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.
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
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.
and that will end too. look how Disney is giving so many flops. Especially the Marvel division
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
heres the thing, comic book movies as a concept arent bad but theyre executed terribly. disney and dc both fucking suck horrendously, thwyre unbearable
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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.
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.
He was right then too. Nothing has changed
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.
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Not every film can be a cinematic masterpiece. I wouldn’t want to watch nothing but masterpieces, it would be exhausting. On the flip side, there can absolutely be comic book movies that are masterpieces. Logan comes to mind.
Logan was certainly a great movie, but a lot of what made it great were the years we had spent with the characters. Without that the movie wouldn’t have been nearly as impactful. The fact that we knew what wolverine and professor x were once capable of, and then seeing them in their present state, really helped set the backdrop for the movie.
Guardians of the galaxy 3 was absolutely amazing on every level!
Comic book movies can be good. What Martin Scorsese means to say is woke culture is ruing good story telling.
Just write good story’s and don’t be an asshole.
He has a point and i would personally always prefer one of his movies over anything Marvel/DC but just let people enjoy what they want, Jesus.
And what actually saved the cinemas sure wasn’t Hugo or his Netflix film Irishman but all those multi billion comic book blockbusters. Not sure how many cinemas would still exist without them.
Only three of the top ten movies this year are comic book movies. One of them, GotG 3, could easily be a sci-fi movie franchise if you didn’t have its roots as a D-list comic book series. Another one, Into the Spiderverse, is a sequel of a movie that is considered to be the first in a new style of animated movie.
And a long, windy introspective of a flawed man is #4, it just happens to be about a physicist instead of a mobster.
People are able to make movies, but his kind of movies shifted to prestige TV a while ago.
Okay, what’s your point exactly?
People removed about it, and its because Martin is 100% right. Comic book things are collapsing now at Disney.
No lies detected.
Honestly tuned out of the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe stuff after the Avengers Age Of Ultron movie. It all felt so manufactured and artificial by then already.
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?
I agree. pass the popcorn the comments already begun
