Filmmaker Martin Scorsese has been in headlines as of late for saying Marvel movies “aren’t cinema.” The director/producer took to the New York Times to write his own opinion piece backing up his statement on the popular films.
Photo Credit: Variety
- Scorsese essentially doubles down on his criticism of Marvel films, saying in his op/ed, “I know that if I were younger, if I’d come of age at a later time, I might have been excited by these pictures and maybe even wanted to make one myself. But I grew up when I did and I developed a sense of movies — of what they were and what they could be — that was as far from the Marvel universe as we on Earth are from Alpha Centauri.”
- He goes on to reference legendary filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock en route to furthering his negative thoughts on the films, saying “Some say that Hitchcock’s pictures had a sameness to them, and perhaps that’s true — Hitchcock himself wondered about it. But the sameness of today’s franchise pictures is something else again. Many of the elements that define cinema as I know it are there in Marvel pictures. What’s not there is revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk. The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes.”
- He also refers to Marvel movies as “sequels in name but they are remakes in spirit” and “everything that the films of Paul Thomas Anderson or Claire Denis or Spike Lee or Ari Aster or Kathryn Bigelow or Wes Anderson are not.”
- He goes onto to point out that his problem with Marvel and other big franchise movies is the difficulty for other filmmakers to succeed, saying “no matter whom you make your movie with, the fact is that the screens in most multiplexes are crowded with franchise pictures.”
- Scorsese ends his piece with a bleak outlook on the future of “cinema,” saying “For anyone who dreams of making movies or who is just starting out, the situation at this moment is brutal and inhospitable to art. And the act of simply writing those words fills me with terrible sadness.”
You can watch nearly all of Marvel Studios’ films when Disney+ launches on November 12!