Scorsese explains why he thinks Marvel movies aren't cinema

[Flash Gordon]

Declaring artistic value is a matter of fact is a really silly point.

These big Marvel flicks are corporate products that are manufactured in a boardroom. You can enjoy them, but yeah they're not anyone's vision or anything artistic.

Something doesn't have to be art to be worthwhile and entertaining, but on the flipside not everything you personally enjoy needs to be considered high art. Scorsese is an artist, Spider-Man: Far From Home is a Pepsi.

[Beaddle]

These big Marvel flicks are corporate products that are manufactured in a boardroom. You can enjoy them, but yeah they're not anyone's vision or anything artistic.

Something doesn't have to be art to be worthwhile and entertaining, but on the flipside not everything you personally enjoy needs to be considered high art. Scorsese is an artist, Spider-Man: Far From Home is a Pepsi.

People treating art like its rare.nope. anything is art. the reason marvel is not art is because they are indeed too sterilised and manufactured and follow a studio formula. how can we call it art when the directors Don't direct the movies so what art are they doing?

As awful as batman and Robin is, that movie was still art. it was Joel joel schumacher's bad art. it is better to be bad art like batman and Robin and no art like marvel, at least we bad art, you can now evolve to good art see the Nolan films. where he did get to direct and write his movies.

[Midvillian1322]

Do you guys think any of the superhero directors match the artistic abilities of directors like Scorsese or Coppola?
They're mostly fun, action/adventure movies, not really much more then that. I think people are using black panther as a argument for marvel's artistic value, and I like black panther but the rhino and cg subway fight at the end kind of undermined whatever good Coogler did before that. I don't know of any director other then Nolan that is as respected as Scorsese or Coppola are. Even Phillips and Joker feel like Value Brand Taxi Driver.

Of course not but if your asking If Ryan Coogler could be considered with the Elites when hes done? I think so, hes off to an amazing start so who knows? And a couple rushed CGI scenes dont undermine a movie. For starters outside of two scenes that had to be rushed to make the release date. That movie had more to say then most movies out there while still having to work inside the frame of a comicbook story. The cultural impact of that movie and dialogues it started werent hindered at all by the two scenes with the questionable CGI. And the real message of the movie was handled so.. well artistically. The colonizer oppression and Isonlationism stuff was right out there on front street. But the mirror images of Killmonger and Tchalla and Coolger commentary on the African american experience were handled so tastefully and were just naturally apart of the characters. If that's not art iono what is. Now if you ask me what the deeper meaning of Dr Strange is? Iono maybe something about learning to adapt to a disability but really I dont see much there. It's just a visual feast that's well made and well acted.


So Scorsese makes a comment about The MCU and the superhero Genre not being art and the minority who hate the MCU latch onto it. And somehow that means it's not art.

Well Quentin Terentino likes the MCU even binged every movie before Endgame came out. And his favorite MCU movie which he talks about how much he loves is Thor Ragnarok. So does one legends opinion offset another's? It's all really silly to me. One person's opinion some how validates theirs. People enjoy different things but if The MCU was hallow as some posters claim it wouldnt last this long. Transformers is a prime example. Chian kept those movies alive because they were dropping with each film because people didnt see anything there past shiny VFX. They pivoted with BumbleBee and while it wasnt there biggest movie it got a great reaction from critics and the audience and if they can continue that quality I'm betting the movies keep coming for years. The MCU has made way more movies then that and hasnt had any of those issus yet. So people are getting something more from those films then just dumb spectacle.

[Beaddle]

OMG I just fell out of my chair reading this. Chadwick thinks Scorsese is saying this because he wants an OSCAR.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/...210002281.html

UH, right, no. Chadwick, if Scorsese gets another oscar it will not be a competitive award, it will be for lifetime achievement. Chadwick you think scorsese wants more awards, this is your marvel movie that was unfairly nominated for an award it took scorsese 30+ years to earn.



wtf is wrong these people bashing scorsese, thinking it is because he wants more lousy Oscars? its pure ignorance. he didn't even win for his best film.

[Midvillian1322]

Chadwick just said what alot of people did. Scorsese's upset his movies and similar ones are being pushed out of Theaters. Also yea saying this now brings alot of attention to your new movies.

[Beaddle]

Chadwick just said what alot of people did. Scorsese's upset his movies and similar ones are being pushed out of Theaters. Also yea saying this now brings alot of attention to your new movies.

A lot of people are not saying agreeing with what Chadwick saying, at least not by the yahoo user comments the article is taking from. they are horrified Chadwick can be so ignorant. they are even using the opportunity to remind chadwick black panther unlike scorsese already has films with many oscars wins. Hugo, The Aviator to name a few. some have said, scorsese had already gotten a life time award before Chadwick went into acting. They have reminded Chadwick Scorsese won his first Oscar in 2007, before the first mcu movie.

Chadwick is ignorant is cringe worthy.

[CliffHanger2]

I love movies like Good Fellas, it's one of my favorites. But if you told me I had to write an essay about the Themes and deeper meanings of GoodFellas and Black Panther. The Essay on Black Panther is gonna be much longer. Very few film makers do Dialogue as well as Scorcese. But most his movies dont move me in some deep emotional way. I dont walk away from Goodfellas or The Departed with anything except the fact I was greatly entertained for the length of the movie. As far as his comments about Human beings relating to one another. I relate way more to a CGI character like Rocket then I do with the 20 Italian gangsters hes made movies about. Marvel is also giving Indie artists a chance to make blockbusters. Ryan coogler was making indie arthouse films. James Gunn was making small weird movies prior, Tika Waititi was making Indy films and staring in Green Lantern the poor guy. Marvel studios isnt some place Art goes to die it seems to be where young upcoming artist want to be. Those 3 directors were given 200m to go make a movie that is uniquely them. Now we got directors like Chloe Zhao making eternals, Cate shortland doing BLACK widow,and Destin Daniel creston doing Shang Chi. These aren't Michale Bay. Marvel either hiring unknown directors or upcoming indy director for most of they're movies. I dont see how that's bad for art.

Totally agree with this. Scorsese is even off when he talks about "emotional danger or risk" something I never felt watching his movies. How can you when most of them are about dirtbags whacking each other?lol.
He even admits if he was younger he'd want to make a superhero movie or be excited about them. It is sad that someone as accomplished as he is got this sour grapes thing going on. But honestly the more ppl bash the MCU the weaker their argument becomes. They just keep repeating the same old shallow arguments.

"It's about Art" but oh yeah 2 dodgy cgi scenes ruined the movie for me"-Can't even take these ppl seriously at this point lol.

[Mister Mets]

That has been the standard argument for MCU. they make money, they get good reviews but all of this is tainted and does not have any merit anymore. How long have critics protected MCU movies? their cinematic universe concept has been a goldmine but it has cost marvel quality, again, the question I have asked for the 500th time. Why hasn't this argument worked for Disney star wars and Disney MCU Spiderman, maybe you can tell us why since you are a mod for the Spiderman forums.

If your claim is that the MCU Spider-Man films haven't reached the level of Raimi films, that's your opinion.

By many metrics, the MCU films are on that level or better. There also hasn't been anything will the flaws of Spider-Man 3 yet,

They were trying to escape from Batman and Robin. The only dark and gritty comic movies were X-men and Batman. Spiderman was not dark and gritty but at the same time, Raimi did not make spiderman like a Disney kids entertainment.

X-Men and batman films post 2000 never fully distanced themselves from the source material, yes Singer and Nolan desliked comics but they took what they felt were the best part of the comics and put it front and centre, for instance in xmen case as a stand in for racism and discrimination or in batman case, tackling crime with little heavy VFX and comedy.


Nolan films are still held High, its the shill media that wants to wipe it out. Please look at how they were trying to dismiss TDK as an Oscar contender in 2008 to favour Black Panther? its the same way they have tried to wipe out the earlier spiderman, blade and xmen movies.
I think its strange how the media and critics got so obsessed with making sure comic movies are light and funny.



Another media propaganda but more proof the media wanted to wipe joker out. DC is doing well right now. Joker is Bank. Matt Reeves Batman would and should be great, Wonder Woman 2 would likely make people dislike captain marvel more.

Its pro Media Marvel spin that DC is not doing well. I would want to be DC now than marvel. at least DC is not 100% manufactured and they have other great movies that is not part of the DCU.

The Dark Knight and Black Panther have different Oscar stories.

After the Dark Knight wasn't nominated, the number of Best Picture nominees was expanded from five to ten.

Lol @ Scorsese accusing others of making remakes when a whole lot of his filmography is based on books and two of his films are remakes of Asian cinema classics.

Lol @ Scorsese talking about Marvel movies being audience tested when he recoloured the climax of Taxi Driver to avoid an X rating.

I think everyone can see that at this point Scorsese is just doing this (or is allowed to keep doing it) for press. I do believe he means what he says, but this is like the sixth time he's reiterated this point when he didn't need to. We got it the first time. He didn't need to write this op-ed because nobody cares what he has to say. And I mean that without it being an insult: Scorsese is (sadly) just not that relevant to this generation of moviegoers, with exception of maybe Wolf of Wall Street. It's obvious this thing became what it was and continued that way because Scorsese specifically mentioned the most popular movie franchise right now and kept going on about it. Had he only said this thing once or generally spoke about blockbuster films, this story would have died down after a week.

But this isn't about comparing MCU films to Scorsese or Scorsese-type films. This isn't about which is better. I don't even think that was the aim of his claim. Scorsese seems to think that the only films that will remain the conscious of the public because they are 'real cinema' are the kind of films he makes: gritty, realistic, intense dramas either based on real events or socially/politically/culturally relevant time periods. Of course that's nonsense. Star Wars isn't based on anything real or human aside from the concept of good vs evil, and it is a cinema classic. But one can look further at films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Night of the Living Dead, and Dawn of the Dead, The Invisible Man, Frankenstein and other classic sci-fi and horror films of the 30s, 40s and 50s that at the time of their release were not seeing as real films, but had things to say about politics, race, gender, culture and made significant strides that other 'real films' did not, and have remained in public conscious for decades because of their popularity and genre of film they were based on, and are seen as classics of cinema. The best Marvel movies are no different from these, and someone as experienced and learned as Scorsese should know this.

But then again, the man said he hasn't seen them so...

If nobody cared what Scorsese had to say, there wouldn't be any comments about it or any pieces about it.

Some changes to the color in one scene to avoid an X rating are also not equivalent to audience-driven plot developments.

This is one of the biggest marvel problems, there is no longer constructive criticism even with so called professional critics. for instance there are people out there have said black panther, thor ragnarok, captain marvel, age of ultron having dodgy cgi is a bad argument or an opinion with zero merit to it.does not happen with other comic book movies with the same problem.

it is this type of thinking that has made marvel a joke in artistic Hollywood while blockbusters like ET, Terminator 2, Star Wars OT have stood the test of time as legit classic blockbusters.

Have we yet established that Marvel is a joke in artistic Hollywood?

The comparison of films that have stood the test of time is flawed in that we have no idea how MCU films will be seen in forty years. A better comparison would be how people see other genre films being made now (Avatar, Mad Max Fury Road, the Planet of the Apes remakes.)

Though, the MCU films seem to be doing okay.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/top/b...antasy_movies/

Are we going back to the whole Oscar stuff? wait 3 months when JOKER gets the best picture nomination. oh and best actor for Phoenix, because it is only logical that most best picture nominees also had nominations in acting, writing, or directing and if you are a big budget movie like some blockbusters classics like Titanic, Avatar or LOTR , you better have a nomination in cinematography or visual effects. Black Panther failed in all these categories. so where did the best picture nomination come from? from a film making stand point it should be impossible. anyone who understands film making would agree with me and that includes the Oscars 90 years own history to back me up on how other categories leads to big one of best picture.

Logan was the best example the Oscar snobbed. However 95% of best picture winners also won for screenplay. 99% of best picture nominees are nominated for screenplays. this is factual Oscar statistics. screenplay are the best indicator or best picture wins.Scorsese;s departed won for screenplay and picture. Every High budget film best picture nominee won for VFX. Even Scorese's own Hugo and Cameron's Avatar and Titanic.
So how did black panther miss out on those categorises and still got best picture?

Sad you brought up the Oscars again, that is another thing MCU has destroyed with cinema when an undeserving marvel movie was nominated for best picture. Iger wanted to use black panther to start a race war with scorsese. he was smart enough not to respond.

it took socrsese years to win an oscar, decades. Goodfellas, taxi driver, raging bill, gangs of new York, the aviator. He was ignored. MCU did it less than 10 years with a movie of bad cgi and one dimensional screenplay all because Disney has influence so in a way, scorsese movies come out looking more real than marvel movies.

If a movie has the 8th best adapted screenplay and the 6th and 9th best supporting actor performances of the year, it won't be nominated in those categories, so a lack of nominations in those categories isn't necessarily a knock.

People treating art like its rare.nope. anything is art. the reason marvel is not art is because they are indeed too sterilised and manufactured and follow a studio formula. how can we call it art when the directors Don't direct the movies so what art are they doing?

As awful as batman and Robin is, that movie was still art. it was Joel joel schumacher's bad art. it is better to be bad art like batman and Robin and no art like marvel, at least we bad art, you can now evolve to good art see the Nolan films. where he did get to direct and write his movies.

I appreciate your honesty in saying that you think MCU films aren't art, but Batman & Robin is. Just don't expect others to share that view.

[Powerboy]

Boseman makes a good point that some of it may be generational and racial. Just as black people will often see something as racist while a lot of white people are like, "What racism?", so older people may completely miss that a story is about huge conflict while a younger generation gets it because it's about their culture.

Six of one, half dozen of the other about the timing of Scorsese's comments. Just because he's a big name doesn't mean he's above a little self-promotion. Then again, maybe the interview took place because he has a movie coming out and he just took advantage to express his opinions.

It's quite common for older directors to express similar opinions. I was watching John Boorman's commentary on "Excalibur", a commentary done well before the MCU started, and he expressed his dislike of the new CGI era and mentioned that a fellow veteran director even went as far as to opine that it would be the death of "real" cinema. Incidentally, Boorman disagreed that it was that bad but still disliked the whole CGI phenomenon.

But, again, we get set in our ways and our opinions of how things should be. Among his generation, that sort of opinion is not uncommon. But again, the real deal for me is not whether he's right or not but that the majority of movies have always been designed for easy popular appeal.

[luprki]

There is good art: The Dark Knight, The Joker, X-Men 1&2, pre-Disney MCU
There is bad art: Batman and Robin, Green Lantern, Dark Phoenix
There is no art: Disney/MCU

[Blind Wedjat]

If nobody cared what Scorsese had to say, there wouldn't be any comments about it or any pieces about it.

Some changes to the color in one scene to avoid an X rating are also not equivalent to audience-driven plot developments.

When I say nobody cares, I mean the general audience does not care. Cinephiles, fanboys and haters can argue about it all they want on the internet, but it isn't going to affect anybody's life or viewing habits. People aren't going to suddenly stop watching MCU films because Scorsese said something. Likewise more people aren't going to start watching his movies more. Additionally, I doubt Disney or Marvel Studios care that much about his opinion that they'll start making significant changes to how they do things.

Nobody really cares.

[Colossus1980]

There needs to be more gangster movies. Now that's fine art cinema!

[Jokerz79]

When I say nobody cares, I mean the general audience does not care. Cinephiles, fanboys and haters can argue about it all they want on the internet, but it isn't going to affect anybody's life or viewing habits. People aren't going to suddenly stop watching MCU films because Scorsese said something. Likewise more people aren't going to start watching his movies more. Additionally, I doubt Disney or Marvel Studios care that much about his opinion that they'll start making significant changes to how they do things.

Nobody really cares.

The MCU had 3 films released in 2019 and combined they made over 4 billion dollars Disney ain't changing a thing they're just going to laugh to the bank.

[Beaddle]

Boseman makes a good point that some of it may be generational and racial. Just as black people will often see something as racist while a lot of white people are like, "What racism?", so older people may completely miss that a story is about huge conflict while a younger generation gets it because it's about their culture.

Six of one, half dozen of the other about the timing of Scorsese's comments. Just because he's a big name doesn't mean he's above a little self-promotion. Then again, maybe the interview took place because he has a movie coming out and he just took advantage to express his opinions.

It's quite common for older directors to express similar opinions. I was watching John Boorman's commentary on "Excalibur", a commentary done well before the MCU started, and he expressed his dislike of the new CGI era and mentioned that a fellow veteran director even went as far as to opine that it would be the death of "real" cinema. Incidentally, Boorman disagreed that it was that bad but still disliked the whole CGI phenomenon.

But, again, we get set in our ways and our opinions of how things should be. Among his generation, that sort of opinion is not uncommon. But again, the real deal for me is not whether he's right or not but that the majority of movies have always been designed for easy popular appeal.

read the full take from Chadwick , he is unbelievable to dare try and bring race to it. Martin scorsese is not a racist.



"He’s saying it at a time when he’s making a Netflix movie, so that’s how eyes get on his film and it’s not going to be in the cinemas," the actor continued. "It’s not going to be seen the best way. So, he is speaking to the time period. He is speaking also to his advantage…I did the first, you know, the superhero movie that was nominated for a [Best Picture] Oscar. I’m secure in that."

"The mystery that Scorsese is talking about, it’s in ‘Black Panther.’ And I think he funny thing about it is if he saw ‘Black Panther,’ he didn’t get that. He didn’t get that there was this feeling of being unsure. There was this feeling of not knowing what was gonna happy that Black people feel. Cause we never had a superhero like this before."

was Chadwick even born when scorsese directed Michael's Jackson BAD which was a short black cast film and was one of the few Black videos that made it to MTV when MTV were not playing black videos.

I am back on my chair. Chadwick is way off.

[luprki]

There needs to be more gangster movies. Now that's fine art cinema!

The difference is all gangster movies don’t follow and same formula and predicability as the MCU does.