Martin Scorsese, While Changing His Own Diaper, Says Comic Book Movies Are NOT "Cinema"
(Variety) – Martin Scorsese gave the Marvel Cinematic Universe the cold shoulder, comparing the billion-dollar franchise to theme parks.
“I don’t see them. I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema,” Scorsese told Empire magazine. “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.”
If Martin Scorsese came out and said, “These superhero movies are like rollercoasters,” and came to a full stop absolutely nobody would care. This quote wouldn’t have gone viral yesterday, nobody would be talking about him outside of the normal press he’s been doing for his highly anticipated upcoming movie THE IRISHMAN. Because that’s actually a pretty accurate comparison. They’re intentionally made to be fun, what an outrageous concept! Where the guy from such prestige pieces as SHARK TALE fucked up is when he used the word “cinema.”
Gatekeepers very rarely come off as genuine. They almost exclusively sound like jealous old dickheads trying to move the goalposts on the next generation. This feels like the movie version of traveling back to 1990 and saying rap isn’t music. What I find most confusing about his statement is that Scorsese seems to be saying the only prerequisite to qualify as cinema would be to invoke an emotional response from its audience. Which, what the fuck does that even mean here? I know he admitted to not seeing these movies but does he know how amusement parks even work? It’s right there in the fucking title: amuse. To amuse. These movies amuse people. I wish the interviewer asked him to rank Christopher Nolan movies as a follow up.
I don’t care if these movies are ever considered prestige cinema by the Academy, that would change my enjoyment of them by exactly zero. I don’t need every movie to be an introspective look into the human psyche. I don’t need every movie to be a gangster flick. Sometimes I just want a raccoon and a tree to blow shit up for two hours. I think it’s a good and not bad thing that some of the most talented artists in the world are afforded the ability to create wondrous landscapes and galaxies which didn’t exist before they put pencil to paper and those turn into literal theme parks after they dominate the box office. I also think if you’re going to make a movie around an infamous Boston gangster you should get off your ass and direct more than half the cast to attempt the fucking accent, but at the end of the day I guess we all have our own standards for cinema.