Poor Martin Scorsese.
The long time veteran filmmaker and Oscar winning director of such classic crime dramas as Taxi Driver (1976), Goodfellas (1991) and Casino (1995) was only expressing his opinion of Disney’s Marvel franchise when he called them “theme-park” films which in turn drew backlash from the “Hollyweird” elite.
“I don’t see them. I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema,” Scorsese told Empire magazine in the 10/4/19 issue while promoting his latest three-hour-plus gangster epic, The Irishman (2019) scheduled to premiere on Netflix Nov. 27 starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino. “Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”
The damning comments were followed by another veteran filmmaking legend and Oscar winner, Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather trilogy – 1972-1990), who at a press conference in Lyon, France clarified Scoresese’s.
“When Martin Scorsese says that the Marvel pictures are not cinema, he’s right because we expect to learn something from cinema, we expect to gain something, some enlightenment, some knowledge, some inspiration,” and, “Martin was kind when he said it’s not cinema. He didn’t say it’s despicable, which I just say it is,” Coppola remarked.
A year before actor Ethan Hawke expressed his dismay with Marvel’s Logan (2017) in a Film Stage interview.
“Now we have the problem that they tell us ‘Logan’ is a great movie. Well, it’s a great superhero movie. It still involves people in tights with metal coming out of their hands. It’s not Bresson. It’s not Bergman. But they talk about it like it is,” Hawke said. “I went to see ‘Logan’ ‘cause everyone was like, ‘This is a great movie’ and I was like, ‘Really? No, this is a fine superhero movie.’ There’s a difference, but big business doesn’t think there’s a difference. Big business wants you to think that this is a great film because they wanna make money off of it.”
“These two guys (Scorsese and Coppola) are my heroes, and they have earned the right to express their opinions,” director Jon Favreau (The Lion King – 2019) told CNBC. “I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if they didn’t carve the way. They served as a source of inspiration, you can go all the way back to Swingers.... They can express whatever opinion they like.”
Doctor Strange (2016) was the worst of them - an overdosed LSD acid trip using magic whose screenplay was a rush job as a means to keep up with Marvel’s release schedule, especially since the lead character played by Benedict Cumberbatch was slated to appear in other future MCU installments. Add to that writer/director Scott Derrickson’s decision to not use an Asian actor as a sorcerer mentor and instead casting Tilda Swinton in the role as a means to avoid negative racial stereotypes was just another example of Disney’s attempt at political correctness.
While the storyline for Thor: Ragnarok (2017) made no sense, it did have Cate Blanchett as the villainess who stole the show, which made the two hours spent watching the film tolerable.
As for Black Panther (2018), I still can’t get through it without dozing off during the first half hour.
Avengers: Infinity War (2018) was a comic book nerd’s wet dream – a chance for “The Big Bang Theory” crowd to get their rocks off seeing every superhero in MCU land come together to battle a supervillain from a “galaxy far, far away” who, after wiping everyone out on Earth, just wanted to be left alone. Just because a majority of the superheroes were killed didn’t mean we would never see them again. To quote Howard Beale, the Mad Prophet of the Airwaves, played by Peter Finch in Network (1976), “We'll tell you anything you want to hear… and no matter how much trouble the hero is in, don't worry, just look at your watch; at the end of the hour he's going to win. We'll tell you any shit you want to hear.” Thus, no payoff.
The Blockbuster Video references in Captain Marvel (2019) was the only reason I went to see it, since I worked for the company from 1988-2008. Like Black Panther, which was made to be an inspiration to African-Americans, Captain Marvel was made to appeal to young girls who dream of being superheroines. Trouble is there is already a female superhero young girls can relate to and her name is Wonder Woman.
Avengers: Endgame (2019) won me over because it actually had an emotional payoff – two of the lead superheroes died.
I can just see as a result of what I’ve just blogged the comments coming from “Nerdville” who after reading this will be similar to what Spider-man: In the Spider-verse (2018) director Peter Ramsey said about Scorsese’s telling me, “Marvel movies are fun and good. Chill.”
"I think that Marvel films are so popular because they're really entertaining and people desire entertainment when they have their special time after work, after dealing with their hardships in real life," Thor star Natalie Portman said on comicbook.com.
“My feeling is, Martin Scorsese never sat in a movie theater with his dad and watched the movies of Steven Spielberg in the early '80s or George Lucas in the late '70s,” added director/actor Kevin Smith. "He didn't feel that sense of magic and wonder. I can still step into one of those comic book movies, divorce myself of that fact that I do this for a living, release, and my dead dad is back for a minute, for two hours. And it's personal for a lot of the audience. You know, and we're not arguing whether or not it counts as cinema. I guarantee you there's something he enjoyed with his parents, like a musical — I bet you some cats would say, 'A musical is not really cinema,' but Martin Scorsese grew up on musicals, and I bet they mean a lot to him. These [Marvel] movies come from a core. They come from a happy childhood. And they're reflections of a happy childhood. He's not wrong, but at the same time, neither are we for loving those movies. And they are cinema."
Disney CEO Bob Iger offered what would seem to be the last word concerning Scorsese’s and Coppola’s criticisms in a conversation with Wall Street Journal Editor-in-Chief, Matt Murray, during a WSJ Tech Live talk last month.
“I reserve the word ‘despicable’ for someone who committed mass murder. I don’t get what they’re trying to criticize us for when we are making films that people obviously are enjoying. I’m puzzled by it. If they want to bitch about movies, it’s certainly their right,” Iger said. “It seems so disrespectful to all the people that work on those [Marvel] films who are working just as hard as the people who work on their films. … Are you telling me Ryan Coogler making ‘Black Panther’ is somehow doing something that is less than what Marty Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola has ever done on any one of their movies?”
The long time veteran filmmaker and Oscar winning director of such classic crime dramas as Taxi Driver (1976), Goodfellas (1991) and Casino (1995) was only expressing his opinion of Disney’s Marvel franchise when he called them “theme-park” films which in turn drew backlash from the “Hollyweird” elite.
“I don’t see them. I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema,” Scorsese told Empire magazine in the 10/4/19 issue while promoting his latest three-hour-plus gangster epic, The Irishman (2019) scheduled to premiere on Netflix Nov. 27 starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino. “Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”
The damning comments were followed by another veteran filmmaking legend and Oscar winner, Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather trilogy – 1972-1990), who at a press conference in Lyon, France clarified Scoresese’s.
A year before actor Ethan Hawke expressed his dismay with Marvel’s Logan (2017) in a Film Stage interview.
“Now we have the problem that they tell us ‘Logan’ is a great movie. Well, it’s a great superhero movie. It still involves people in tights with metal coming out of their hands. It’s not Bresson. It’s not Bergman. But they talk about it like it is,” Hawke said. “I went to see ‘Logan’ ‘cause everyone was like, ‘This is a great movie’ and I was like, ‘Really? No, this is a fine superhero movie.’ There’s a difference, but big business doesn’t think there’s a difference. Big business wants you to think that this is a great film because they wanna make money off of it.”
“These two guys (Scorsese and Coppola) are my heroes, and they have earned the right to express their opinions,” director Jon Favreau (The Lion King – 2019) told CNBC. “I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if they didn’t carve the way. They served as a source of inspiration, you can go all the way back to Swingers.... They can express whatever opinion they like.”
The past few years I’ve avoided seeing several Marvel movies. The fact Mickey Mouse churns out two to three films a year is not the result of my suffering from Marvel fatigue. My reasons stem from finding them predictable, emotionally empty and nothing but a meaningless money marketing excuse to sell overpriced $200 plus action figures. For me, the Marvel villains fade from memory within a few minutes whereas the ones from the DC universe (Lex Luthor, General Zod, Bane, the Joker, Catwoman, Harley Quinn, etc) make lasting impressions.
Every time a character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) mentions some cataclysmic alien event that happened in a previous installment, I keep expecting a comment at the bottom of the screen saying, “For reference see Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)” which is exactly what the monthly Marvel comics do.
The powers-that-be at Mickey Mouse will have you believe that EVERYTHING they’ve given audiences is gold but the truth is Marvel’s billion dollar franchise is as flawed as every other movie franchise since the James Bond films of the 1960s. The majority of the MCU films I’ve seen the past few years were not gems and the couple movies I did like were not glowing recommendations.
While the storyline for Thor: Ragnarok (2017) made no sense, it did have Cate Blanchett as the villainess who stole the show, which made the two hours spent watching the film tolerable.
As for Black Panther (2018), I still can’t get through it without dozing off during the first half hour.
Avengers: Infinity War (2018) was a comic book nerd’s wet dream – a chance for “The Big Bang Theory” crowd to get their rocks off seeing every superhero in MCU land come together to battle a supervillain from a “galaxy far, far away” who, after wiping everyone out on Earth, just wanted to be left alone. Just because a majority of the superheroes were killed didn’t mean we would never see them again. To quote Howard Beale, the Mad Prophet of the Airwaves, played by Peter Finch in Network (1976), “We'll tell you anything you want to hear… and no matter how much trouble the hero is in, don't worry, just look at your watch; at the end of the hour he's going to win. We'll tell you any shit you want to hear.” Thus, no payoff.
Avengers: Endgame (2019) won me over because it actually had an emotional payoff – two of the lead superheroes died.
I can just see as a result of what I’ve just blogged the comments coming from “Nerdville” who after reading this will be similar to what Spider-man: In the Spider-verse (2018) director Peter Ramsey said about Scorsese’s telling me, “Marvel movies are fun and good. Chill.”
"I think that Marvel films are so popular because they're really entertaining and people desire entertainment when they have their special time after work, after dealing with their hardships in real life," Thor star Natalie Portman said on comicbook.com.
Disney CEO Bob Iger offered what would seem to be the last word concerning Scorsese’s and Coppola’s criticisms in a conversation with Wall Street Journal Editor-in-Chief, Matt Murray, during a WSJ Tech Live talk last month.
“I reserve the word ‘despicable’ for someone who committed mass murder. I don’t get what they’re trying to criticize us for when we are making films that people obviously are enjoying. I’m puzzled by it. If they want to bitch about movies, it’s certainly their right,” Iger said. “It seems so disrespectful to all the people that work on those [Marvel] films who are working just as hard as the people who work on their films. … Are you telling me Ryan Coogler making ‘Black Panther’ is somehow doing something that is less than what Marty Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola has ever done on any one of their movies?”
I’m as much for enjoying a mindless “popcorn” movie every now and then as the next person as a means to get away from all the daily political nonsense, mass shootings and depressing news reported every day. Trouble is the Marvel movies fall below that. The majority of them are all style and almost zero substance. They are not “event” movies, something to look forward to, which is what I call the DC Comics/Warner Brothers franchise.
DC learned early on after the box office failure of Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) that they cannot follow the same format tying every superhero movie to the previous one let alone release more than two movies a year the way Disney continues to do. The difference is unlike Marvel’s installments, the number of DC’s movies I’ve embraced are more than the ones I didn’t (Suicide Squad – 2016, Aquaman – 2018).
In the end, what two film making legends think of an unstoppable billion dollar toy making comic book movie franchise is nothing more than an opinion. As I've said so many times before, if one doesn't like it, don't watch it. Scorsese and Coppola were only sharing their views on Marvel movies and while the argument can be made as to how much they are wrong, based on the MCU installments I’ve sat through, truth be damned, they are actually right.
©11/6/19
In the end, what two film making legends think of an unstoppable billion dollar toy making comic book movie franchise is nothing more than an opinion. As I've said so many times before, if one doesn't like it, don't watch it. Scorsese and Coppola were only sharing their views on Marvel movies and while the argument can be made as to how much they are wrong, based on the MCU installments I’ve sat through, truth be damned, they are actually right.
©11/6/19
