Scorsese explains why he thinks Marvel movies aren't cinema

[Powerboy]

On the Scorsese side you have people saying superheroes are done for and others saying things that aren't superheroes are done for. Which is it?

That's true. You have people saying that these superhero movies are just a passing fad that are going to fade away anytime now and some of the most prolific of these people are the same people that go on and on about how they are destroying the industry. If it's a fad that's going to fade anytime now, they shouldn't be all that worried about it. If it's taking over the industry, it's not a passing fad.

What has really happened is that they have a new technology. Relatively speaking, CGI is a new technology, especially at it's current developmental level. It has allowed movies to visually show things and make them look believable that was not possible before or to do it far more easily.

It is currently changing the nature of movies in much the same way that "talkies" killed the silent style of film-making along with some of the unique qualities of the silent film. It is the same way that color destroyed the black and white movie with many of the artistic qualities that could be captured better and maybe only captured at all in black and white. I might as well say video killed the radio star.

People are flocking to it because it's something new and fascinating. It may fade some but I don't see too many silent movies being done anymore or too many in black and white. Right now, the superhero movie is dominating because it offers one of the best exploitations of this technology. It may fade some but I don't see it going away unless other genre movies find a way to use it too without being action movies.

[CliffHanger2]

Did Tony Stark face consequences when he converted his company from manufacturing arms to peacetime use? Did his stock drop, was he forced to downsize his company and fire people? Was Stark Industries a company that suffer in a significant way for that? No it didn't. Tony Stark made Spider-Man's life a living hell thanks to the fact that two people he screwed over Vulture and Mysterio f--ked Peter's life, and still Peter kisses the ground Tony walks on. In the end he gets a beautiful death and total validation of his life choices.

Scorsese's movies are all about society that doesn't reward good and altruistic behavior, where if you do act morally and so on, you pay some kind of price for doing so. That attitude speaks to reality moreso than the imaginary 40 year old ******* arms dealer will somehow redeem himself and after sitting on his ass for 20 years building weapons will just crap out revolutionary tech in a cave with a box-of-scraps.

And again...answer this basic question, is Captain America The First Avenger a better World War II movie than Casablanca, than Saving Private Ryan, The Best Years of Our Lives? The later movies are about flawed vulnerable and human people giving their all in fighting a brutal industrial war that can shred their limbs and bodies like nothing else, Casablanca is a really adult love story in the middle of wartime, as opposed to Chris Evans being the least convincing virgin ever.

No Stark didn't face financial consequences but if he did would that have made the movies better? Parker decided to become Spiderman and deal with those villains so you can't say Stark ruined his life. It was his choice to take on those fights he could have walked away. He mentored Peter, trusted him with his last weapon system and was a father-figure-why wouldn't a kid look up to somebody like that. And yeah they gave Stark a hero's death because those were the themes in those movies. That's not to say I didn't have any problems with the way they handled Stark. But for the most part it worked.

The irony is Scorsese prides himself on making "realistic" art. But when the reality of streaming and changing times are kicking him in the ass he gets upset. He doesn't want to make comicbook movies because he feels it would compromise his integrity. But at the same time he doesn't want to pay the price for his moral choice..

No First Avenger is not a better war movie than Pvt Ryan but it isn't meant to be, it's not trying to be and that's the appeal. MCU isn't trying to be other genres they are sticking to their guns with this comicbook thing and it's paid off greatly.

[Colossus1980]

If feige really had creative freedom, marvel won't be the way it is.

You mean the highest grossing franchise? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...nd_film_series

Are you good with finances?

[Beaddle]

You mean the highest grossing franchise? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...nd_film_series

Are you good with finances?

Is that the only reason why u think Scorsese is wrong. mcu is the highest grossing franchise. Who are the most successful reality TV stars.

Kevin Fiege is no James Mangold, who could look at the issues with The Wolverine and fight for 100% creative Freedom for Logan. Feige is more than happy to sit there and reuse the Disney formula with no questions. it is this type of gullible behaviour and that wrecked mcu place in serious cinema and made mcu become more of a product.

[JKtheMac]

And again in the history of comics, people who worked in other genres saw themselves shut out by superhero stories. So historically those genres see superheroes as an invasive species in genre storytelling. It ruins the marketplace for other genres. So the arguments for other genres don't really work for superheroes because they don't have the same context they do.

This reasoning just doesn’t hold water. It certainly has nothing to do with what Scorsese said.

Firstly let me check what you are saying is what I think you are saying. That somehow the Superhero genre is a different class of genre because it subsumed other types of genre and squeezes out competition. That the model of comic book sales in the US in the past is somehow a model for what is happening in Hollywood.

Taking that as what you are saying, which I can’t be sure because you are not being as clear as you perhaps think you are, superheroes are absolutely no different to Westerns. It is a fad in film making and popular culture because it speaks to people. By the Western model it will stick around and mutate over many years and never totally disappear but it will not subsume anything else.

The reality is that the argument about what cinema is has been raging since cinema began. It has always been a spectacle and specific popular genres have always dominated. The studio system churned out romantic comedies, westerns and musicals for decades.

Scorsese comes from a background of genre cinema, specifically the exploitation genre. He should be able to recognise Black Panther as part of his own milleu, but having never watched it he isn’t necessarily going to.

Saying Superheroes are spectacle or a fairground ride is to categorise cinema in a very convenient way for himself to exclude others. He could easily have said the same thing about disaster movies back in the day. IMO this is all part of a somewhat cynical attempt by a subset of film makers to head off Superheroes from the major awards. They attempted to push it into its own blockbuster focused category at the Oscars and now this is an attempt to just disqualify the entire genre on nonsense grounds.

There is a problem with cinema. It’s not going away. Unless a movie is a spectacle or can market itself as an event it is difficult to persuade owners of expensive home cinema systems that they need to go to the cinema. This has created an environment where the only reason your local multiplex stays open is because of blockbuster spectacle movies. Again, we have seen this before. In the seventies the only thing keeping cinemas open and competing with TV were blockbuster spectacle movies. What happened to change this wasn’t a shift in attitude of the consumer it was a positive feedback loop that produced more and more such movies until today when the yearly cycle has become saturated with them. Without them cinema would have contracted into a niche industry of arts cinemas. Some would have preferred that but it is difficult to imagine much of an industry serving that market.

[JKtheMac]

Is that the only reason why u think Scorsese is wrong. mcu is the highest grossing franchise. Who are the most successful reality TV stars.

Kevin Fiege is no James Mangold, who could look at the issues with The Wolverine and fight for 100% creative Freedom for Logan. Feige is more than happy to sit there and reuse the Disney formula with no questions. it is this type of gullible behaviour and that wrecked mcu place in serious cinema and made mcu become more of a product.

100% of successful movies of all genres in the entire history of cinema fit the same four act formula according to objective computer analysis. It is a tired and provably incorrect statement to accuse anyone of cynically using this formula when EVERYONE does.

[JKtheMac]

In general Scorsese is picking a loosing battle that has very little to do with the quality of cinema. The US has created three major contributions to the corpus of world mythology. Two are about the power of the individual, The Western and The Superhero, and one as an inversion is about the insignificance of humanity, The Cthulhu Mythos (this same cultural imperative spawned the short lived blockbuster disaster movie genre). They tap into very significant aspects of American culture and will always be a touchstone for debate and insights.

Cultures require a mythology to interrogate, learn about and define themselves. Until a new mythology comes along that can work as well as these existing ones superhero movies are not going anywhere. They are important and essential, not just a trivial distraction.

So if anyone feels like a highbrow cultural figure (which itself is a silly idea because of who Scorsese is and his corpus of work) is telling them that the things they love are trivial, then know that the mythologists have your corner.

[jetengine]

On the topic of "Did Stark lose money".

Yes. Yes he did. At one point theres a financial show in the background expositing how Starks stocks are in meltdown and one third of the reason Obidiah tries to kill him is because he's fucking the company.

By IM2 its assumed he redirected his money and talent into other fields to make up for it. Using Avengers as an example clean energy

[Revolutionary_Jack]

On the topic of "Did Stark lose money".

Yes. Yes he did. At one point theres a financial show in the background expositing how Starks stocks are in meltdown and one third of the reason Obidiah tries to kill him is because he's fucking the company.

By IM2 its assumed he redirected his money and talent into other fields to make up for it. Using Avengers as an example clean energy

He got a slap on the wrist for a bit in the first movie and it's never referred to again isn't consequences or "losing money". Logically speaking, Stark Industries' move to clean energy especially with something like the Arc Reactor tech which Tony doesn't want to put entirely on the market because he doesn't want the Iron Man tech to be replicable and so on, should have brought several movies' worth of lean years. The truth is in the Iron Man movies, the whole business side of things can't change too much or change entirely because the movies aren't constructed to allow an Iron Man who isn't ever less than a winner. Take a look at real history -- Nikola Tesla wanted to give people free stuff, Preston Tucker wanted to introduce safety features in automobiles in the 50s and faced clampdown from Big Auto (there's a movie called Tucker: The Man and His Dream by...Francis Ford Coppola [Evil Laugh]...that deals with what happens when an inventor-businessman decides to put consumer interests above capital interests).

I mean here's the thing. Tony Stark is modeled on Elon Musk, RDJ said as much. Elon Musk never invented anything. The Tesla car was invented by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. RDJ acts all the time like Elon Musk's public persona of cool billionaire while secretly also being personally a great inventor. But historically that's rarely been true. Most inventors don't become rich and successful. Usually they make other people rich. So again iron Man doesn't have anything meaningful to say in terms of themes.

No Stark didn't face financial consequences but if he did would that have made the movies better?

It would have made him more relateable for sure. As it is, Tony Stark in the movies is a clown and RDJ plays him as a wacky funny dude who is a constant f--k up who ends up failing upwards to the top of the superhero food chain.

The irony is Scorsese prides himself on making "realistic" art. But when the reality of streaming and changing times are kicking him in the ass he gets upset.

That is a supremely childish argument. You can definitely do better, and have done better than this.

No First Avenger is not a better war movie than Pvt Ryan but it isn't meant to be, it's not trying to be and that's the appeal.

If you are setting a movie in World War II and you have people claiming that MCU movies have deep themes and if I offer a simple test on how a MCU World War II movie compares with actual World War II movies then I don't know how you can make a case against people saying these movies aren't cinema.

Take Captain America Winter Soldier. Feige said that the movie was based on 70s movies like Parallax View or All the President's Men. Here's the thing, in The Parallax View, the bad guys win. The all powerful conspiracy organization shut down the guy who was gonna blow the whistle and so on. Likewise, All the President's Men is about ordinary journalists going after the POTUS whereas Winter Soldier as a movie is chickens--t as it is with Captain America only going against Shield when it's revealed 100% that it's Hydra.

Winter Soldier was also inspired by stuff like Snowden blowing the whistle on Prism and WikiLeaks and so on, and in the end Cap and Black Widow basically do the MCU version of that by uploading all the SHIELD files for the world to see. In real life, Snowden after blowing the whistle has lived in exile in Putin's Moscow while Julian Assange was a rapist who hid his time in an Ecuadorean Embassy in London for a decade plus. Reality is messy, gray, and dark. So I don't know how you can say these movies have real themes.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

This reasoning just doesn’t hold water. It certainly has nothing to do with what Scorsese said.

It's the subtext of the thing, which Neil Gaiman himself picked up. Neil Gaiman you know one of the best writers in comics history who has worked with the Big Two and so on.

Firstly let me check what you are saying is what I think you are saying. That somehow the Superhero genre is a different class of genre because it subsumed other types of genre and squeezes out competition. That the model of comic book sales in the US in the past is somehow a model for what is happening in Hollywood.

That is correct. That's what I have been saying. And I think it's a legit fear. Movies haven't got there yet but it's something that can happen. The MCU model is highly serialized and now with the Disney Plus stuff it's going to be even moreso. The superhero stuff used to be a piggy bank for actors and directors to hit up so they can make their real movies but now it's becoming a career goal. Robert Downey Jr. over the last decade made basically just 2-3 movies outside the MCU and he's a legit great actor. In the 2000s, he appeared in major films like Zodiac as well as great comedies like Tropic Thunder and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Ben Affleck saw the DCEU movies as an attempt to get money to supplement his well received directorial career and instead that ended up taking too much of his time, and upset his career. This also happened to Andrew Garfield who has basically gone back to being a niche actor after trying and failing to do the Spider-Man thing.

By the Western model it will stick around and mutate over many years and never totally disappear but it will not subsume anything else.

Westerns as a genre died out because it's ties to history as a fantasy about America's past became impossible to ignore. Superheroes aren't really tied to history. It stands outside history and apart from it. The original Superman and Batman and Cap America stuff are rooted in the Depression and the Marvel Era is rooted in the late 50s through 60s...but comics have always found ways to update and root the characters out of time. The evolution of the Westerns was largely about how the final decades of it ended up being revisionist where more or less every white guy was a psychopathic genocidal dude. Logan for instance was compared to Unforgiven by its creators but in Unforgiven Clint Eastwood's character William Munny is a total psychopath and the finale where he makes his glorious return is framed as horrific, like a monster movie. Whereas in Logan, Wolverine becoming an X-Man is framed as a glorious heroic moment. So it's not remotely the same thing and it's not possible for superhero movies to evolve this way without serial transformation and changes. In the case of the Western it's about this idea of fantasy about white men with guns shootin' and rasslin' being pretty f--ked up to start with, was in fact always f--ked up historically speaking, and ended when Western directors and actors more or less did a public confession about the fact that they are in fact horror movies where you saw stuff from the perspective of the monsters. No way superheroes will go the same way.

The reality is that the argument about what cinema is has been raging since cinema began. It has always been a spectacle and specific popular genres have always dominated. The studio system churned out romantic comedies, westerns and musicals for decades.

Romantic Comedies (and musicals too) were based on star power and heteronormative straight values, musicals were a focus on great choreographers and singers who largely did their own dancing and singing. In superheroes everything is CGI stuff most of the time and nobody does their own stunts and so on. So it's not remotely the same kind of thing.

Scorsese comes from a background of genre cinema, specifically the exploitation genre.

Exploitation films content-wise are closer to underground comics than superhero comics or superhero movies. Superhero comics were always mainstream safe stuff. That doesn't mean brave things weren't done in superhero comics or with superhero comics. Because there has been interesting stuff but you would have to say that it's rarely been a trailblazer on that front. Scorsese would know a lot about that. He's good friends with George DiCaprio, father of Leonardo, who is an underground comics artist. In terms of comics, Scorsese's equivalent would be Ben Katchor, Kim Deitch, Robert Crumb maybe, Alan Moore and others. And Alan Moore's opinions about superheroes in both comics and movies is identical to Scorsese, only way less polite.

[CliffHanger2]

It would have made him more relateable for sure. As it is, Tony Stark in the movies is a clown and RDJ plays him as a wacky funny dude who is a constant f--k up who ends up failing upwards to the top of the superhero food chain.



That is a supremely childish argument. You can definitely do better, and have done better than this.



If you are setting a movie in World War II and you have people claiming that MCU movies have deep themes and if I offer a simple test on how a MCU World War II movie compares with actual World War II movies then I don't know how you can make a case against people saying these movies aren't cinema.

Take Captain America Winter Soldier. Feige said that the movie was based on 70s movies like Parallax View or All the President's Men. Here's the thing, in The Parallax View, the bad guys win. The all powerful conspiracy organization shut down the guy who was gonna blow the whistle and so on. Likewise, All the President's Men is about ordinary journalists going after the POTUS whereas Winter Soldier as a movie is chickens--t as it is with Captain America only going against Shield when it's revealed 100% that it's Hydra.

Winter Soldier was also inspired by stuff like Snowden blowing the whistle on Prism and WikiLeaks and so on, and in the end Cap and Black Widow basically do the MCU version of that by uploading all the SHIELD files for the world to see. In real life, Snowden after blowing the whistle has lived in exile in Putin's Moscow while Julian Assange was a rapist who hid his time in an Ecuadorean Embassy in London for a decade plus. Reality is messy, gray, and dark. So I don't know how you can say these movies have real themes.

How do we judge what's relatable? The IM franchise has grossed over 2billion world wide obviously ppl are relating to something. And I thought IM3 was a pos but damn I can't say ppl didn't relate to it. The movie made over a billion dollars ffs ppl related. Making him "more relatable" is neither here nor there.

Yeah First Avenger was set in WW2 but I mostly consider it a superhero movie. Just because it isn't as good a war movie as Pvt Ryan means it isn't cinema? And it seems like you're suggesting that because Heroes or characters in a fantasy setting don't face real-life consequences that those stories aren't art? You're flipping off a whole lot of Art-some thousands of years old. I have to disagree.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

How do we judge what's relatable?

In the sense of George Bailey from It's A Wonderful Life being more relatable as a figure than RDJ's Tony Stark.

The IM franchise has grossed over 2billion world wide obviously ppl are relating to something.

Being relatable doesn't correlate to being commercially successful nor is anything being successful means it's relatable.

Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 80s and 90s was a mega-successful movie star but he definitely wasn't someone you related to.

And I thought IM3 was a pos

Actually my favorite IM movie, pity it didn't do much favors for Shane Black. His vastly superior The Nice Guys failed.

Yeah First Avenger was set in WW2 but I mostly consider it a superhero movie.

At which point one needs to ask what exactly is a superhero story as a genre? Is it just folks in costumes punching each other and having powers and the external stuff like the background setting and so on doesn't matter? Because if you say the content/background/setting don't matter and all that matters is the costumes and whizzes and bangs, then that's the definition of a theme park and not a movie.

And it seems like you're suggesting that because Heroes or characters in a fantasy setting don't face real-life consequences that those stories aren't art?

Yes.

You're flipping off a whole lot of Art-some thousands of years old. I have to disagree.

If you take ancient greek epics, all people do is face consequences in those stories. They happen to be foundation for western tragedies and comedies and much contemporary storytelling. Hercules, greatest hero of Ancient Greece went nuts and killed his wife and children and was punished to do 12 labors and at the end of his life, got killed by his second wife Deianera. Shakespeare popular playwright or Cervantes who wrote Don Quixote likewise showed that there are consequences for actions and so on.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

I have to wonder if he isn't simply jealous. According to Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin...se_filmography

"According to Box Office Mojo, Scorsese's 24 feature films have earned a lifetime gross of over $1.9 billion. "

Avenger's Endgame. https://www.vox.com/2019/7/22/207034...ime-box-office
2.79 Billion.

So what was his excuse before. Raging Bull was hurt by Christopher Reeve's Superman? Goodfellas was hurt by ... hey there were no Superhero movies out that year.

Anyone who thinks he’s jealous is completely out of touch and I would argue it’s a petty attack because people are mad he criticized the object of their fandom.

There is no scenario in the last decade where Scorsese could have said he wanted to do a Marvel film and he would have been denied a film. It would have been one of the biggest gets for not just Marvel but Disney in general. And all the same people would have went wild over it.

If he wanted to make a billion dollar Marvel film, he could and would have.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Anyone who thinks he’s jealous is completely out of touch and I would argue it’s a petty attack because people are mad he criticized the object of their fandom.

And it's also dumb because they're acting like it's their success Scorsese is jealous of. I mean Disney keeps all the money, the fans get zilch, they are in fact being farmed out and harnessed as unpaid/disposable labour for free advertising and so on.

There is no scenario in the last decade where Scorsese could have said he wanted to do a Marvel film and he would have been denied a film.

Scorsese has made commercial films before like The Color of Money, Cape Fear, and The Departed. I mean they were solid commercial movies of their day. Color of Money is a sequel to a classic movie, the other two are remakes. But today even that's considered arthouse purely because of the content and the fact that all three movies are made for adult audiences. All three of those movies are among his biggest and most commercial hits.

It would have been one of the biggest gets for not just Marvel but Disney in general. And all the same people would have went wild over it.

To be honest, I actually think Scorsese would have been the right choice to make a Doctor Doom movie. Especially Triumph and Torment.

If he wanted to make a billion dollar Marvel film, he could and would have.

I wouldn't go that far myself. I think it takes a lot of effort and hard work to make a successful mainstream movie and i don't think just anyone could have made it. Of course all the effort put into a movie has little to do with the ultimate value and merit of the thing. But I would never say the MCU movies aren't a product of hard work and initiative. I think that's true. I don't think anybody else could have managed things the way they did.

The question about a film-maker like Scorsese making a mainstream movie is whether it would be worth the effort for him. Chris Nolan made those Batman movies and got a clean free hand to do what he wanted with them and he used the success of those movies to make stuff like Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk, Prestige, and now Tenet. So for him those Batman movies brought him "f--k you money". On the other hand, making MCU movies hasn't brought eyeballs to Joss Whedon's stuff after he made Avengers, nor has it helped Ryan Coogler get funding for his next movie, or the Russos for theirs.

RDJ's career recovered with Iron Man but it also seems to have stopped him making non-Iron Man movies. And his presence hasn't helped movies like Dr. Dolittle which was dumped in January after a terrible production. Actors like Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio are among the last holdouts of stars who sell movies by themselves and both of them continue doing diverse and interesting movies with Hanks making some of his best movies in this decade stuff like Bridge of Spies, The Post, and Sully.

[djoki96]

Wow! First, we have MCU fans bashing Scorcese, talking about how jealous he is and such bs, then we have MCU bashers and/or Scorcese fans trying to gatekeep what art or cinema is. This thread is a bloody disaster.

Now, I'm by no means a fan of Scorcese, as a director or as a person, but even I have to admit, the guy is a genius. He's definitely not jealous of Marvel movies. And, quite honestly, there is no need to get so offended by his comments.

As for MCU, it most certainly is an art and cinema. Whether it's good art or not is your subjective opinion, but it can't be denied it's art, whether it's made for money or not. I'm a vampire geek, so I hate Twilight, with passion, but I can't deny it's literature. I think it's bad literature, but it's literature. No one can say what is or isn't art based on their like/dislike of something. But, as I said, whether it's good art or bad art is up to you.