Another week, another Martin Scorsese quote being taken out of context in the ongoing superhero movie wars.
Yes, Scorsese, the director behind such classic films as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and The Departed, has caught flak in recent years from the comic book movie community for, well, that one time in 2018 when he tried to explain that zeitgeisty Marvel films aren’t what he would consider “cinema” and are more related to theme park experiences.
While “cinema” itself is admittedly a subjective definition, Scorsese has tried time and time again to explain that your average Marvel film isn’t the type of cinema that inspired him in his youth, the types of inescapably human pieces of drama that draw right from the real world and escape from the screen into life itself. (For what it’s worth, he’s also compared the work of Alfred Hitchcock to the thrill of what a theme park attraction can bring you, so don’t take that as some sort of insult toward the superhero film.)
The Oscar-winning auteur has devoted much of his career to the preservation of film, and he’s grown more worried as time has gone on that the cinema of his childhood and the style in which he built his career could be swallowed whole by the corporate machine that leans on intellectual property and the blockbuster apparatus to drive the cultural conversation and make lots of money in the process.
While superhero movies have certainly tapped into real-world issues and have had respectably grounded approaches (see Black Panther and Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy), most of these film are still mass product first and foremost. Being risk averse is part of what makes a superhero film fiscally lucrative and crowd-friendly.
Scorsese explains it better than anyone:
“Many of the elements that define cinema as I know it are there in Marvel pictures,” Scorsese wrote in The New York Times in 2019. “What’s not there is revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk. The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes.
“They are sequels in name but they are remakes in spirit, and everything in them is officially sanctioned because it can’t really be any other way. That’s the nature of modern film franchises: market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, revetted and remodified until they’re ready for consumption.
Another way of putting it would be that they are everything that the films of Paul Thomas Anderson or Claire Denis or Spike Lee or Ari Aster or Kathryn Bigelow or Wes Anderson are not. When I watch a movie by any of those filmmakers, I know I’m going to see something absolutely new and be taken to unexpected and maybe even unnameable areas of experience. My sense of what is possible in telling stories with moving images and sounds is going to be expanded.”
For example, Avengers: Endgame is a pretty great movie in and of itself, but it’s also playing to your most basic set of expectations. You know exactly what you’re going to get when you sit down, and everything you’ve experienced in watching it stems from something you’ve experienced before. It’s comfort food; there’s nothing wrong with it, but its intent is different than other films that seek to push the boundaries of the visual medium.
You’re not necessarily going to be “surprised” by that the same way you would a visionary experience from an auteur like Jordan Peele, Ridley Scott or Greta Gerwig or feel the catharsis of a true-to-life drama that comes from someone like Celine Song, Kelly Reichardt or Nicole Holofcener.
This week, Scorsese made a plea in a GQ profile for moviegoers to expand their horizons past the typical blockbuster fare, lest an entire way of making movies falls out of focus into the abyss of the past.
“The danger there is what it’s doing to our culture,” he said in the profile. “Because there are going to be generations now that think movies are only those — that’s what movies are.”
He expands when asked by the interviewer if this is where we already are in the cultural conversation.
“They already think that,” he said. “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. 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. Let’s see what you got. Go out there and do it. Go reinvent. Don’t complain about it. But it’s true, because we’ve got to save cinema.”
As one of the true luminaries left in the cinematic space, Scorsese’s words hit hard for anyone who loves the full gamut of what movies can be, not just what tops the summer box office list.
This most recent interview sparked a fresh wave of criticism for Scorsese’s thoughts, though they’re taken out of context for what he’s trying to accomplish. He’s not trying to advocate for no superhero movies; he’s trying to argue why other types of films deserve just as much oxygen in the room.
For anyone peeved that Scorsese isn’t necessarily embracing comic book movies as the pinnacle of the artform, consider why those are made and what a cinematic landscape would look like it if was just filled with capes and CGI battles shot on a backlot somewhere in Burbank.
Scorsese is a champion of cinema, not an enemy of superhero movies. They might not be his favorites, but he certainly advocates for a broad landscape where everything can thrive. The horror, of course, is what he warns. If superhero movies are all we get, cinema really would die on the vine.
