Originally Posted by
Mister Mets
There is a substance to his complaint, although it may be based on an underlying fallacy.
Here's the argument as I've heard it. Scorsese came of age as a director during the era of New Hollywood, when there was a string of exciting new work that didn't conform to earlier standards, partly as a way to compete with TV. In the ten years after 1967, we had daring mainstream material like The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider, Patton, Five Easy Pieces, The French Connection, The Last Picture Show, A Clockwork Orange, The Godfather, Cabaret, Deliverance, Mean Streets, The Exorcist, The Last Tango in Paris, The Godfather Part 2, Lenny, Chinatown, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dog Day Afternoon, Nashville, Network, All the President's Men and Taxi Driver.
One explanation is that this era came to an end with the success of summer blockbusters of Jaws, Star Wars, Superman, which brought more family friendly hits and sequels.
Another explanation is that the movie industry had failed to adjust to the reality of American consumers moving to the suburbs. When the multiplexes came along, more people were able to see more movies near where they lived, and they opted to see Superman II rather than Reds.
In addition, if the late 60s/ early 70s was a period when movies were able to do stuff that we couldn't see on TV, we may be arguably be shifting to an era where the exciting mature audiences material is on TV (Game of Thrones, Fleabag, Better Call Saul, Chernobyl, Now They See Us, etc.)