I am very tired of how people think that if someone's taste is differentto theirs, then they must have no taste. Especially as Hawke's recent films have been less than epic.

It's worthwhile to remember that he didn't say this. It's also worthwhile to remember that there's a difference between something you immensely enjoy, and something that's done extraordinarily well. It's entirely OK to enjoy something done poorly and not enjoy something done well, and Hawke said nothing that would suggest it's NOT OK.

What he said is that Logan is a fine example of its genre, but the genre itself, by it's nature, is not going to rise beyond a certain self-imposed ceiling. Like a well-made burger is never going to rise to the level of a five-star restaurant entrée.

For the life of me I don't understand how this fairly obvious truth can upset people. He actually payed the film a great compliment, and I don't get the refusal to take it as such.