Martin Scorsese urges filmmakers to fight comic book movie culture: ‘We’ve got to save cinema’
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.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2023-09-25/martin-scorsese-wants-moviegoers-to-fight-comic-book-movie-culture-save-cinemaOpen linkView original on lemmy.film
I mean, he's 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 it's not like good movies aren't 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 McDonald's of movies. It's going to pull in way more money than a fine dining establishment, but not because it's good, because it's 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 it's 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 wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that there was a noticeable diversity and I'm going to say thoughtfulness amongst big films of the past compared to today. I'm open to being wrong of course, but it's worth thinking about, just because big-corp monopolisation can easily have these effects.
I'm 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). There's even a moment (when they first see the raptors being fed) that's basically kinda vegan message or at least a critique or contrast between humans and "the monsters" of the film, done entirely but very clearly through editing and directing ... it was really nice actually.
You're wrong.
But to be clear, when you say "the past" 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 you're 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 you're in Old Hollywood territory, where the "action" 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 ... wrong about what exactly ... I don't that's 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 it's 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 "Adult film" 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 it's been a continuous collapse of "Adult films" under the weight of blockbusters to the point that the blockbusters aren't even trying anymore to imitate, at least at times, the more nuanced "adult" films of the past.
All due respect to Boyle's hot take, but I'd 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 don't get a restricted audience due to censorship make more money, but I'm gonna guess people would have figured that out at some point either way. It's also interesting that the other target he gave in that quote was Pixar, but people tend to not mention that part.
I think there's a sense that pre-blockbuster Hollywood wasn't 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. "Serious dramas" or "adult films" were only at the forefront of filmmaking when they were at the forefront of profitability. That's to say, when the so-called "star system" made it so that seeing Cary Grant or Humpfrey Bogart mostly just... 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 don't 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 wouldn't get a chance to make a Raging Bull, he'd 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 director's creative vision in the current environment, but by producers... the suits and their market research.
I'm 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 shouldn't. Artistic merit isn't 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 60's or 70's.
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 Scorsese's 70s heyday, a "modest success" was seen by the studio suits as a success, they made many of these and were happy about it.
Nowadays, a "modest success" 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 didn't love Guardians 3, it's a conservative, Christian movie and I don't agree with most of its premises.
But there wasn't a dry eye in the house by the end of that, and I'm pretty sure most of them know what "it meant", and it certainly wasn't "almost like AI making a film". Ditto for Across the Spider-Verse, whcih is a progressive movie I do agree with.
There's always been this argument that successfull movies are bad, and I've never liked it. It's 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 don't agree with but are very well made, go figure).
So yeah, I do agree that Oscar bait keeps Oscar baiting, and that superheroes aren't killing cinema, which is a hard take to roll with this year in particular. But no, I actively don't 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 it's a conservative movie in that it explicitly religious and does take the stance that science and technocratic "let's change the world" 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 that's fine, but that's still a (small c) conservative viewpoint.
Hell, I'll go one further: a lot of people on the opposite side of that argument are today, in fact, actual fascists. It's not hard to go find examples of atheist dicks online, or of technocratic tyrants. Turns out your religious beliefs are not connected to whether you're a good person. That doesn't mean the Catholic worldview isn't inherently conservative. I was using the word philosophically, not politically.
That’s a lot of mental gymnastics to make GOTG3 political.
It’s a movie about friendship, family, and a megalomaniac.
How is it mental gymnastics? I'm 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.
Eh... I may be late to this, but... 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 but... no, man, it's right there. Explicitly.
Hey, don't look now, but besides being pretty explicit about there being a God and an afterlife it's also super not on board with for-profit health care and animal testing. You may have missed how it's like 75% of the running time of the movie. You could argue about it being a religious film, but political? It's the story of a group of people whose friend's organs are hadlocked by a corporation, they go fight the corporation and end up freeing all their animal test subjects.
Every time this "it's not political" stuff comes up in online conversation I swear it's like an optical effect of some sort. It makes you question how subjective perception is and wonder how other people's 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. You’re reading way too much in to it.
They do, but no, I'm not.
There's 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 it'd 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. It'd be a shame to purposefully ignore it, whether you agree with the implied philosophical take or not.
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 that's all I'm picking up.
I have absolutely no idea what they mean by conservative/progressive movie. I too would like to know, because I'm utterly baffled.
The second back to the future movie even turns the villain into a trump-like megalomaniac
Oh, boy. Should have guessed that's the bit that would get picked up.
I mean, I didn't think Guardians was very subtle about this at all. James Gunn doesn't 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 "there's the hands that made us and then there's the hands that guide the hands", and says that heaven "is beatutiful and it is forever". And then the villain yells "there is no God, that's why I stepped in", which is the tipping point for his allies turning on him. The entire diagnosis the movie has on the guy ends up being that "he didn't want to make things better, he just hated things the way they are", which is, for the record, a much, much better take on the equally conformist version of that in The Flash. It's a very well made, very emotional, very beautiful movie, but... you know, it's not very shy about spiritualism. If I had to sum it up I'd say it's... eh... Stephen Colbert Catholic? In that wavelength?
As for Back to the Future... well, I'm not the first to notice that the "good future" 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, but... yeah, it's a very 80s franchise with very 80s sensibilities. Zemeckis has pushed back against this slightly, I think, and yeah, it's being a bit jokey about the weirdness of the americana he's clearly nostalgic for, but that doesn't change the text. I mean, he's also the guy that used "a black family lives here now" as shorthand for the town going to crap in the sequel. He also made the entirety of Forrest Gump, so... yeah, you don't have to present a worldview on purpose to have it color your stuff. Once again, the movie isn't mean about it, and it's certainly not dumb, but it's 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 it's 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 he's the only one with enough common sense and old school skills to fix the situation. Also, the government is fundamentally incompetent unless it's specifically the cops. And Reginald VelJohnson's 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 "plot point that has aged the absolute worst in movie history" award. Still love it, though. Super conservative movie. The most political of this bunch, probably. Still good filmmaking.
Look, you don't have to dislike things just because they're built on implicit viewpoints that you don't 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 wouldn't be able to enjoy anything made outside this century or... you know, your own culture. It's fine.
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. I'm being a lot less original than you give me credit for. It's less a reach and more the go-to default read for these.
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 you'd been ingesting
Less conservative and more a product of its time, so let's say centre with a whiff of Reagan.
But yeah, hey, that's a thing. If you learned it today and you're 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 I'm not really buying it.
There is a line "Ronald Reagan, the actor? President?" Which seems to indicate it's a ridiculous idea.
Then as others have pointed out, Biff in BTTF 2 is basically exactly trump and they couldn't paint that character in a worse light. He's an evil villain.
The reality is probably that the movies have nothing political in them other than the joke about Reagan which likely actually wasn't meant to be a real critique
That's not how meaning works, though.
Look, I get it, not everybody cares or knows how semiotics work, but it's always baffling how much people get invested in the notion of "no politics in art" 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 don't 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 it's an American movie from the 80s and that's 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 let's just say that nothing in BTTF2 and Forrest Gump was accidental.
Is it an active piece of propaganda? No, that's not where the bar is for containing a political or even politicized worldview. But it does present a worldview, and that is... a pretty centrist, eminently materialistic take on what was a fairly conservative world.
I promise that's not an insult.
Never ever ever said that because it's untrue as fuck. You lost me completely
You... literally said
It's right there, I'm looking at it.
I am now more curious to know how you think this works. Like, you think there's a political take in some art, but not in all art, so there's 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 that's not what I'm saying.
I love his movies, but this feels like an "Old Man Yells at Cloud" story.
C'mon bro-- comic book movies have even ruined comic book movies at this point 😅
The thing is though, Low effort, high special effect action, action over plot moviesis nothing new, before marvel it was transformers and so on all the way back to shoot em up westerns at the dawn of cinema.
Its not like before the MCU, you're average movie goer was watching super artistic cerebral movies, and comic book movies took that all away, like this guy is acting
Bad movies are bad movies. Many movies are adapted from tv, books, and fairy tales. The only thing special about comic book movies is that they are all based on existing stories that have accompanying artwork. There are important scenes, moments captured in time, and I could understand how an auteur might feel hamstrung by the existing imagery.
But how is that different from making a pirate movie, where everyone looks and talks like Long John Silver? Or a gangster movie where everyone dresses and talks like James Cagney?
If he's complaining about big budget CG action flicks, those aren't specific to comic book movies, either. Avatar, Mission Impossible, Inception, Planet of the Apes, shit go back to Towering Inferno or the old Harryhausen movies. People want spectacle, wonder, and adventure. That's not new. That's why the comics exist in the first place.
If he's complaining about studios churning out blockbusters and crowding the release calendar, yeah that's got to be frustrating. Just pick a weekend right after a DC release, and you'll do fine.
Have movies typically planned and scheduled 10+ sequels/spinoffs in a shared universes prior to the MCU? I don't remember ever hearing that X1 is going to come out this year and Y1 the next with Z1 in the winter, etc etc over the course of 4-5 years.
Is that really similar to "pirate movies" or westerns or whatever from back in the day? When it comes to budgeting? Locking yourselves into set releases publicly, blocking theater schedules, etc?
That's a fair point, but studios have always planned out their slates, just not publicly. They do know what they plan to release over the next 4-5 years, and they announce them when it is best for the movie.
Star Wars, Flash Gordon, Pixar has been hiding easter eggs for future movies since long before Marvel. There just wasn't a reason to promote something so far away.
But I don't see why that's a bad thing.
It absolutely is yelling at clouds.
They're just fun scifi westerns, not the end of cinema.
It's just a catchy headline to mask the real point of this article: to advertise his new movie.
Good point
Man who makes only gangster movies angry at people who make only superhero movies.
"Let's get back to making movies about the mafia!" lol
God, I got so bored watching The Irishman in 2019. I still cannot fathom why he would make another 90's movie that late in the game. Grow up already. Also, who has time to watch a 3,5 hour movie? Geriatrics and boomers, that's who. Thank you for sitting through my rant.
I mean, I'm a millenial and I'll happily sit though a 3 hour plus film if it's good. Oppenheimer was three hours and zipped by it's so well paced. This says more about you and your peers wrecked attention spans due to social media than the films.
Or maybe The Irishman was a boring slog.
yeah, really. I don't give a shit about the movies he makes, that's why I don't watch them.
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.
Basically, in trying to make a mainstream product they've ended up with something no one really cares about.
The thing about the MCU is that there is very little consequences, there is a giant corpse in the ocean for the last 2 years unmentioned.
We could have done something cool like an out there doctor strange movie where things were a little unexpected and off only for a grand reveal that this wasn't our doctor strange, that it was an alternative version in a different. Big twists like that could have done something that could only be done with the multiverse.
All that said it is pure fluff, I put it on when I want to tv on not when I want to watch a movie.
This has always been what's bothered me about these movies. The fights so frequently seem to have no lasting impact or consequences. Beat the ever living shit out of each other, collateral damage absolutely everywhere, neither side gains/loses much, and in 15-20 mins it'll all start over again but possibly with different players. What's the point? And what about all the innocent people and their homes/businesses that are being destroyed in the middle of the fight? There are no stakes, no skin in the game.
Yeah. They could have gotten freaky with that corpse. Telling me Damage Control is out here chasing down Kamala when they could be after a celestial just chilling in the water lol. You know some villain going to try and eat it, get crazy powers. Some good guy has some wash up on their shore, gets crazy powers. So many opportunities left on the table.
He was right then too. Nothing has changed
But they're not doing great with that shit. So maybe the universe will resolve itself.
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
and that will end too. look how Disney is giving so many flops. Especially the Marvel division. comic book fatigue has already started
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.
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
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
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.
And that lead actress, whoever she is, should totally get an Oscar for her performance this year.
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.
It literally is a zero sum game. Studios dump all their money into these types of movies and there's no money left over for the "story about the deepest darkest recesses of the human mind."
And yet A24 exists and continues to find success.
https://www.the-numbers.com/box-office-records/worldwide/all-movies/theatrical-distributors/a24
A24 has an online cult following, but they struggle at the box office even with wide releases.
You are assuming that if Marvel movies didn't exist everyone would just go watch Requiem for a Dream instead, which is just silly. They target different audiences and the same people could choose to see one today and the other tomorrow. It's not like Oppenheimer was made by a bunch of indies scraping money on Kickstarter.
I'm not assuming anything like that. That's you putting your ridiculous dichotomic outlook of any subject into someone else's mouth. There's a good chance if Requiem for a Dream required a 2023 movie budget, it wouldn't have even been made. An unknown director/writer with a 2023 budget with a movie like that? Ha. There would have been no option to see that the next day. Also, are you comparing Requiem for a Dream to Oppenheimer?
disney isn't the only one funding movies.
your regular $15m arty pantsy black and white movie isn't paid for the mouse.
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.
should be understood in this context as well. We owe him so much gratitude for keeping the language of film alive.
He's right. Not that comic book movies are bad but how they are made is bad (also other movies nowadays). Batman trilogy is magnificent and I don't like comic books.. It's all about constant action and no plot and thrilling parts to graduate the plot. You don't need bambilion of explosions to have a good movie (Joker).
Also I think that part of the problem is CGI. Before CGI movie makers needed to take the shot for the first time (cause money) so everyone was max concentrated and gave everything into their performance. Also everything needed to be precise to make sense. Nowadays it doesn't matter.. Just do few shots in front of green screen and we'll do the rest.
Of course there are exceptions, but the mainstream money-making machine is taking this movie soul-sucking path to produce quantity not quality in order to make piles of money. They don't care about art.
If I'm paying $25 to watch a movie on a giant screen, it better have explosions and other shiny shit to justify the price.
I can watch other films at home.
That's a conclusion for sure.
Say the guy who thinks everyone who doesnt enjoy the same thing as him is a Trump-voting fascist.
Please. Dont generalise like that. To anyone.
And thinking everyone should think the same and enjoy the same thing is a big step into fascistic thinking. You might tell yourself that forcing a modicum of thought and intellectual participation on people is for a good cause. But you arent, in these comments at least, a good judge of what intellectual participation is.
Well, excuse me for not wanting to be called a fascist just for liking action movies.
So now you're calling me an American?! Jeez.
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.
I don't think that's true. While the newest MCU movie were not doing as well as they were before, outside these main cinematic universe there have been some great recent comic book movies: the two Spiderverse movies are such absolute delights and some of the best animated movies ever made, and "The Batman" and "Joker" are fantastic as well. (Let's... not talk about the DCEU.)
I wonder if he would consider "The Departed" to be "manufactured content" by his own definition as well, considering the fact it is much more than merely "inspired" by "Infernal Affairs". Just sayin'.
Remember before Marvel movies, when we had such hits as Encino Man, Problem Child, Speed 2: Cruise Control, and and Cocktail? I've got news for you, Marty, cinema has been killing cinema since the dawn of cinema, and yet cinema survives. There will always be movies that someone doesn't like that make a FUCK ton of money. Then there will be the passion projects that gain a cult following decades after the fact. If you are lucky, you get a little of both sides of the coin, but most aren't. Get off your high-art horse and enjoy some escapism, not everyone has a 9 figure net worth, some of us need to forget how much life sucks and watch a guy with a hammer beat alien skulls into paste.
Hey now, let’s leave Encino Man out of this.
No wheezing the juice!
Dude. You need to lay off the caffeine or whatever it is. That was actually insane.
Whoa. I think you're late for your shrink. Don't forget to take your meds. My life doesn't suck or at least not that bad.
I’ll save you a trip to your shrink and armchair-diagnose you with NPD.
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 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.
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.
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.Couldn't agree more. I enjoyed some of the superhero movies from the early 2000s because they had good stories, they were clearly made by people passionate about them and they felt novel at the time. Things went downhill over the next decade or so and then I saw The Avengers and thought it was one of the worst movies I've ever seen and couldn't understand why anyone would like it. Further, the people who did like it, all told me the same thing, that you need to watch half a dozen other movies first. Why? Who in their right mind makes that decision as a producer? The Avengers is a movie with no character arcs, no plot build up, no introduction, and nothing the characters do feels like it has any weight and you know they're more or less invincible. It's boring garbage and people love it to death. I haven't really watched many superhero movies since, especially Marvel.
Business-people obviously and sadly. I mean movies have always been a business first, but since there are now basically only 2 or three large companies left with a much larger share of the income they can much better predict the expected income. Everything becomes more efficient. Before with thousands of little studios competing each individual project was kind of hustling around in all kinds of directions. It was hit or miss at random basically. And a small studio doesn't do focus-grouping in order to increase a movies financial success - that would be much too expensive for a small project. Those things only make sense financially if your movie is fairly large OR your company already has a well oiled marketing-department that focus-groups for basically every movie automatically. But with focus-groups you obviously always aim for what most people like. It's like the lowest denominator. That's why so many things feel so boring in marvel/disney-productions. There's no too room for random happy accidents.
I still have hopes for cinema though, since the incredible rise of the A24 brand in recent years for me is a clear signal that people are fed up with this marvel/disney-monoculture-assembly-line that clogges up the cinemas. One major aspect of the disney-death-star is that Disney basically prevents other productions from materializing. They even prevent some of their own projects from materializing as their planning shows them that N large movies a year is about the most they can extract from the movie-going audience. So they will not produce more big budget blockbusters, because that would only waste money. (If that doesn't make sense think about this: the more blockbuster you release each year the less it will be watched as you reach a saturation at a certain point. As a studio you try to release big-budget movies at times at which they don't have to compete with similar movies. Disney being the biggest player - aka the "disney-death-star" that has gobbled up pixar/marvel/star-wars and the entire 20th century fox IP/franchises - is defining what is and isn't possible to be released during a year (and making a profit with reasonable likelihood)).
Similar with competitors: They know that their big budget movie will have to compete with e.g. Marvels new this-and-that that weekend (or another Disney release at another time) and will not produce a movie. Disney is clogging up the cinemas with their grey goo.
A24 simply made movies that are different and not aimed at everyone. That simple idea was e extremely radical.
A producer who wants to make billions?
there isn't a finite amount of film, why not let people who enjoy superhero movies watch superhero movies? why are these fucking directors compelled to curate what the industry produces? I'm guessing he got his budget rejected and blamed action flicks.
Eff that! Those people dont understand superhero comics. Nobody who picks up a Spider-Man comic starts back at the beginning, back in 1962. What makes Marvel comics interesting to those who enjoy Marvel comics is that despite the comic being about one (or a team) superhero, it feels like theres events happening in the background, and past and future events that has happened and shaped the character. Their world feels more alive because you might not know what happened in another comic series but still get references to it. MCU manages to do this in miniature. You CAN watch every movie, but you shouldnt have to. The story stands alone despite there being references to stuff that you might not know about. And that makes it better than DCU movies.
I dont want to go back to boring, stand-alone movies with generic loser action heroes who can do superhero stuff like taking down jet planes despite pretending not to have superhero powers, and a sequel after another sequel then reboot. I mean, someone recently complained about getting tired of the John Wick movies.. Like we've gotten 4 movies. 2 hours every second year isnt something to get tired of.. 7 years of 20 episodes each is getting close to tiresome, if you enjoy it like you said you did.
I want a continious story in a continious world. I find that fun entertainment. And I'm sad that some Oscar-baiting movie producer think this isnt what movies can be.
Gross, I can't get behind a single thing you said.
And thats natural. We cant all enjoy the same stuff. :)
I just want to show that theres comic fans out there who actually enjoy having the comicbook movies we dreamt about when we were kids. And got disappointed over and over when the movie was so loosely based on the source material that it wasnt recognisable.
heres the thing, comic book movies as a concept arent bad but theyre executed terribly. disney and dc both fucking suck horrendously, thwyre unbearable
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.
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
Once X-Men hit at the box office, all the movie studios snatched up every single comic property they could get their greedy little hands on.
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?
The movie business has been dog shit for a long time now. Whether they continue making these shitty movies makes no difference at the end of the day.
"Music today is dogshit."
Don't confuse your uninformed opinion with reality.
Sounds like you’re upset that someone is calling your movies trash. Get over it and get better.
My movies? What?
I'm not upset about anything. I'm simply pointing out that the assertion that all movies today are dogshit shows you are either ignorant to all the quality movies being produced and the history of cinema in general, or your expectations are ludicrously high. In either case, you're contribution to the discussion is worthless. Or, to put it in your terms: your words are dogshit.
There have always been shitty movies. That's not to say that there have ONLY been shitty movies.
There are good movies being produced, and with the entirety of human culture at your fingertips, if all you are seeing is dogshit that's entirely your fault.
Is there a time when it wasnt? I dont believe the average movie was less shitty back then either. It is just that the best movies survive our memories and in our culture, so the past might seem more classy from here.
You could be right. But I distinctly remember there being a lot more enjoyable movies from the 90s. I’ve noticed that the format changed quite a bit between movies in the 90s vs movies today. Movie makers figured out a formula that maximizes their return on investment, but to me that has limited the depth and variability between movies these days. The exact same can be said about the music industry as well. To be me the more interesting movies/bands tend to be the obscure ones, which modern industry has strategically eliminated.
In other words some of the best and most interesting movies I’ve watched came from the 90s where those movies did poorly in the box office.
Movie makers today are only interested in making movies that perform well in the box office and so they take less risks. The lack of those risks means making movies that only fit a certain format. In my opinion that format gets old.
You're defeating your own point. You're basically saying the same thing that happened then ( a bunch of crap made, but among the crap was some golden treasures you had to find) is happening now, but you're complaining about it happening now and not then.
Take off your rose glasses. There has always been crap shovelled at us and if you wade through the crap you can find some real gems. It's not different now, you are.
You were also at least 23 years younger, presumably less jaded etc.
For as long as there's been art, people have pined for the art of their youth that was just "better." Boomers do it all the time with music still and joke about how their parents called their music noise.
There are amazing movies being made nowadays, from sociological fun Like Barbie to fresh horrors like Barbarian, X or Talk to Me, from intellectual commentaries like Tar to action brilliance like the Northman, social commentaries like Triangle of Sadness to wild action like RRR, beautiful anime like Suzume to soul searchers like Banshees of Inishiren, all of which are from the last 2 years. I'd say few of those would have been made in the 90s as we've just come farther, been able to make more daring and more interesting films.
Which 90s movies are you thinking of that stand unparalleled in modern times?
I was born in '85, so grew up in the 90s. And I thought I just didnt like music. It was crap. And played over and over again on every radio, every TOP X Hits CD, and in every gymnastic class. I tried searching, but the local music shops just contained the most pop stuff and nothing else. '01 was when I first found I actually enjoy music. One guy burned a CD with some progressive metal on it. And not long after that I found so damn much good music that just wasnt available to me before we had internet and could share mp3s.
So the good music was already eliminated in the 90s, at least where I live. And came back with internet sharing, despite the music industri trying their best to strangle it instead of embracing it. They havent stopped. Notice how out of trends mp3s are now? All is about the damn streaming. Thats them doing surprisingly well at controlling, imho.
This doesnt disprove your experience, of course. We need a bigger sample for that.
It's weird to me that he's lumping all comic book movies together and acting like they're the problem. We keep having trash movies churned out by studios because they make money. That's been true since at least the nineteen-forties if not earlier. Hell, I'm really just talking about the ones where enough of them still survive that you can go find them. Earlier, in the silent era, yeah, you had trash get made quickly and churned out so that people would pay a dime to watch it. I don't get how a single genre is supposed to be the culmination that's ruining cinema.
But, here's the thing. Have movies changed over the years? Absolutely. Scorcesie's movies have changed over the years! His style has changed, his vision has changed. What sells tickets has changed. How studios are producing films based on what they think will make them money has changed. It's been discussed before that the fall of video rentals and the rise of streaming has changed what kinds of movies studios are willing to put their money behind and how they're less likely to take a risk on something than they used to be. That's a problem. That's a big problem because it's reduced the number of small-budget and medium-budget studio films. None of that can be blamed on comic book adaptations.
And there's nothing inherently wrong with a comic book adaptation. Marvel movies are overly formulaic and especially since Disney bought them overly safe. Even in the ones I like, I can just feel that Disney touch that makes me go, "Ew," sometimes. DC's movies have been mismanaged with an unfit vision helming its original run from the start. So the big series, yes, I'll admit, they're kind of shit cinema. I still enjoy some of them, but they're kind of shit cinema. There are plenty of shit crime movies and thrillers and other things like that, but I'm not going to start yelling about how they're killing cinema and we have to fight against them. Why do comic book adaptations get singled out as artless trash when there's a constant stream of hollow feel-good romance films that get churned out every year? Do those formulaic vacuous sap-fests (some of which I love and will watch whenever I need a good cry, I'm really not knocking them) really merit a pass yet for some reason comic books require this war be waged by filmmakers against them? I really don't see how they're the problem.
And you can come in and say things like, "He's just stirring the pot to promote his film," but I don't think so. Scorsese has had a lot to say about modern filmmaking even when he doesn't have a project on the table. He's talked about his feelings on modern film culture, comic book adaptations, using the word content to describe any form of media, and more. I really don't think he's doing it to bring attention to any project so much as he just really feels very strongly that movies have changed and change is bad? Is that really what it is? Because some of the stuff he sees as a problem, yeah, I agree, it's an issue. But other stuff like this, even if there is a problem, your aim at what the problem really is is just completely off.
The answer is obviously more de-aged De Niro. We must determine how young he can play so I say we remake Three Men and a Baby with De Niro playing the baby. Quick, somebody call Steve Guttenberg!
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.
Those comic book movies are keeping theaters open, so there are screens even in existence to show Scorsese movies. He ought to be grateful.
My dude reads the Barbie comics. Respect.
What a coincidence that he's got a movie that's "fighting back" *checks watch* oh right about now! 🙄
Not only is this ridiculous (and untrue) fearmongering about the death of "real cinema" from an old man scared for his own relevance, it's such blatant self-promotion it's sickening. Dude would be better served being silent and maintaining his (admittedly deserved) reputation and prestige in the art form instead of tarnishing it with foolish declarations like this.
"old man scared of his own relevance" being said about one of the greatest directors of all time and probably the greatest alive. Ffs man...
First, I never said he was irrelevant. I said he's scared that he is. Second, past accomplishments don't negate current or future accountability for dumb statements like his.
I wonder when we will see a headline "[email protected] punches back: 'there's a place for these movies, they're great'". Your body of work is what makes people care about your opinion. The fact that Scorcese has made such outstanding movies is why people think he might know something about them... apparently you think those movies carry no weight but they absolutely do, this post existing in the first place being enough evidence of that already
Won't someone else stand up for the poor multi, multibillion dollar industry?? Think of the shareholders!!!
That you think Martin is somehow outside of this "poor multi, multibillion dollar industry" that you think I'm defending really says everything.
I didn't say he was outside it. But I'm not defending him like he's a victim like you are the marvel trash factory
Where did I do that?
Truth truth truth
You're wrong and Martin scorcese is right. First of all, he's Martin scorcese and you're not. Also, he speaks the truth and you're not. He's articulating exactly what I started feeling around 2003. I get so much shit for not liking superhero movies despite them being absolute dog shit. Nice to finally feel like I'm not the only one.
Are you old, too?
I have a feeling I'm older than you, and that's a good thing
This is no different than an old man ranting that music was better in his day.
I think movies and music have developed differently with rise of technology. The barrier to entry for making music and having it become popular has dramatically changed. You could in theory make a short song, have it go viral on the short videos (Tiktok, IG Reels, YT Shorts, etc) and you can in theory become a household name.
You don't need a big company mediating that. Anyone with a shitty laptop and some free time can take a go at this.
Movies? Not so much. A movie requires millions of dollars and then requires big companies to handle distribution, advertisement, production, etc.
This difference creates a sort of competition in the music industry, keeping the record companies in check whereas that simply doesn't exist in the movie industry. They are different animals. If independent movie makers could easily make successful movies without big companies, then I think it would be different.
Having said all that, Talk To Me was made by a couple of YouTubers and that is having a lot of success and honestly is a great movie. So maybe it's changing in the movie industry too
It's highly unlikely some of those YouTubers don't have very wealthy connections or family.
I was curious so I looked them up. Their wiki doesn't have much info, but it did mention they grew up in Adelaide Australia. I looked up median home price there and you seem to be right, it's one of the richest parts of the country.
Regardless, from a quick cursory glance it seems they've been making videos since they were 11 years old. It was through their popular YouTube channel that they made certain connections. They for example managed to be a part of the filming of the Babadook, another great Australian horror movie.
So while yes, their wealth certainly helped I think YouTube becoming a conduit into more "legitimate" video form is something that I think will likely happen more and more
Movies have shifted from dialogue and storytelling to glitter and flash. The depth of content is not what it used to be.
We can continue the music analogy again, if you'd like.
That's an aggressive response. No wonder you agree with Scorsese. You obviously have decided what art and film are, and everyone elses subjective opinion (because it's fucking art, not math) is wrong.
But really, the first comment, the one with more upvotes than you, is right. This is no different thatln some white dude telling you rap isn't real music, and classical is the only artful form of music. And of course a bunch of pseudo-intellectuals will agree, because it makes you feel fancy.
People removed about it, and its because Martin is 100% right. Comic book things are collapsing now at Disney.
About a decade too late there bub
I agree. pass the popcorn the comments already begun
Poor old man, he doesn't know what is coming. Movies with Ai generated scenarios and actors. Actors that you can change if you pay some micro transactions, and their outfits too. Half assed on release, pay some more for dlc's to have the full story, etc...
“Culture” , at this point and a long time ago is not about a culture, it’s just what it makes money … ironically is ruining the industry and less people want to watch Hollywood
ITT: people are mad because someone doesn't like their mahvie movies
yeah I could really go without another 20 years of kind of movies
Luckily, Disney is way ahead of him on ruining comic book movies.
"Stop making things I personally don't like! It's destroying the culture of America!"
The future is comic book movies, old man. Deal with it.
That movie sounds dope.
As for the other part, I love comic book movies, but still agree. I think he might get more agreement if he reframed it as a complaint about homginization. For instance, I think The Batman was surprisingly fresh. Whereas the Flash was like... high end tv, maybe? Like, not BAD, but you've gotta ask: how many people will watch it five years from now? What ideas or artistic images is it introducing?
I think some comic movies --Black Panther, for instance -- move culture and inspire new stories. But a lot don't. I've heard it said that the modern studio system could never make Back to the Future or Ghostbusters, and I think that's true. A lot needs to change about how these are financed and distributed to make that not the case.
What does this even mean?
Probably talking about new IPs? Studios are pretty risk averse nowadays.
It obviously means studios wouldn't take a chance on something "wacky" which is a change that prevents as much actual creativity from getting to audiences
Big money has always and will always chase success. That some people don't like the current trends doesn't mean it's the downfall of the industry, and it doesn't mean things were better or different in the past. And why should we be bothered about trends anyway? Indy film has been killing it for ages now and anybody that's worth listening to is looking there for innovation, not at profit driven studios.
As many people have pointed out, if all the money gets spent on ironman 72, movies like pulp fiction can't be funded. Yeah indie films are great, but there was also a time that movies in that same vein could reach hundreds of millions in the mainstream, and that impact on culture was a good one imo
Good things that's not happening! Again, that you and others aren't happy with current trends doesn't mean the industry is dying, or even that it's objectively worse than it was. Is it really that surprising that the trends today aren't the same as they were 40 years ago? And in 40 more years, there'll be entirely different trends. Change is inevitable and fearmongering about it is just pointless. Find the good in it and celebrate the continued success of cinema instead of wallowing in a miserable yearning for something that's moved on.
Just because Scorcese frames it as an industry dying doesn't mean I fully agree with that. I absolutely agree that the overall quality of stories is down and marvel crap is largely to blame. Doesn't matter if it's not a new thing for trash media to exist, I can still dislike it
Ok? If you read my comments, you might see that my point isn't that people aren't allowed to dislike things, though I would recommend against it when it only serves to make them needlessly pessimistic about anything and everything.
I apologize, but the case was made to be in a long and very compelling article that I don't have a link for.
I think it was about consolidation, and how the lack of diversity in small independent theaters and small independent distributors robbed movies that weren't copies of successful films the chance to become surprise hits.
Now, most theaters are chains, and they're largely owned by the same entities that own distributors. So everywhere shows the same films, and there's no one to take a chance on something different or risky.
Gotcha. Yeah, vertical integration, such as studios owning theaters, has been a longstanding back-and-forth struggle in film. Most dramatically seen back in the "Golden Age" where studios basically owned the whole process, from actors to theaters. Even if we're swinging back towards studio domination (or are already there), the Internet really changes things to the point I don't think it's gonna be the downfall of anything. Distribution is simply too easy to be entirely dominated by established studios like it was before.
When you say this I feel like you're explaining how competition in healthcare is providing incredible choice for patients at incredibly low prices. Because what you're saying sounds very reasonable in theory, but just doesn't seem to match up with the reality we're living in.
If you wanna read it that way, I'm not sure what to tell you. I'm just saying all's not lost because Marvel is making bank.
I believe Disney is doing it on their own by now. Look at what is happening to Marcel and the DCU, I see only big failures recently and viewers are exhausted by it too.
What? The last Marvel Movie Gaurdians of the Galaxy 3, was released 5/5/23, had a budget of 250M and has earned 850M. That's far from a big failure. You might not like them, but they are far from "failures".
I was admittedly on the train with Marvel until End Game and thoroughly enjoyed it. I've since fallen off the MCU. I'll still catch Batman, but otherwise I'm on board with moving on.
Oh yes Martin. Please save the cinema by yawns making the 100th Mafia movie.
You say that superhero movies vary to a degree that I would even notice if you switched movies halfway through when I went for a piss break.
Absolutely zero interesting qualities in any of the last 10 super hero movies that I've seen.
It seems like you replied to the wrong comment.
Only uncultured peasants watch movies. 😜
save Big Band dance hall culture while you're at it, too Marty.. that shit was fly, and there was more dames than there are at one of your little picture shows, you know what i mean, pal.. great for cardiac health too.. i mean don't get me wrong.. i like watching Joe stab an asshole in the throat with a pen just as much as the next asshole.. especially if you hit him over the head with a bat later, man that was a fucking twist outta nowhere.. fucking cinema, wow..
okay Marty good luck with everything.. seriously though, Big Band too as long as you're saving important cultural you know, institutions..
Based
I respect him a lot but I don't think people will consider comic book adaptations as the real cinema. Movies like Spiderman into the Spiderverse and Across the Spiderverse were good, even a good example for good animation. But will we call it real cinema? If we do, does it matter?
You got a weird definition of cinema yo. Cinema isn't some high falutin, transcendental experience. I don't care if it's Good Fellas or Beavis and Butthead. They're all just movies.
Yeah, the main point of mine was that different people have different views on cinema. For some, it's art. For some, it's an entertainment, a past time. For some, it's business. Having a proper composition of all of these is important.
Mari Selvaraj's Pariyerum Perumal and Vetrimaaran's Visaranai are cinema to me, but will I suggest everyone the same movie? not.
Old man doing old man things moving on 🙄
Like Spielberg, his best years after behind him and he only makes grandpa movies now
So wrong.
This is just an old man saying guitarists were better in his day when truthfully they were not.
Rich white fuck gonna rich white fuck I guess.
He's of Italian descent.