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 â he called them theme parks rather than actual cinema â Scorsese isnât shying away from the topic.
âThe danger there is what itâs doing to our culture,â he told GQ. âBecause there are going to be generations now that think ⊠thatâs what movies are.â
GQâs Zach Baron posited that what Scorsese was saying might already be true, and the âKillers of the Flower Moonâ filmmaker agreed.
âThey already think that. Which means that we have to then fight back stronger. And itâs got to come from the grassroots level. Itâs gotta come from the filmmakers themselves,â Scorsese continued to the outlet. âAnd youâll have, you know, the Safdie brothers, and youâll have Chris Nolan, you know what I mean? And hit âem from all sides. Hit âem from all sides, and donât give up. ⊠Go reinvent. Donât complain about it. But itâs true, because weâve got to save cinema.â
Scorsese referred to movies inspired by comic books as âmanufactured contentâ rather than cinema.
âItâs almost like AI making a film,â he said. âAnd that doesnât mean that you donât have incredible directors and special effects people doing beautiful artwork. But what does it mean? What do these films, what will it give you?â
His forthcoming film, âKillers of the Flower Moon,â had been on Scorseseâs wish list for several years; itâs based on David Grannâs 2017 nonfiction book of the same name. He called the story âa sober look at who we are as a culture.â
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.
âAfter a certain point,â the filmmaker told Time, âI realized I was making a movie about all the white guys.â
The dramatic focus shifted from Whiteâs 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.
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 itâs 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 wouldnât be surprised if it turned out that there was a noticeable diversity and Iâm going to say thoughtfulness amongst big films of the past compared to today. Iâm open to being wrong of course, but itâs worth thinking about, just because big-corp monopolisation can easily have these effects.
Iâm 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). Thereâs even a moment (when they first see the raptors being fed) thatâs basically kinda vegan message or at least a critique or contrast between humans and âthe monstersâ of the film, done entirely but very clearly through editing and directing ⊠it was really nice actually.
Youâre wrong.
But to be clear, when you say âthe pastâ 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 youâre 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 youâre in Old Hollywood territory, where the âactionâ 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 donât thatâs 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 itâs 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 âAdult filmâ 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 itâs been a continuous collapse of âAdult filmsâ under the weight of blockbusters to the point that the blockbusters arenât even trying anymore to imitate, at least at times, the more nuanced âadultâ films of the past.
All due respect to Boyleâs hot take, but Iâd 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 donât get a restricted audience due to censorship make more money, but Iâm gonna guess people would have figured that out at some point either way. Itâs also interesting that the other target he gave in that quote was Pixar, but people tend to not mention that part.
I think thereâs a sense that pre-blockbuster Hollywood wasnât 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. âSerious dramasâ or âadult filmsâ were only at the forefront of filmmaking when they were at the forefront of profitability. Thatâs to say, when the so-called âstar systemâ 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 donât think that would have been any different in 1982.