I don't think most are upset about his tastes, I myself don't care for most of the Marvel films, it's the idea he's putting forward that blockbusters are squeezing out smaller films and that the state of cinema was better off before them...but neither is true. There are still plenty of films that get put out that aren't blockbusters and I don't think the ratio is all that different than it was in years past.
I can't speak for everyone here, but from what I've seen people aren't having a problem accepting the MCU is hated by some. We're three of these threads past that being a fact. However there is a difference between merely not liking something and going the extra step into saying it's not art/cinema. Or people in this thread comparing Disney to chattel slave owners or saying Scorsese wants the marvel movies banned. Lots of people I talk with and regard well don't care for the MCU. But they aren't trying to say they aren't movies nor is anyone acting like their dislike is some kind of call to arms to have the films banned.
Well for example, take a movie like It's A Wonderful Life. Both It's A Wonderful Life and freaking Iron Man are about how one guy has such a big difference. The difference is that Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey sacrificed his hopes, ambitions, and dreams for the sake of his family and his town and barely has much to show for it before he flirts with suicide. Then you had the element of fantasy by the angel who shows him how things would have been without him. At the end of the movie, George finds out he has a community of friends and family...but Mr. Potter is still a businessman, still in control and still in charge. His lot in life hasn't improved materially but he's found happiness in not letting the mean old world get him down.
Compare that to Iron Man. Does Iron Man truly pay a price for doing good or suffer consequences for his bad actions, or otherwise has regrets about not living a fulfilling life? No. Ultimately Tony Stark's is a story about a guy who has it all. He was a womanizing prick for 40 years but he ends up getting the girl of his dreams and becomes Mr. Monogamous so all that stuff from before has no impact. He was a callous ruthless arms dealer for 40 years whose terrible personality drove a few people to villainy but for all the back-and-forth melodrama this doesn't cost Tony the friendship with Peter Parker who logically should come to a conclusion after two whole movies dealing with villains created by Tony that Iron Man is a piece of s--t. Likewise, Tony Stark converts his company from arms dealing to peaceful endeavors. Okay does he pay a price for that? Like does Stark Industries tank in stock prices and becomes a shadow of its former self because people want to punish a big tech company for going green and getting woke? No that doesn't seem to happen either.
Ultimately, George Bailey is a far greater hero than any Marvel character. He had no powers. He did good for no reward, and he pays a price for being a good guy because America's economy materially rewards the Mr. Potters rather than the George Baileys. It's A Wonderful Life will always be a masterpiece of cinema beyond any Marvel movie.
Yeah but there needs to be some reality. The Wizard of Oz is a fantasy for sure but it speaks a lot of truth about growing up, wanting to change, travel and so on. Freaking Salman Rushdie wrote a book about all the deep themes in that. It's A Wonderful Life also has fantastic elements to it, you know angels and so on, but it does speak a lot of human truths.Art doesn't have to be about the way things are it can/should be about the way things should be. Not necessarily reality but truth.
Well that's the truth.
Here's the thing Martin Scorsese is widely known for seeing more movies than anybody else. If he says things are worse than he's not talking stuff out of thin air.There are still plenty of films that get put out that aren't blockbusters and I don't think the ratio is all that different than it was in years past.
So many people are saying that Irishman is a safe movie project. Deniro, Pacino, Pesci, Scorsese, gangster movie. Well yeah, it would have been a safe no-brainer project had it been made back in the 90s or around the 2000s. Now it's a movie that only Netflix is willing to fund. The truth is the current era is squeezing out of the mainstream movies that used to be mainstream. And not in some distant past but say the 90s or 2000s, i.e. in living memory. Even the Russo Brothers said that some movie they made with Tom Holland was hard for them to get funding for. I mean directing these movies won't necessarily make it easier for them to make non-Marvel movies. That's been true...I mean look at Sam Raimi, he gave a full decade of his life to the Spider-Man movies and it seems to have ended his career as a regular director since he's barely made movies since then.
It's not the truth though, art films have always made up a small portion of film out put and always will. Pick any year you like and look at all the films that came out and you'll see that the kinds of films that Scorsese is talking about can probably be counted on your fingers while action flicks, kids movies, and other genre movies make up the other 9/10s of films produced. There's a reason why the joke that the oscar for best picture should be called the film that no one actually saw award has been told in some variation or another almost every year since the 60's.
Art movies used to mean foreign movies, or experimental movies. Stuff like Andy Warhol's Vinyl, stuff like Fellini or Ingmar Bergman or Lars von Trier. Martin Scorsese movies were never really considered art movies. I mean they were considered great quality mainstream movies and so on but they were still mainstream movies with big stars. Today a movie with Leonardo DiCaprio biggest movie star on the planet is an art movie. That's how narrow things have become.
A movie like The Irishman a decade ago would have been mainstream. Now it's Netflix. I don't know how you can see that as anything other than a comedown.
Well in those years Scorsese's mid-tier movies would have been funded and screened. Back in 2002 when Scorsese made Gangs of New York the biggest movie of the year was Raimi's Spider-Man, and Lord of the Rings Two Towers and IIRC Attack of the Clones...Scorsese's movie still opened big and made some $100mn and got a wide release, and that was for what had been until then his biggest most ambitious movie up to that point.Pick any year you like and look at all the films that came out and you'll see that the kinds of films that Scorsese is talking about can probably be counted on your fingers while action flicks, kids movies, and other genre movies make up the other 9/10s of films produced.
Well Scorsese made one of the Oscar winners that people did see...The Departed, a very influential crime film that started a new trend of Boston set movies like Gone Baby Gone, Black Mass, The Fighter and many many others. Today that movie would be hard or impossible to fund/sell.There's a reason why the joke that the oscar for best picture should be called the film that no one actually saw award has been told in some variation or another almost every year since the 60's.
I mean, if I have an opinion on a film, shouting out argumentum ad populums isn't going to convince me otherwise. I don't understand why I have to give 'credit' to a film franchise I no longer like and I emphasis, no longer like. I liked the MCU once, until Thor 2 I saw all the films in the theatre and I even own an expensive Avenger's Lego set. I just grew bored of them and they still continue to unimpressive me.
#InGunnITrust, #ZackSnyderistheBlueprint, #ReleasetheAyerCut
Fantasy is a huge broad term and that includes stuff like The Wizard of Oz, The Thief of Bagdad (1940), Terry Gilliam movies and a host of stuff that Scorsese is a huge fan of.
Scorsese isn't against the idea of fantasy and so on. He just doesn't like superheroes.
And again I don't know why this is a hard concept for people to grasp. Superheroes as a genre have historically always swallowed and bought out and shut down other genres. The idea that some people have that superheroes are analogous to crime genres and other genres looked down upon has no historical grounding and for anyone schooled in comics, it would be pretty disingenuous to make when you think of the reality of creator's rights and attempts by people to make non-superhero stuff marketable which again is basically an attempt to restore a status-quo.
The default used to be EC Comics, Donald Duck Comics and Little Lulu and other stuff - war comics, horror comics, adventure comics, freaking Classics Illustrated. Neil Gaiman freaking won an award for fantasy for writing The Sandman but he also said clearly that he isn't keen on writing a monthly superhero ongoing and he doesn't really like the conventional superhero stuff. Warren Ellis likewise, he has said that all his Marvel stuff is to pay the bills. Kieron Gillen ditto. Garth Ennis likewise. Alan Moore would freaking do actual prostitution before he writes for mainstream comics again.
You can be a fan of genres like war stories (Garth Ennis), fantasy stories (Gaiman), horror and other stuff (Alan Moore), and not be a fan of superheroes. You can also be a fan of superhero comics and not be a fan of superhero movies such as the novelist Jonathan Lethem. Scorsese likes every genre of cinema, movies from every country, every type but he doesn't like superheroes pure and simple. There's nothing exceptional about that.
For a dude in his seventies after 5 decades of defining movies, I'd think he'd have a right to see it as a comedown. Especially since he speaks often and always about other young film-makers who don't even get a shot.
Yes he has had. He talks about a lot of unmade movies. Scorsese has had it better than others for sure, but it's not like he's had a royal run of the place either.It's not as if Scorsese has never had a film go unmade, even at his apex.
Last edited by Revolutionary_Jack; 11-12-2019 at 04:59 PM.
So I guess all of Ray Harryhausen's movies are none cinema crap as well?
There came a time when the Old Gods died! The Brave died with the Cunning! The Noble perished locked in battle with unleashed Evil! It was the last day for them! An ancient era was passing in fiery holocaust!
Dislike is different from saying they aren't cinema. Some of the same arguments used here on why the MCU movies are bad can be attributed to Harryhsausen, or other fantasy movies for that matter.
There came a time when the Old Gods died! The Brave died with the Cunning! The Noble perished locked in battle with unleashed Evil! It was the last day for them! An ancient era was passing in fiery holocaust!
It's a different way of saying the same thing.
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.Some of the same arguments used here on why the MCU movies are bad can be attributed to Harryhsausen, or other fantasy movies for that matter.
If you read between the lines, what Scorsese is saying i.e stories have no risk nor do you have real emotional impact is that he thinks they aren't cinema because superhero characters are largely static, rarely grow and change, nor do big stake stories affect status-quo or consequences really last meaningfully. Rare exceptions aside (usually non-canon ones like Logan) that is true for modern shared universe franchise stories. In superhero stories, comics and movies, the main superhero character rarely changes and develops much. There's little depth.
IN Norse Myth, Ragnarok was the literal end of everything. In MCU, Ragnarok is some janky jokey buddy comedy. The fact that the Norse Myth of Ragnarok is fantasy as much as the MCU's take doesn't mean the two things have anything in common.