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 ā he called them theme parks rather than actual cinema ā Scorsese isnāt shying away from the topic.
āThe danger there is what itās doing to our culture,ā he told GQ. āBecause there are going to be generations now that think ā¦ thatās what movies are.ā
GQās Zach Baron posited that what Scorsese was saying might already be true, and the āKillers of the Flower Moonā filmmaker agreed.
āThey already think that. Which means that we have to then fight back stronger. And itās got to come from the grassroots level. Itās gotta come from the filmmakers themselves,ā Scorsese continued to the outlet. āAnd youāll have, you know, the Safdie brothers, and youāll have Chris Nolan, you know what I mean? And hit āem from all sides. Hit āem from all sides, and donāt give up. ā¦ Go reinvent. Donāt complain about it. But itās true, because weāve got to save cinema.ā
Scorsese referred to movies inspired by comic books as āmanufactured contentā rather than cinema.
āItās almost like AI making a film,ā he said. āAnd that doesnāt mean that you donāt have incredible directors and special effects people doing beautiful artwork. But what does it mean? What do these films, what will it give you?ā
His forthcoming film, āKillers of the Flower Moon,ā had been on Scorseseās wish list for several years; itās based on David Grannās 2017 nonfiction book of the same name. He called the story āa sober look at who we are as a culture.ā
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.
āAfter a certain point,ā the filmmaker told Time, āI realized I was making a movie about all the white guys.ā
The dramatic focus shifted from Whiteās 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.
Itās been that way for a loooong time.
Movies became so expensive to produce that studios canāt 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 bankās 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 thereās any risk, e.g. this has never been done before, or thereās no recognizable franchise branding, or if something could be controversial in a meaningful way, the bank wonāt 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.
Thatās why Hollywood doesnāt make daring, experimental, and controversial movies much anymore.
So in a way itās going right back to the way things were during the Golden Age of Hollywood. I hope this means more musicals are on the way.
Huh, I remember reading his critique around when Endgame was coming out and thought he just didnāt 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 āquietā part of the overall story, where no one really has any stakes and we have little investment in anyoneās 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 didnāt care about Kaang because we no long had an investment in any character.
Then weāre 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 Kaangās making the character have 0 remaining intrigue. !< Even had the stuff with Masters not happened theyād 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 theyāve ended up with something no one really cares about.
He was right then too. Nothing has changed
Couldnāt 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 Iāve ever seen and couldnāt 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 theyāre more or less invincible. Itās boring garbage and people love it to death. I havenāt really watched many superhero movies since, especially Marvel.
I was admittedly on the train with Marvel until End Game and thoroughly enjoyed it. Iāve since fallen off the MCU. Iāll still catch Batman, but otherwise Iām on board with moving on.
People who disparage Marty forget or donāt 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, BuƱuel, 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.
āBecause there are going to be generations now that think ā¦ thatās what movies are.ā
should be understood in this context as well. We owe him so much gratitude for keeping the language of film alive.
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 wonāt 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 āHollywoodā needs to look in a mirror to remind themselves why these types of movies have became so popularā¦ is it just everyone attached to beautiful art and special effects? Or is it perhaps that maybe their storytelling wasnāt as great, or original as they thought, and they are losing out to stories written decades ago because they are just simply more interesting?
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 youāre 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, youāre 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 wonāt give as good an experience.
Serious dramas? Iām not getting anything more from watching it at the theater than Iām 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.
Itās definitely an issue, but itās 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. Thatās the draw of cinema for me these days.
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 thatās incredibly hard.
People removed about it, and its because Martin is 100% right. Comic book things are collapsing now at Disney.
What a coincidence that heās got a movie thatās āfighting backā *checks watch* oh right about now! š
Not only is this ridiculous (and untrue) fearmongering about the death of āreal cinemaā from an old man scared for his own relevance, itās such blatant self-promotion itās sickening. Dude would be better served being silent and maintaining his (admittedly deserved) reputation and prestige in the art form instead of tarnishing it with foolish declarations like this.
āold man scared of his own relevanceā being said about one of the greatest directors of all time and probably the greatest alive. Ffs manā¦
First, I never said he was irrelevant. I said heās scared that he is. Second, past accomplishments donāt negate current or future accountability for dumb statements like his.
I wonder when we will see a headline ā[email protected] punches back: āthereās a place for these movies, theyāre greatāā. Your body of work is what makes people care about your opinion. The fact that Scorcese has made such outstanding movies is why people think he might know something about themā¦ apparently you think those movies carry no weight but they absolutely do, this post existing in the first place being enough evidence of that already
Wonāt someone else stand up for the poor multi, multibillion dollar industry?? Think of the shareholders!!!
That you think Martin is somehow outside of this āpoor multi, multibillion dollar industryā that you think Iām defending really says everything.
I didnāt say he was outside it. But Iām not defending him like heās a victim like you are the marvel trash factory
Youāre wrong and Martin scorcese is right. First of all, heās Martin scorcese and youāre not. Also, he speaks the truth and youāre not. Heās articulating exactly what I started feeling around 2003. I get so much shit for not liking superhero movies despite them being absolute dog shit. Nice to finally feel like Iām not the only one.
That movie sounds dope.
As for the other part, I love comic book movies, but still agree. I think he might get more agreement if he reframed it as a complaint about homginization. For instance, I think The Batman was surprisingly fresh. Whereas the Flash was likeā¦ high end tv, maybe? Like, not BAD, but youāve gotta ask: how many people will watch it five years from now? What ideas or artistic images is it introducing?
I think some comic movies --Black Panther, for instance ā move culture and inspire new stories. But a lot donāt. Iāve heard it said that the modern studio system could never make Back to the Future or Ghostbusters, and I think thatās true. A lot needs to change about how these are financed and distributed to make that not the case.
Iāve heard it said that the modern studio system could never make Back to the Future or Ghostbusters, and I think thatās true.
What does this even mean?
I apologize, but the case was made to be in a long and very compelling article that I donāt have a link for.
I think it was about consolidation, and how the lack of diversity in small independent theaters and small independent distributors robbed movies that werenāt copies of successful films the chance to become surprise hits.
Now, most theaters are chains, and theyāre largely owned by the same entities that own distributors. So everywhere shows the same films, and thereās no one to take a chance on something different or risky.
I mean, canāt 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. Itās not a zero sum game.
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.
Remember that Martin Scorseseās last big movie was The Irishman, so he isnāt saving the movie industry either.
Also, Hugo was based on a comic book, so kind of hypocritical.
Also, Hugo was based on a comic book ā¦
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.
heres the thing, comic book movies as a concept arent bad but theyre executed terribly. disney and dc both fucking suck horrendously, thwyre unbearable
