Martin Scorsese is urging filmmakers to save cinema, by doubling down on his call to fight comic book movie culture.
The storied filmmaker is revisiting the topic of comic book movies in a new profile for GQ. Despite facing intense blowback from filmmakers, actors and the public for the 2019 comments he made slamming the Marvel Cinematic Universe films — he called them theme parks rather than actual cinema — Scorsese isn’t shying away from the topic.
“The danger there is what it’s doing to our culture,” he told GQ. “Because there are going to be generations now that think … that’s what movies are.”
GQ’s Zach Baron posited that what Scorsese was saying might already be true, and the “Killers of the Flower Moon” filmmaker agreed.
“They already think that. Which means that we have to then fight back stronger. And it’s got to come from the grassroots level. It’s gotta come from the filmmakers themselves,” Scorsese continued to the outlet. “And you’ll have, you know, the Safdie brothers, and you’ll have Chris Nolan, you know what I mean? And hit ’em from all sides. Hit ’em from all sides, and don’t give up. … Go reinvent. Don’t complain about it. But it’s true, because we’ve got to save cinema.”
Scorsese referred to movies inspired by comic books as “manufactured content” rather than cinema.
“It’s almost like AI making a film,” he said. “And that doesn’t mean that you don’t have incredible directors and special effects people doing beautiful artwork. But what does it mean? What do these films, what will it give you?”
His forthcoming film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” had been on Scorsese’s wish list for several years; it’s based on David Grann’s 2017 nonfiction book of the same name. He called the story “a sober look at who we are as a culture.”
The film tells the true story of the murders of Osage Nation members by white settlers in the 1920s. DiCaprio originally was attached to play FBI investigator Tom White, who was sent to the Osage Nation within Oklahoma to probe the killings. The script, however, underwent a significant rewrite.
“After a certain point,” the filmmaker told Time, “I realized I was making a movie about all the white guys.”
The dramatic focus shifted from White’s investigation to the Osage and the circumstances that led to them being systematically killed with no consequences.
The character of White now is played by Jesse Plemons in a supporting role. DiCaprio stars as the husband of a Native American woman, Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), an oil-rich Osage woman, and member of a conspiracy to kill her loved ones in an effort to steal her family fortune.
Scorsese worked closely with Osage Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear and his office from the beginning of production, consulting producer Chad Renfro told Time. On the first day of shooting, the Oscar-winning filmmaker had an elder of the nation come to set to say a prayer for the cast and crew.
I mean, he’s not wrong. But there has always been a ton of shitty action movies with the same cut and paste plot. Marvel just tweaked the formula.
And it’s not like good movies aren’t still being made. The Marvel movies are historically bad at winning awards. There have been a handful of nominations, but not a lot of wins. The wins always go to good movies that deserve them.
Sure, the Marvel movies pull in more money than other movies, but the money makers are usually trash. Marvel is like the McDonald’s of movies. It’s going to pull in way more money than a fine dining establishment, but not because it’s good, because it’s the garbage that the public will take out their wallet for. There is space in the market for both of these things.
There is space in the market for both of these things.
Not so sure about that, and that might be the problem. Marvel/Disney is both rather monocultural and a ridiculously huge draw and brand that can suck the oxygen out of the marketing ecosystem. It could be true that the comic cinema industry is genuinely taking eyes off of other things and creating a less diverse cinema experience per capita. Even if for most people it’s only marginal, a slightly alternative take on an action or hero film with a slightly different angle or message or style is still diversity that might be important and valuable.
It would be interesting to compare this to the action and block buster movies of the past. Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that there was a noticeable diversity and I’m going to say thoughtfulness amongst big films of the past compared to today. I’m open to being wrong of course, but it’s worth thinking about, just because big-corp monopolisation can easily have these effects.
I’m partly influenced by a recent rewatch of Jurassic Park and noticing how subtly thoughtful it was while also being basically a straight action film (after the set up at least). There’s even a moment (when they first see the raptors being fed) that’s basically kinda vegan message or at least a critique or contrast between humans and “the monsters” of the film, done entirely but very clearly through editing and directing … it was really nice actually.
You’re wrong.
But to be clear, when you say “the past” you are talking about maybe twenty years. Thirty, tops.
Because people WERE in fact saying this about Star Wars. The notion that the new Hollywood brats were turning it into a commercial dystopia was very much a thing. So the old school action films you’re talking about are the blockbusters ranging from 1978 to maybe 2000 when the Blade, X-Men and Spider-Man films start building momentum for comic book movies.
Before then you’re in Old Hollywood territory, where the “action” stuff is pulp and exploitation in the margins. The status quo you remember is late 20th century kids bringing the crappy b-list stuff they grew up with into big money blockbuster fare.
Ummm … wrong about what exactly … I don’t that’s clear from your post?
Otherwise, we can both be right. The action blockbuster movie thing, as far as I understand, and as you state, was definitely a creature of the 70s up to now. And it’s also probably important and valuable to criticise that too. Danny Boyle, for instance, is on record saying that the great sin of Star Wars is that it transformed the idea of an “Adult film” into a pornographic film when it used to just be a normal drama film about adult and interesting things which have been pushed out of the industry by relatively childish blockbusters. Comic films can easily be seen as just an extension of that. My point was that we might find that it’s been a continuous collapse of “Adult films” under the weight of blockbusters to the point that the blockbusters aren’t even trying anymore to imitate, at least at times, the more nuanced “adult” films of the past.
All due respect to Boyle’s hot take, but I’d argue that US censorship had a whole lot more to do than Star Wars there.
I mean, sure, it created an understanding that family films that don’t get a restricted audience due to censorship make more money, but I’m gonna guess people would have figured that out at some point either way. It’s also interesting that the other target he gave in that quote was Pixar, but people tend to not mention that part.
I think there’s a sense that pre-blockbuster Hollywood wasn’t about spectacle or commercialism, which I find a bit confusing in the context of Cleopatra, Gone with the Wind or The Ten Commandments. I think the movies people miss are the pulpy trash they saw as kids, probably. “Serious dramas” or “adult films” were only at the forefront of filmmaking when they were at the forefront of profitability. That’s to say, when the so-called “star system” made it so that seeing Cary Grant or Humpfrey Bogart mostly just… hanging out and acting out stage plays could move audiences.
Which is, incidentally, why people are so desperate to praise Nolan or Villeneuve, who are both very competent visual filmmakers that are way less smart than they and the industry seem to think.
Okay, let me put it this way: I like most Rian Johnson movies. I think is worst movie is The Last Jedi. I think that movie was made worse by being a Star Wars film. I don’t think that would have been any different in 1982.
In the late-70s/80s it was slasher movies. In the 80s/90s it was Rambo-style action movies, or Lethal Weapon and Fatal Attraction-style thrillers.
There have always been Hollywood bandwagons.The difference is that back then the major studios made a bunch of films of all scopes and budgets, while today those same studios make fewer, more expensive movies.
If Scorsese was a young man today - or Robert Altman or William Friedkin, whoever - he probably wouldn’t get a chance to make a Raging Bull, he’d be steered towards a superhero film with - of course - NO final cut. The one exception is Christopher Nolan. And even he did an entire superhero TRILOGY.Taking what Marty is saying and putting it another way - major studio content is not driven by a director’s creative vision in the current environment, but by producers… the suits and their market research.
Taking what Marty is saying and putting it another way - major studio content is not driven by a director’s creative vision in the current environment, but by producers… the suits and their market research.
I’m by no means an expert but was that ever different? Making movies always was very expensive, so the people in charge obviously had to have money and then try to use that to make more money. That alone leads to rather conservative decisions regarding which movies should be produced and which shouldn’t. Artistic merit isn’t something I believe ever had much sway in Hollywood unless some directors actually used their previous success to bully the rich cats in charge to trust them or outright finance the movie themself. And that I guess is rather rare. I think the only thing really different today, is that market research today is way more advanced than it was in the 60’s or 70’s.
Making lower budget films and giving artistic freedom to their directors allowed them to:
- Spread the risk.
- Catch lightning in a bottle, sometimes.
This was also in the days when a film could play in theaters for months, breathe and grow.
Now, they want every movie they release to make 200 million in the first weekend, with a marketing carpet-bombing blitz.In Scorsese’s 70s heyday, a “modest success” was seen by the studio suits as a success, they made many of these and were happy about it.
Nowadays, a “modest success” is seen as a fizzle. Half a billion or bust.There probably are hundreds of weird movies made that cannot be explained by financial interest alone. In fact one was given above which you ignored. Raging Bull.
Look, I didn’t love Guardians 3, it’s a conservative, Christian movie and I don’t agree with most of its premises.
But there wasn’t a dry eye in the house by the end of that, and I’m pretty sure most of them know what “it meant”, and it certainly wasn’t “almost like AI making a film”. Ditto for Across the Spider-Verse, whcih is a progressive movie I do agree with.
There’s always been this argument that successfull movies are bad, and I’ve never liked it. It’s never been true. There are tons of bad films that make their money back, but for every Air Force One there is a Die Hard or Back to the Future (more conservative movies I don’t agree with but are very well made, go figure).
So yeah, I do agree that Oscar bait keeps Oscar baiting, and that superheroes aren’t killing cinema, which is a hard take to roll with this year in particular. But no, I actively don’t think superhero movies or genre movies are worthless or trash, any more than I think westerns are trash or action movies are trash.
How is Guardians 3 a conservative Christian movie? You know the director, James Gunn, is very outspokenly progressive, right?
I responded to this above, but just to clarify on this point, I mean small c conservative here. Which is absolutely not inconsistent with Gunn being a normal person who is not an actual fascist.
I mean that it’s a conservative movie in that it explicitly religious and does take the stance that science and technocratic “let’s change the world” science is inherently equal to hubris and negative, while the positive flipside is enduring suffering, embracing spirituality and being rewarded with a happy afterlife. There is absolutely a progressive read of those beliefs, there has been for hundreds of years. Gunn seems to be explicitly aligning with it here, and that’s fine, but that’s still a (small c) conservative viewpoint.
Hell, I’ll go one further: a lot of people on the opposite side of that argument are today, in fact, actual fascists. It’s not hard to go find examples of atheist dicks online, or of technocratic tyrants. Turns out your religious beliefs are not connected to whether you’re a good person. That doesn’t mean the Catholic worldview isn’t inherently conservative. I was using the word philosophically, not politically.
That’s a lot of mental gymnastics to make GOTG3 political.
It’s a movie about friendship, family, and a megalomaniac.
How is it mental gymnastics? I’m starting to feel bad for Gunn, because he put all that stuff on the movie super on purpose and apparently people will not just miss it they will actively try to ignore it.
Eh… I may be late to this, but… yeah, these are extreme SPOILERS. This thing really needs a content warning system, a spoiler alert system or both.
Anyway, dude, Rocket goes to actual heaven. They flag it as actual heaven. We see it on screen. Lyla straight up says there is a God and a heaven and Rocket gets to go to it.
Normally you expect this argument to be about some subtextual reinterpretation or an allegory or whatever but… no, man, it’s right there. Explicitly.
Hey, don’t look now, but besides being pretty explicit about there being a God and an afterlife it’s also super not on board with for-profit health care and animal testing. You may have missed how it’s like 75% of the running time of the movie. You could argue about it being a religious film, but political? It’s the story of a group of people whose friend’s organs are hadlocked by a corporation, they go fight the corporation and end up freeing all their animal test subjects.
Every time this “it’s not political” stuff comes up in online conversation I swear it’s like an optical effect of some sort. It makes you question how subjective perception is and wonder how other people’s minds are parsing the world in different ways.
God and Heaven exist in the Marvel universe in the same way that Thor and Zeus exist. You’re reading way too much in to it.
They do, but no, I’m not.
There’s a difference between using Christian mythos as mythos and making a spiritual point. You pick what to pull and why, and things have meaning.
Ironically, in this context if they had made this more of an explicit heaven it’d have been less of a conscious choice (see also, Thor: Love & Thunder). The framing of the afterlife, who states the existence of a divine plan, paired with the role that scene plays in the movie are all important context cues.
Again, people worked really hard to not trivialize that scene as a fantasy setup and instead charge it with meaning and a point. It’d be a shame to purposefully ignore it, whether you agree with the implied philosophical take or not.
Right on, those are some very fair points. I guess calling them trash is a bit far.
But out of genuine curiosity, could you expand on how the movies you mentioned are conservative Christian movies? I know Die Hard takes place on Christmas, but that’s all I’m picking up.
I have absolutely no idea what they mean by conservative/progressive movie. I too would like to know, because I’m utterly baffled.
The second back to the future movie even turns the villain into a trump-like megalomaniac
Oh, boy. Should have guessed that’s the bit that would get picked up.
I mean, I didn’t think Guardians was very subtle about this at all. James Gunn doesn’t seem to be an asshole, but you can be religious and not be a completely reactionary idiot. The movie features actual heaven, where a character tells another “there’s the hands that made us and then there’s the hands that guide the hands”, and says that heaven “is beatutiful and it is forever”. And then the villain yells “there is no God, that’s why I stepped in”, which is the tipping point for his allies turning on him. The entire diagnosis the movie has on the guy ends up being that “he didn’t want to make things better, he just hated things the way they are”, which is, for the record, a much, much better take on the equally conformist version of that in The Flash. It’s a very well made, very emotional, very beautiful movie, but… you know, it’s not very shy about spiritualism. If I had to sum it up I’d say it’s… eh… Stephen Colbert Catholic? In that wavelength?
As for Back to the Future… well, I’m not the first to notice that the “good future” is a Reaganomics fever dream. Somebody points out the Trumpy bad guy in the sequel, which I guess from the modern day makes it read different, but… yeah, it’s a very 80s franchise with very 80s sensibilities. Zemeckis has pushed back against this slightly, I think, and yeah, it’s being a bit jokey about the weirdness of the americana he’s clearly nostalgic for, but that doesn’t change the text. I mean, he’s also the guy that used “a black family lives here now” as shorthand for the town going to crap in the sequel. He also made the entirety of Forrest Gump, so… yeah, you don’t have to present a worldview on purpose to have it color your stuff. Once again, the movie isn’t mean about it, and it’s certainly not dumb, but it’s coming from a certain worldview and you can absolutely tell.
Die Hard is straight up MRA propaganda, though. Great film, love it to bits, but it’s entirely about how the down-to-Earth cop feels emasculated by his wife having a career and rubbing elbows with all the California yuppies only to get himself vindicated when things turn violent and he’s the only one with enough common sense and old school skills to fix the situation. Also, the government is fundamentally incompetent unless it’s specifically the cops. And Reginald VelJohnson’s entire arc is about how he should not stop shooting people just because he once killed a kid when he saw his toy gun, which is up there for “plot point that has aged the absolute worst in movie history” award. Still love it, though. Super conservative movie. The most political of this bunch, probably. Still good filmmaking.
Look, you don’t have to dislike things just because they’re built on implicit viewpoints that you don’t agree with. Art is art, and it carries meaning and implications. You can notice them and still enjoy the result regardless of whether you agree with those viewpoints. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to enjoy anything made outside this century or… you know, your own culture. It’s fine.
I wasn’t on board with you at first, but this write-up was thought provoking and I appreciated the read.
Cool, thanks!
People sometimes think analysis or interpretation of stuff they like is an attack, especially when it identifies elements they disagree with in things they enjoy.
But that’s not the point, it’s about understanding what you’re hearing and seeing and you can absolutely enjoy things even if they’re saying things you don’t agree with. If I made that point to one person this entire thread was worth it (and already more interesting than Martin Scorsese not liking superhero movies, honestly).
Wow, just wow. Are your arms sore from all of that reaching?
Oh, hey, shitposting. Maybe this is a legit Reddit alternative after all.
For the record, except for Guardians 3, which is a bit too new to have much in the way of hermeneutics going on around it, none of those takes are new at all. I’m being a lot less original than you give me credit for. It’s less a reach and more the go-to default read for these.
A good guy with a gun kills bad guys with guns? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Just as Jesus commanded.
TIL that somehow it makes sense to consider the classic back to the future somehow a fucking conservative movie. LMAO might wanna lay off whatever heavy drug you’d been ingesting
Less conservative and more a product of its time, so let’s say centre with a whiff of Reagan.
But yeah, hey, that’s a thing. If you learned it today and you’re curious about it there are decades of criticism and analysis about it. I am very far from being the first to point that out, among other things because I was a toddler when it came out.
Despite other people pointing it out I’m not really buying it.
There is a line “Ronald Reagan, the actor? President?” Which seems to indicate it’s a ridiculous idea.
Then as others have pointed out, Biff in BTTF 2 is basically exactly trump and they couldn’t paint that character in a worse light. He’s an evil villain.
The reality is probably that the movies have nothing political in them other than the joke about Reagan which likely actually wasn’t meant to be a real critique
That’s not how meaning works, though.
Look, I get it, not everybody cares or knows how semiotics work, but it’s always baffling how much people get invested in the notion of “no politics in art” no matter how often this comes up.
Yes, there are politics in Back to the Future, as in any other film where the worldview of the creators becomes the perspective from which the entire film is put together. Things in movies don’t happen by accident, they get carefully written, acted and shot. Everything in a movie is something somebody is saying, and like any other thing you say it has both superficial and subtextual meaning.
So yes, BTTF does spend the entire movie boiling down maturity and success to being financially successful and self-confident. Because it’s an American movie from the 80s and that’s how young Bob Zemeckis and Bob Gale saw being self-fulfilled looking like in 1985.
And yes, they poke good intentioned, light fun at Reagan being president. And they acknowledge some form of past racism in the form of Goldie being president, but also holy crap, the way Goldie is characterized also tells you a lot of how the Bobs saw race working and let’s just say that nothing in BTTF2 and Forrest Gump was accidental.
Is it an active piece of propaganda? No, that’s not where the bar is for containing a political or even politicized worldview. But it does present a worldview, and that is… a pretty centrist, eminently materialistic take on what was a fairly conservative world.
I promise that’s not an insult.
no politics in art
Never ever ever said that because it’s untrue as fuck. You lost me completely
You… literally said
The reality is probably that the movies have nothing political in them other than the joke about Reagan which likely actually wasn’t meant to be a real critique
It’s right there, I’m looking at it.
I am now more curious to know how you think this works. Like, you think there’s a political take in some art, but not in all art, so there’s a line somewhere between explicit and implicit political stuff, I suppose?
Or is the confusion that you thought I understood you as advocating for no politics in art instead? Because that’s not what I’m saying.
I love his movies, but this feels like an “Old Man Yells at Cloud” story.
C’mon bro-- comic book movies have even ruined comic book movies at this point 😅
The thing is though, Low effort, high special effect action, action over plot moviesis nothing new, before marvel it was transformers and so on all the way back to shoot em up westerns at the dawn of cinema.
Its not like before the MCU, you’re average movie goer was watching super artistic cerebral movies, and comic book movies took that all away, like this guy is acting
Bad movies are bad movies. Many movies are adapted from tv, books, and fairy tales. The only thing special about comic book movies is that they are all based on existing stories that have accompanying artwork. There are important scenes, moments captured in time, and I could understand how an auteur might feel hamstrung by the existing imagery.
But how is that different from making a pirate movie, where everyone looks and talks like Long John Silver? Or a gangster movie where everyone dresses and talks like James Cagney?
If he’s complaining about big budget CG action flicks, those aren’t specific to comic book movies, either. Avatar, Mission Impossible, Inception, Planet of the Apes, shit go back to Towering Inferno or the old Harryhausen movies. People want spectacle, wonder, and adventure. That’s not new. That’s why the comics exist in the first place.
If he’s complaining about studios churning out blockbusters and crowding the release calendar, yeah that’s got to be frustrating. Just pick a weekend right after a DC release, and you’ll do fine.
Have movies typically planned and scheduled 10+ sequels/spinoffs in a shared universes prior to the MCU? I don’t remember ever hearing that X1 is going to come out this year and Y1 the next with Z1 in the winter, etc etc over the course of 4-5 years.
Is that really similar to “pirate movies” or westerns or whatever from back in the day? When it comes to budgeting? Locking yourselves into set releases publicly, blocking theater schedules, etc?
That’s a fair point, but studios have always planned out their slates, just not publicly. They do know what they plan to release over the next 4-5 years, and they announce them when it is best for the movie.
Star Wars, Flash Gordon, Pixar has been hiding easter eggs for future movies since long before Marvel. There just wasn’t a reason to promote something so far away.
But I don’t see why that’s a bad thing.
It absolutely is yelling at clouds.
They’re just fun scifi westerns, not the end of cinema.It’s just a catchy headline to mask the real point of this article: to advertise his new movie.
Good point
Man who makes only gangster movies angry at people who make only superhero movies.
“Let’s get back to making movies about the mafia!” lol
God, I got so bored watching The Irishman in 2019. I still cannot fathom why he would make another 90’s movie that late in the game. Grow up already. Also, who has time to watch a 3,5 hour movie? Geriatrics and boomers, that’s who. Thank you for sitting through my rant.
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Or maybe The Irishman was a boring slog.
yeah, really. I don’t give a shit about the movies he makes, that’s why I don’t watch them.
Huh, I remember reading his critique around when Endgame was coming out and thought he just didn’t get it.
Now, after years of the shit the MCU has been pushing out, I see he was ahead of our time.
The multiverse could have been so cool, but they went about it ass backwards. They introduce Kaang in a ‘quiet’ part of the overall story, where no one really has any stakes and we have little investment in anyone’s stories. Everyone is kinda doing their own things, mainly dealing with the aftermath of Endgame. Even Spider-Man, who we should be feeling protective of, decides to have a reset. We didn’t care about Kaang because we no long had an investment in any character.
Then we’re supposed to feel scared of Kaang? And then in >!Quantumania they straight up just strip him of all mystique to the point the end shot of that movie is just comical with the arena full of Kaang’s making the character have 0 remaining intrigue. !< Even had the stuff with Masters not happened they’d lost their chances to make it interesting. Paired with Skrull just not really resonating with the audience at all, it has been misstep after misstep.
!imo the only way you fix it now is have Doom come in the the F4, outright murder Kaang as the actual universal badass and then switch back to the personal less connected stories to tell a series of Invasion stories as the universe crumbles. Lead up to Fox-verse Vs MCU showdown. Then have a battleworld at the end of it and just reset the whole thing.!<
Basically, in trying to make a mainstream product they’ve ended up with something no one really cares about.
The thing about the MCU is that there is very little consequences, there is a giant corpse in the ocean for the last 2 years unmentioned.
We could have done something cool like an out there doctor strange movie where things were a little unexpected and off only for a grand reveal that this wasn’t our doctor strange, that it was an alternative version in a different. Big twists like that could have done something that could only be done with the multiverse.
All that said it is pure fluff, I put it on when I want to tv on not when I want to watch a movie.
The thing about the MCU is that there is very little consequences
This has always been what’s bothered me about these movies. The fights so frequently seem to have no lasting impact or consequences. Beat the ever living shit out of each other, collateral damage absolutely everywhere, neither side gains/loses much, and in 15-20 mins it’ll all start over again but possibly with different players. What’s the point? And what about all the innocent people and their homes/businesses that are being destroyed in the middle of the fight? There are no stakes, no skin in the game.
Yeah. They could have gotten freaky with that corpse. Telling me Damage Control is out here chasing down Kamala when they could be after a celestial just chilling in the water lol. You know some villain going to try and eat it, get crazy powers. Some good guy has some wash up on their shore, gets crazy powers. So many opportunities left on the table.
He was right then too. Nothing has changed
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I was bitterly disappointed even by Endgame. All flash and no substance.
For me, all these movies rely on stakes and villains. As soon as you start fucking around with time nothing has any stakes any more. You can undo anything. Also Josh Brolin doesn’t have the screen presence required for a big bad.
Compare to original Iron Man. Jeff Bridges fills the screen, dominating every scene with cartoonish meme potential. Hugo Weaving, Tom Hiddleston, even Michael Keaton have it… Josh is missing something. He’s not a bad actor by any means, but some roles just aren’t for him.
I think Guardians of the Galaxy is the only MCU franchise that doesn’t hinge on the villain, and it’s actually their most consistent series of movies. Even if the game has made me annoyed at the movies just making Drax and Mantis into fucking morons.
People who disparage Marty forget or don’t know that he has been a fierce proponent and heavy financial supporter of film restoration through companies like Milestone Films for more than three decades now. If you ever enjoyed world cinema, the films of Kalatozov, Pasolini, Buñuel, Murnau and many more, there is a decent chance you were able to enjoy them in good quality through the direct efforts of Martin Scorsese and others.
“Because there are going to be generations now that think … that’s what movies are.”
should be understood in this context as well. We owe him so much gratitude for keeping the language of film alive.
BUT HE INSULTED MARVEL 😠 😡 😡 FUCK HIM AND HIS PRETENTIOUS BULLSHIT! HE’S JUST MAD THAT MARVEL MAKES BILLIONS
It’s been that way for a loooong time.
Movies became so expensive to produce that studios can’t finance them themselves.
So they turned to the banks.
Banks are by nature risk averse.
So a production company has to submit an application to their bank’s movie financing department like you would when applying for a home loan.
The bank decides whether to finance the movie based on the information submitted: Script, subject matter, director, which stars have committed to the project, etc.
Now if you imagine, people from the banking industry are not artists and creatives and visionaries. They just look at raw investment potential, i.e. Is this proposed production going to pay off the loan with interest?
If there’s any risk, e.g. this has never been done before, or there’s no recognizable franchise branding, or if something could be controversial in a meaningful way, the bank won’t approve the production loan.
So sequels, brand name franchises, with writing committees, are easier to get approvals from the banks, therefore are more likely to make it into production.
That’s why Hollywood doesn’t make daring, experimental, and controversial movies much anymore.
Capitalism ruins everything.
Enshittification doesn’t just happen to online platforms.
And it’s not just movies.
Hit song analysis systems like Platinum Blue, aka Music XRay, use algorithms to compare new songs to hit songs of the past to rate the chances that they will become hits themselves.
This is why all new songs sound the same and there are so many cover versions.
New songs are scored by hit song analysis system(s) and have to achieve a high score showing how much they resemble previous hit songs before money is allocated for promotion.
That’s… really sad
and that will end too. look how Disney is giving so many flops. Especially the Marvel division. comic book fatigue has already started
If marvel stopped after endgame it would have still arguably been art. Movies have always been a cash grab to some extent, but at least those movies were inspired.
I don’t think Scorsese is wrong necessarily, but there’re a lot of old man yells at cloud vibes happening. He still makes movies he wants but he’s butthurt he doesn’t get the accolades he did in his heyday?
People’s tastes ebb and flow and this will “correct” eventually. I mean, punk rock happened because rock and disco got so overwrought and bland in the 70s. Cinema will evolve but I’m willing to bet it’ll be into something Scorsese hates before noir esque gangster films are de rigeur again
‘Cinema’ as Scorsese knows it probably really is dead. When people go to a movie theater they typically want spectacle to justify the price tag.
I’m all in favor of thought provoking artistic original movies that challenge my perspective but I rarely decide to chance a trip to the theater for that sort of film.
Lmao I had comic book movie fatigue back in 2004, and quit watching movies entirely in 2009, after watching one too many remakes
movie fatigue is real. soon movies will collapse and we can finally go back to the golden age of plays
I still enjoy comic book movies when they’re good. The problem is they’re trying too hard to make all the characters quippy and that gets old. Not everyone needs to be Spider-Man. You can still make serious movies about comic book stories. The worst one I saw was Ragnarok. I didn’t bother with love and thunder but heard it was even worse.
Love and thunder was Thor trying to do the Ragnarok thing and it not landing. It was very very not good
So in a way it’s going right back to the way things were during the Golden Age of Hollywood. I hope this means more musicals are on the way.
I mean, can’t we just have both? On some days I want to see a silly lighthearted action movie and on some days I want to see a heart wrenching story about the deepest darkest recesses of the human mind. It’s not a zero sum game.
We’ve just had the highest grossin opening weekend with Barbenhiemer.
Yes, we can have both. They need to have both otherwise they are only accomodating part of their audience.
The Barbie movie is a perfect example of the balance of pinache and meaning, and mainstream movies ought to learn from that.
And that lead actress, whoever she is, should totally get an Oscar for her performance this year.
Something can be lighthearted or action based and still be interesting film making in contrast to the paint by numbers MCU films and some others.
It’s pure action, but Fury Road is an example of a simple action movie that had thought put into the editing, cinematography, etc. Barbie is light hearted but similarly had some ideas to play with.
It literally is a zero sum game. Studios dump all their money into these types of movies and there’s no money left over for the “story about the deepest darkest recesses of the human mind.”
And yet A24 exists and continues to find success.
https://www.the-numbers.com/box-office-records/worldwide/all-movies/theatrical-distributors/a24
A24 has an online cult following, but they struggle at the box office even with wide releases.
You are assuming that if Marvel movies didn’t exist everyone would just go watch Requiem for a Dream instead, which is just silly. They target different audiences and the same people could choose to see one today and the other tomorrow. It’s not like Oppenheimer was made by a bunch of indies scraping money on Kickstarter.
I’m not assuming anything like that. That’s you putting your ridiculous dichotomic outlook of any subject into someone else’s mouth. There’s a good chance if Requiem for a Dream required a 2023 movie budget, it wouldn’t have even been made. An unknown director/writer with a 2023 budget with a movie like that? Ha. There would have been no option to see that the next day. Also, are you comparing Requiem for a Dream to Oppenheimer?
disney isn’t the only one funding movies.
your regular $15m arty pantsy black and white movie isn’t paid for the mouse.
I don’t think that’s true. While the newest MCU movie were not doing as well as they were before, outside these main cinematic universe there have been some great recent comic book movies: the two Spiderverse movies are such absolute delights and some of the best animated movies ever made, and “The Batman” and “Joker” are fantastic as well. (Let’s… not talk about the DCEU.)
I wonder if he would consider “The Departed” to be “manufactured content” by his own definition as well, considering the fact it is much more than merely “inspired” by “Infernal Affairs”. Just sayin’.
My take on it is eventually viewers will tire of the genre, and it will fade out into the background like most other genres. Dramas were all the rage in the 40s, Westerns were very popular in the 50s, in the 70s and 80s you have disaster films and pure action type stuff that was incredibly popular, the 90s had the start of some very popular independent films, and the late 90s and early aughts had a lot of popular fantasy/epics and animation films.
None of those genres completely went away, and some have had resurgence from time to time. Comic based movies won’t be dominating forever. There was and still are a lot of complaints about the movies made in the previous couple decades, and I think it says something that people are finding these comic stories so compelling. I think “Hollywood” needs to look in a mirror to remind themselves why these types of movies have became so popular… is it just everyone attached to beautiful art and special effects? Or is it perhaps that maybe their storytelling wasn’t as great, or original as they thought, and they are losing out to stories written decades ago because they are just simply more interesting?
Yeah, people remember a handful of classic war movies or westerns and think that era was magical but for every great film there was a hundred terrible cookie cutter cash grabs.
I would love to see some more directors focus on making great art but the reality is that’s incredibly hard.
I’m already tired… Spiderman gets recycled ever so often because of the license they have, then the multi verse was fine the few first movies but gets annoying after, then you get super heroes that only hard fans know and no one else.
I actually think the multiverse concept is a super annoying and obvious cash grab. At no point did I think “oh cool these movies connect”. From the first moment to me it read as “oh they’re planning to make 100 movies and tying them together is just a tactic to con people into seeing all 100 the same way people have watched plenty of sequels they know will suck, but they just want to finish the trilogy”. Then the first time I heard it referred to as the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” I threw up in my mouth. I’ll never understand how people didn’t get bored and jaded after… 10 years max. We’re now sailing past 20 years from where I see this as all starting and it’s still some of the most popular shit of all time.
I feel like technology has changed things a lot. In the past when there was tube TVs with crappy resolution and poor quality sound you had to go to a theater for good quality picture and sound. Now TVs are good enough that if you’re going to watch a 3 1/2 hour long movie about some gangsters in their 70s reminiscing about a hit they did many decades before, you’re better off watching it at home. Why would someone want to go to the theater for that?
Now people go to the theater for the spectacle. Big event movies that people get dressed in costumes for. Movies with big effects that their home TV and sound system just won’t give as good an experience.
Serious dramas? I’m not getting anything more from watching it at the theater than I’m going to get at home on my TV.
And why is that a bad thing? A modern 4K TV with even just a speaker bar probably gives a better viewing experience than people had when they watched Taxi Driver in the theaters in 1976.
It’s definitely an issue, but it’s not an unworkable one. Villeneuve films for exemple, while a bit hit-or-miss on the characters, definitely use the format in a way where you loose something if you watch it on TV instead of in a theater.
I saw BR 2049 in the cinema, and even now, several years later, I wish I could see it again that way. The sound over that enormous system was absolutely incredible, in a way that I could never recreate in my terraced house with neighbours. That’s the draw of cinema for me these days.
Those are big special effects movies. You’re certainly not going to Villeneuve movies because they’re well written. Well the writing in Dune is good, but only because he’s sticking close to the novel. But even with Dune, I’m obviously not going to the theater for the story (because I already know the story) I’m going for the visuals and sound.
I hate super hero movies …do you know what I do? I don’t watch them…there’s nothing to be saved …studios will stop making those terrible movies once people stop watching them…if there is a lot of audience there’s no meaning in stop producing…
Damn, and here’s Scorsese who cant help but keep watching these movies. Why didn’t he think of not watching them?
He’s right. Not that comic book movies are bad but how they are made is bad (also other movies nowadays). Batman trilogy is magnificent and I don’t like comic books… It’s all about constant action and no plot and thrilling parts to graduate the plot. You don’t need bambilion of explosions to have a good movie (Joker).
Also I think that part of the problem is CGI. Before CGI movie makers needed to take the shot for the first time (cause money) so everyone was max concentrated and gave everything into their performance. Also everything needed to be precise to make sense. Nowadays it doesn’t matter… Just do few shots in front of green screen and we’ll do the rest.
Of course there are exceptions, but the mainstream money-making machine is taking this movie soul-sucking path to produce quantity not quality in order to make piles of money. They don’t care about art.
If I’m paying $25 to watch a movie on a giant screen, it better have explosions and other shiny shit to justify the price.
I can watch other films at home.
Lol people like you think this way and then you wonder why we elect fascists like Donald Trump. 😆
That’s a conclusion for sure.
One you don’t like and in turn, you can have yourself a nice hot cup of “too bad”. We’re sick of immature idiots like you defending an exploitative industry that has monopolized an entire art form, enabled the rape of countless innocent actors and actresses because of that monopoly, and does nothing but churn out prefabricated, hollow, meaningless, propaganda-filled garbage. We don’t want your fucking crap anymore. Shove it.
Say the guy who thinks everyone who doesnt enjoy the same thing as him is a Trump-voting fascist.
Please. Dont generalise like that. To anyone.
Says the guy who doesn’t see that fascism is enabled by anti-intellectualist mindsets that make people reject movies and other media that require a modicum of thought and intellectual participation on the audience’s part. Anti-intellectualist mindsets like the kind you’re peddling.
Grow the fuck up and stop getting defensive when called out on it. You’re wrong and Martin Scorsese is right whether you want him to be or not.
And thinking everyone should think the same and enjoy the same thing is a big step into fascistic thinking. You might tell yourself that forcing a modicum of thought and intellectual participation on people is for a good cause. But you arent, in these comments at least, a good judge of what intellectual participation is.
Which is what you do when you do something wrong and then demand everyone has to conform to your way of thinking when called out on it. Because you portray yourself as an ignorant common man standing up to the out-of-touch academic in the ivory tower who tells you facts you don’t want to hear. Because you think that’s an acceptable way to live. Because you refuse to see how doing that hurts everyone else.
You might think of thinking and intellectual investment as egregious violations of your human rights, but that’s not how the real world works. You are an adult with responsibilities who is helping to run a democracy, and as such, you do in fact have to think and consume content that helps you think. It’s called growing up and you and the rest of the United States badly need to do it before Trump and his little cult exploits your refusal to stop being a child to commit genocide.
This shit happening with movies is having far-reaching effects throughout all of society and you see it as well as we do; you just don’t want to take responsibility for it.
You are a child.
Well, excuse me for not wanting to be called a fascist just for liking action movies.
you and the rest of the United States
So now you’re calling me an American?! Jeez.
Remember that Martin Scorsese’s last big movie was The Irishman, so he isn’t saving the movie industry either.
Also, Hugo was based on a comic book, so kind of hypocritical.
Notice how there wasn’t 11 sequels and offshoots to Hugo?
Notice how Hugo was a flop? Those facts are not mutually exclusive.
The thing I like about the MCU is the shared continuity. I appreciate when the styles differ from the standard as well, but I don’t view multiple sequels and offshoots as a bad thing inherently.
Generally, the issue he’s talking about isn’t caused by comic book movies. It completely predates the modern comic book movie. Comic books are just the current medium for that style of story telling. In the 80s and 90s it was body builder action movies. The 90s and 00s focused more on the slasher film. Now it’s comic book movies.
I honestly think Scorsese is more upset that he personally is having a more difficult time getting backing for his films due to the limited commercial success of his films lately and he’s blaming the viewer and producers rather than looking at himself.
It’s 100% how no one can get backing for anything new. There are hardly any comedies anymore for example.
Also, Hugo was based on a comic book …
More an illustrated novel than a comic book. Also, there are great
comic booksgraphic novels. I feel that his criticism is more of the formulaic and shallow plot and characters frequently associated with comic books, rather than the medium itself.
What we really need is a nonprofit organization that rents out equipment and set space to directors so they don’t have to turn to big movie studios to get their projects made.
And we need federated online independent movie portals so people know where to find them.
I would be willing to fund something with tax dollars for art grants. Heck it could even be a low or zero interest loan if they want to profit on it.
Couldn’t agree more. I enjoyed some of the superhero movies from the early 2000s because they had good stories, they were clearly made by people passionate about them and they felt novel at the time. Things went downhill over the next decade or so and then I saw The Avengers and thought it was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen and couldn’t understand why anyone would like it. Further, the people who did like it, all told me the same thing, that you need to watch half a dozen other movies first. Why? Who in their right mind makes that decision as a producer? The Avengers is a movie with no character arcs, no plot build up, no introduction, and nothing the characters do feels like it has any weight and you know they’re more or less invincible. It’s boring garbage and people love it to death. I haven’t really watched many superhero movies since, especially Marvel.
Who in their right mind makes that decision as a producer?
Business-people obviously and sadly. I mean movies have always been a business first, but since there are now basically only 2 or three large companies left with a much larger share of the income they can much better predict the expected income. Everything becomes more efficient. Before with thousands of little studios competing each individual project was kind of hustling around in all kinds of directions. It was hit or miss at random basically. And a small studio doesn’t do focus-grouping in order to increase a movies financial success - that would be much too expensive for a small project. Those things only make sense financially if your movie is fairly large OR your company already has a well oiled marketing-department that focus-groups for basically every movie automatically. But with focus-groups you obviously always aim for what most people like. It’s like the lowest denominator. That’s why so many things feel so boring in marvel/disney-productions. There’s no too room for random happy accidents.
I still have hopes for cinema though, since the incredible rise of the A24 brand in recent years for me is a clear signal that people are fed up with this marvel/disney-monoculture-assembly-line that clogges up the cinemas. One major aspect of the disney-death-star is that Disney basically prevents other productions from materializing. They even prevent some of their own projects from materializing as their planning shows them that N large movies a year is about the most they can extract from the movie-going audience. So they will not produce more big budget blockbusters, because that would only waste money. (If that doesn’t make sense think about this: the more blockbuster you release each year the less it will be watched as you reach a saturation at a certain point. As a studio you try to release big-budget movies at times at which they don’t have to compete with similar movies. Disney being the biggest player - aka the “disney-death-star” that has gobbled up pixar/marvel/star-wars and the entire 20th century fox IP/franchises - is defining what is and isn’t possible to be released during a year (and making a profit with reasonable likelihood)).
Similar with competitors: They know that their big budget movie will have to compete with e.g. Marvels new this-and-that that weekend (or another Disney release at another time) and will not produce a movie. Disney is clogging up the cinemas with their grey goo.
A24 simply made movies that are different and not aimed at everyone. That simple idea was e extremely radical.
Who in their right mind makes that decision as a producer?
A producer who wants to make billions?
there isn’t a finite amount of film, why not let people who enjoy superhero movies watch superhero movies? why are these fucking directors compelled to curate what the industry produces? I’m guessing he got his budget rejected and blamed action flicks.
Further, the people who did like it, all told me the same thing, that you need to watch half a dozen other movies first. Why?
Eff that! Those people dont understand superhero comics. Nobody who picks up a Spider-Man comic starts back at the beginning, back in 1962. What makes Marvel comics interesting to those who enjoy Marvel comics is that despite the comic being about one (or a team) superhero, it feels like theres events happening in the background, and past and future events that has happened and shaped the character. Their world feels more alive because you might not know what happened in another comic series but still get references to it. MCU manages to do this in miniature. You CAN watch every movie, but you shouldnt have to. The story stands alone despite there being references to stuff that you might not know about. And that makes it better than DCU movies.
I dont want to go back to boring, stand-alone movies with generic loser action heroes who can do superhero stuff like taking down jet planes despite pretending not to have superhero powers, and a sequel after another sequel then reboot. I mean, someone recently complained about getting tired of the John Wick movies… Like we’ve gotten 4 movies. 2 hours every second year isnt something to get tired of… 7 years of 20 episodes each is getting close to tiresome, if you enjoy it like you said you did.
I want a continious story in a continious world. I find that fun entertainment. And I’m sad that some Oscar-baiting movie producer think this isnt what movies can be.
Gross, I can’t get behind a single thing you said.
And thats natural. We cant all enjoy the same stuff. :)
I just want to show that theres comic fans out there who actually enjoy having the comicbook movies we dreamt about when we were kids. And got disappointed over and over when the movie was so loosely based on the source material that it wasnt recognisable.
Remember before Marvel movies, when we had such hits as Encino Man, Problem Child, Speed 2: Cruise Control, and and Cocktail? I’ve got news for you, Marty, cinema has been killing cinema since the dawn of cinema, and yet cinema survives. There will always be movies that someone doesn’t like that make a FUCK ton of money. Then there will be the passion projects that gain a cult following decades after the fact. If you are lucky, you get a little of both sides of the coin, but most aren’t. Get off your high-art horse and enjoy some escapism, not everyone has a 9 figure net worth, some of us need to forget how much life sucks and watch a guy with a hammer beat alien skulls into paste.
Hey now, let’s leave Encino Man out of this.
No wheezing the juice!
That just sounds like immature drivel from someone angry they’re being called out for not thinking about anything.
The existence of low-quality garbage does not justify its existence and the fact is that post-endgame Marvel movies SUCK. And they suck because they do not follow basic rules of plot, building up suspense, meaningful stakes and other important shit the rabble either forgot about or never knew.
And the fact remains that Americans are suffering because they’re not being exposed to high-level ideas in movies, one of the kinds of entertainment they consume the most, and being actively discouraged from thinking by and large through arguments of your own intended to justify their ignorance to avoid emotional hurt. It’s hurting us as a people. Art isn’t there solely to entertain, it’s there to teach you things and make you think, and one of the things Americans badly need to learn is that life isn’t all about being entertained and having fun. You have to be willing to put on your big boy pants and actually think.
The fact that there is even a dichotomy between enjoyable movies and movies that make audiences think is what should be upsetting people right now, not Martin Scorsese pointing out truths that make you feel bad.
Grow up.
Dude. You need to lay off the caffeine or whatever it is. That was actually insane.
Yep. As immature as expected.
some of us need to forget how much life sucks and watch a guy with a hammer beat alien skulls into paste.
Whoa. I think you’re late for your shrink. Don’t forget to take your meds. My life doesn’t suck or at least not that bad.
I’ll save you a trip to your shrink and armchair-diagnose you with NPD.
