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.
I mean, heās not wrong. But there has always been a ton of shitty action movies with the same cut and paste plot. Marvel just tweaked the formula.
And itās not like good movies arenāt still being made. The Marvel movies are historically bad at winning awards. There have been a handful of nominations, but not a lot of wins. The wins always go to good movies that deserve them.
Sure, the Marvel movies pull in more money than other movies, but the money makers are usually trash. Marvel is like the McDonaldās of movies. Itās going to pull in way more money than a fine dining establishment, but not because itās good, because itās the garbage that the public will take out their wallet for. There is space in the market for both of these things.
Not so sure about that, and that might be the problem. Marvel/Disney is both rather monocultural and a ridiculously huge draw and brand that can suck the oxygen out of the marketing ecosystem. It could be true that the comic cinema industry is genuinely taking eyes off of other things and creating a less diverse cinema experience per capita. Even if for most people itās only marginal, a slightly alternative take on an action or hero film with a slightly different angle or message or style is still diversity that might be important and valuable.
It would be interesting to compare this to the action and block buster movies of the past. Personally, I wouldnāt be surprised if it turned out that there was a noticeable diversity and Iām going to say thoughtfulness amongst big films of the past compared to today. Iām open to being wrong of course, but itās worth thinking about, just because big-corp monopolisation can easily have these effects.
Iām partly influenced by a recent rewatch of Jurassic Park and noticing how subtly thoughtful it was while also being basically a straight action film (after the set up at least). Thereās even a moment (when they first see the raptors being fed) thatās basically kinda vegan message or at least a critique or contrast between humans and āthe monstersā of the film, done entirely but very clearly through editing and directing ā¦ it was really nice actually.
Youāre wrong.
But to be clear, when you say āthe pastā you are talking about maybe twenty years. Thirty, tops.
Because people WERE in fact saying this about Star Wars. The notion that the new Hollywood brats were turning it into a commercial dystopia was very much a thing. So the old school action films youāre talking about are the blockbusters ranging from 1978 to maybe 2000 when the Blade, X-Men and Spider-Man films start building momentum for comic book movies.
Before then youāre in Old Hollywood territory, where the āactionā stuff is pulp and exploitation in the margins. The status quo you remember is late 20th century kids bringing the crappy b-list stuff they grew up with into big money blockbuster fare.
Ummm ā¦ wrong about what exactly ā¦ I donāt thatās clear from your post?
Otherwise, we can both be right. The action blockbuster movie thing, as far as I understand, and as you state, was definitely a creature of the 70s up to now. And itās also probably important and valuable to criticise that too. Danny Boyle, for instance, is on record saying that the great sin of Star Wars is that it transformed the idea of an āAdult filmā into a pornographic film when it used to just be a normal drama film about adult and interesting things which have been pushed out of the industry by relatively childish blockbusters. Comic films can easily be seen as just an extension of that. My point was that we might find that itās been a continuous collapse of āAdult filmsā under the weight of blockbusters to the point that the blockbusters arenāt even trying anymore to imitate, at least at times, the more nuanced āadultā films of the past.
All due respect to Boyleās hot take, but Iād argue that US censorship had a whole lot more to do than Star Wars there.
I mean, sure, it created an understanding that family films that donāt get a restricted audience due to censorship make more money, but Iām gonna guess people would have figured that out at some point either way. Itās also interesting that the other target he gave in that quote was Pixar, but people tend to not mention that part.
I think thereās a sense that pre-blockbuster Hollywood wasnāt about spectacle or commercialism, which I find a bit confusing in the context of Cleopatra, Gone with the Wind or The Ten Commandments. I think the movies people miss are the pulpy trash they saw as kids, probably. āSerious dramasā or āadult filmsā were only at the forefront of filmmaking when they were at the forefront of profitability. Thatās to say, when the so-called āstar systemā made it so that seeing Cary Grant or Humpfrey Bogart mostly justā¦ hanging out and acting out stage plays could move audiences.
Which is, incidentally, why people are so desperate to praise Nolan or Villeneuve, who are both very competent visual filmmakers that are way less smart than they and the industry seem to think.
Okay, let me put it this way: I like most Rian Johnson movies. I think is worst movie is The Last Jedi. I think that movie was made worse by being a Star Wars film. I donāt think that would have been any different in 1982.
In the late-70s/80s it was slasher movies. In the 80s/90s it was Rambo-style action movies, or Lethal Weapon and Fatal Attraction-style thrillers.
There have always been Hollywood bandwagons.
The difference is that back then the major studios made a bunch of films of all scopes and budgets, while today those same studios make fewer, more expensive movies.
If Scorsese was a young man today - or Robert Altman or William Friedkin, whoever - he probably wouldnāt get a chance to make a Raging Bull, heād be steered towards a superhero film with - of course - NO final cut. The one exception is Christopher Nolan. And even he did an entire superhero TRILOGY.
Taking what Marty is saying and putting it another way - major studio content is not driven by a directorās creative vision in the current environment, but by producersā¦ the suits and their market research.
Iām by no means an expert but was that ever different? Making movies always was very expensive, so the people in charge obviously had to have money and then try to use that to make more money. That alone leads to rather conservative decisions regarding which movies should be produced and which shouldnāt. Artistic merit isnāt something I believe ever had much sway in Hollywood unless some directors actually used their previous success to bully the rich cats in charge to trust them or outright finance the movie themself. And that I guess is rather rare. I think the only thing really different today, is that market research today is way more advanced than it was in the 60ās or 70ās.
Making lower budget films and giving artistic freedom to their directors allowed them to:
This was also in the days when a film could play in theaters for months, breathe and grow.
Now, they want every movie they release to make 200 million in the first weekend, with a marketing carpet-bombing blitz.
In Scorseseās 70s heyday, a āmodest successā was seen by the studio suits as a success, they made many of these and were happy about it.
Nowadays, a āmodest successā is seen as a fizzle. Half a billion or bust.
There probably are hundreds of weird movies made that cannot be explained by financial interest alone. In fact one was given above which you ignored. Raging Bull.
Look, I didnāt love Guardians 3, itās a conservative, Christian movie and I donāt agree with most of its premises.
But there wasnāt a dry eye in the house by the end of that, and Iām pretty sure most of them know what āit meantā, and it certainly wasnāt āalmost like AI making a filmā. Ditto for Across the Spider-Verse, whcih is a progressive movie I do agree with.
Thereās always been this argument that successfull movies are bad, and Iāve never liked it. Itās never been true. There are tons of bad films that make their money back, but for every Air Force One there is a Die Hard or Back to the Future (more conservative movies I donāt agree with but are very well made, go figure).
So yeah, I do agree that Oscar bait keeps Oscar baiting, and that superheroes arenāt killing cinema, which is a hard take to roll with this year in particular. But no, I actively donāt think superhero movies or genre movies are worthless or trash, any more than I think westerns are trash or action movies are trash.
How is Guardians 3 a conservative Christian movie? You know the director, James Gunn, is very outspokenly progressive, right?
I responded to this above, but just to clarify on this point, I mean small c conservative here. Which is absolutely not inconsistent with Gunn being a normal person who is not an actual fascist.
I mean that itās a conservative movie in that it explicitly religious and does take the stance that science and technocratic āletās change the worldā science is inherently equal to hubris and negative, while the positive flipside is enduring suffering, embracing spirituality and being rewarded with a happy afterlife. There is absolutely a progressive read of those beliefs, there has been for hundreds of years. Gunn seems to be explicitly aligning with it here, and thatās fine, but thatās still a (small c) conservative viewpoint.
Hell, Iāll go one further: a lot of people on the opposite side of that argument are today, in fact, actual fascists. Itās not hard to go find examples of atheist dicks online, or of technocratic tyrants. Turns out your religious beliefs are not connected to whether youāre a good person. That doesnāt mean the Catholic worldview isnāt inherently conservative. I was using the word philosophically, not politically.
Thatās a lot of mental gymnastics to make GOTG3 political.
Itās a movie about friendship, family, and a megalomaniac.
How is it mental gymnastics? Iām starting to feel bad for Gunn, because he put all that stuff on the movie super on purpose and apparently people will not just miss it they will actively try to ignore it.
Ehā¦ I may be late to this, butā¦ yeah, these are extreme SPOILERS. This thing really needs a content warning system, a spoiler alert system or both.
Anyway, dude, Rocket goes to actual heaven. They flag it as actual heaven. We see it on screen. Lyla straight up says there is a God and a heaven and Rocket gets to go to it.
Normally you expect this argument to be about some subtextual reinterpretation or an allegory or whatever butā¦ no, man, itās right there. Explicitly.
Hey, donāt look now, but besides being pretty explicit about there being a God and an afterlife itās also super not on board with for-profit health care and animal testing. You may have missed how itās like 75% of the running time of the movie. You could argue about it being a religious film, but political? Itās the story of a group of people whose friendās organs are hadlocked by a corporation, they go fight the corporation and end up freeing all their animal test subjects.
Every time this āitās not politicalā stuff comes up in online conversation I swear itās like an optical effect of some sort. It makes you question how subjective perception is and wonder how other peopleās minds are parsing the world in different ways.
God and Heaven exist in the Marvel universe in the same way that Thor and Zeus exist. Youāre reading way too much in to it.
They do, but no, Iām not.
Thereās a difference between using Christian mythos as mythos and making a spiritual point. You pick what to pull and why, and things have meaning.
Ironically, in this context if they had made this more of an explicit heaven itād have been less of a conscious choice (see also, Thor: Love & Thunder). The framing of the afterlife, who states the existence of a divine plan, paired with the role that scene plays in the movie are all important context cues.
Again, people worked really hard to not trivialize that scene as a fantasy setup and instead charge it with meaning and a point. Itād be a shame to purposefully ignore it, whether you agree with the implied philosophical take or not.
By that logic the Thor movies are pushing a Nordic mythological agenda. Should I be concerned?
Right on, those are some very fair points. I guess calling them trash is a bit far.
But out of genuine curiosity, could you expand on how the movies you mentioned are conservative Christian movies? I know Die Hard takes place on Christmas, but thatās all Iām picking up.
I have absolutely no idea what they mean by conservative/progressive movie. I too would like to know, because Iām utterly baffled.
The second back to the future movie even turns the villain into a trump-like megalomaniac
Oh, boy. Should have guessed thatās the bit that would get picked up.
I mean, I didnāt think Guardians was very subtle about this at all. James Gunn doesnāt seem to be an asshole, but you can be religious and not be a completely reactionary idiot. The movie features actual heaven, where a character tells another āthereās the hands that made us and then thereās the hands that guide the handsā, and says that heaven āis beatutiful and it is foreverā. And then the villain yells āthere is no God, thatās why I stepped inā, which is the tipping point for his allies turning on him. The entire diagnosis the movie has on the guy ends up being that āhe didnāt want to make things better, he just hated things the way they areā, which is, for the record, a much, much better take on the equally conformist version of that in The Flash. Itās a very well made, very emotional, very beautiful movie, butā¦ you know, itās not very shy about spiritualism. If I had to sum it up Iād say itāsā¦ ehā¦ Stephen Colbert Catholic? In that wavelength?
As for Back to the Futureā¦ well, Iām not the first to notice that the āgood futureā is a Reaganomics fever dream. Somebody points out the Trumpy bad guy in the sequel, which I guess from the modern day makes it read different, butā¦ yeah, itās a very 80s franchise with very 80s sensibilities. Zemeckis has pushed back against this slightly, I think, and yeah, itās being a bit jokey about the weirdness of the americana heās clearly nostalgic for, but that doesnāt change the text. I mean, heās also the guy that used āa black family lives here nowā as shorthand for the town going to crap in the sequel. He also made the entirety of Forrest Gump, soā¦ yeah, you donāt have to present a worldview on purpose to have it color your stuff. Once again, the movie isnāt mean about it, and itās certainly not dumb, but itās coming from a certain worldview and you can absolutely tell.
Die Hard is straight up MRA propaganda, though. Great film, love it to bits, but itās entirely about how the down-to-Earth cop feels emasculated by his wife having a career and rubbing elbows with all the California yuppies only to get himself vindicated when things turn violent and heās the only one with enough common sense and old school skills to fix the situation. Also, the government is fundamentally incompetent unless itās specifically the cops. And Reginald VelJohnsonās entire arc is about how he should not stop shooting people just because he once killed a kid when he saw his toy gun, which is up there for āplot point that has aged the absolute worst in movie historyā award. Still love it, though. Super conservative movie. The most political of this bunch, probably. Still good filmmaking.
Look, you donāt have to dislike things just because theyāre built on implicit viewpoints that you donāt agree with. Art is art, and it carries meaning and implications. You can notice them and still enjoy the result regardless of whether you agree with those viewpoints. Otherwise you wouldnāt be able to enjoy anything made outside this century orā¦ you know, your own culture. Itās fine.
I wasnāt on board with you at first, but this write-up was thought provoking and I appreciated the read.
Cool, thanks!
People sometimes think analysis or interpretation of stuff they like is an attack, especially when it identifies elements they disagree with in things they enjoy.
But thatās not the point, itās about understanding what youāre hearing and seeing and you can absolutely enjoy things even if theyāre saying things you donāt agree with. If I made that point to one person this entire thread was worth it (and already more interesting than Martin Scorsese not liking superhero movies, honestly).
Wow, just wow. Are your arms sore from all of that reaching?
Oh, hey, shitposting. Maybe this is a legit Reddit alternative after all.
For the record, except for Guardians 3, which is a bit too new to have much in the way of hermeneutics going on around it, none of those takes are new at all. Iām being a lot less original than you give me credit for. Itās less a reach and more the go-to default read for these.
A good guy with a gun kills bad guys with guns? ĀÆā \ā _ā (ā ćā )ā _ā /ā ĀÆ
Just as Jesus commanded.
TIL that somehow it makes sense to consider the classic back to the future somehow a fucking conservative movie. LMAO might wanna lay off whatever heavy drug youād been ingesting
Less conservative and more a product of its time, so letās say centre with a whiff of Reagan.
But yeah, hey, thatās a thing. If you learned it today and youāre curious about it there are decades of criticism and analysis about it. I am very far from being the first to point that out, among other things because I was a toddler when it came out.
Despite other people pointing it out Iām not really buying it.
There is a line āRonald Reagan, the actor? President?ā Which seems to indicate itās a ridiculous idea.
Then as others have pointed out, Biff in BTTF 2 is basically exactly trump and they couldnāt paint that character in a worse light. Heās an evil villain.
The reality is probably that the movies have nothing political in them other than the joke about Reagan which likely actually wasnāt meant to be a real critique
Thatās not how meaning works, though.
Look, I get it, not everybody cares or knows how semiotics work, but itās always baffling how much people get invested in the notion of āno politics in artā no matter how often this comes up.
Yes, there are politics in Back to the Future, as in any other film where the worldview of the creators becomes the perspective from which the entire film is put together. Things in movies donāt happen by accident, they get carefully written, acted and shot. Everything in a movie is something somebody is saying, and like any other thing you say it has both superficial and subtextual meaning.
So yes, BTTF does spend the entire movie boiling down maturity and success to being financially successful and self-confident. Because itās an American movie from the 80s and thatās how young Bob Zemeckis and Bob Gale saw being self-fulfilled looking like in 1985.
And yes, they poke good intentioned, light fun at Reagan being president. And they acknowledge some form of past racism in the form of Goldie being president, but also holy crap, the way Goldie is characterized also tells you a lot of how the Bobs saw race working and letās just say that nothing in BTTF2 and Forrest Gump was accidental.
Is it an active piece of propaganda? No, thatās not where the bar is for containing a political or even politicized worldview. But it does present a worldview, and that isā¦ a pretty centrist, eminently materialistic take on what was a fairly conservative world.
I promise thatās not an insult.
Never ever ever said that because itās untrue as fuck. You lost me completely
Youā¦ literally said
Itās right there, Iām looking at it.
I am now more curious to know how you think this works. Like, you think thereās a political take in some art, but not in all art, so thereās a line somewhere between explicit and implicit political stuff, I suppose?
Or is the confusion that you thought I understood you as advocating for no politics in art instead? Because thatās not what Iām saying.
I claimed 3 movies likely arenāt political. You extrapolated that to all art. Iām done here