Martin Scorsese urges filmmakers to fight comic book movie culture: ‘We’ve got to save cinema’
Martin Scorsese urges filmmakers to fight comic book movie culture: ‘We’ve got to save cinema’
Martin Scorsese wants filmmakers to 'save cinema' by fighting comic book movie culture, which he called manufactured content.
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.
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It's kind of amusing that he mentioned Christopher Nolan as a possible ally in his grassroots campaign of filmmakers extolling the virtues of cinema. Christopher Nolan who made a massive comic book movie trilogy. That Christopher Nolan?
I don't believe that The Dark Knight trilogy can be compared to anything from Marvel. They are miles ahead in cinematography, directon, use of practical special effects, writing, etc. And there wasn't 20+ TDK movies.
Christopher Nolan’s Batman is cut from a different cloth though.
It’s far better than anything Marvel’s ever put out, and isn’t confined to being good “comic superhero movies”, they’re just good movies to the point that even my mother loves the dark knight.
The fact that you find those movies to be comparable to marvel ones kind of disqualifies all future opinions of yours lol
They are literally comparable as they are both in the same genre this article is about. You realise Batman is a comic book character, and that the article is about comic book movies, yeah? I said nothing about the quality between the two.
"quality is obviously not included when comparisons are made" -Mr Giggity
Hah. From your perspective sure, I'll give you that. I don't think subjective or objective "quality" is the sole criteria when comparing cinema, especially in this context where the article is talking about comic book movies versus the rest of cinema, but I am running on 4 hours of sleep so I wasn't as clear I could have been, sorry. In this context, from my perspective, they are inherently comparable since they are in the same genre. I think we may also have slightly different applications of "comparable" here — maybe a regional language thing?
For the record I think the couple of Marvel movies I've seen have been vapid wastes of time that could have possibly been
writtenengineered by LLMs for maximum returns on investment. So I think we're of a similar opinion and probably on the same side here. I still think mentioning Nolan in this context is hilariously hypocritical given he made some of the biggest comic book movies ever. I get the intent behind evoking Nolan's quality filmmaking, still funny to me regardless.That said... Your messages come across as quite antagonistic. Why is that? I mean this quite sincerely: are you doing okay? It takes so much energy to be sour all of the time — I know from experience. Feel free to message me on here if you want to shoot the shit.
-Mr Giggity