Martin Scorsese is urging filmmakers to save cinema, by doubling down on his call to fight comic book movie culture.
The storied filmmaker is revisiting the topic of comic book movies in a new profile for GQ. Despite facing intense blowback from filmmakers, actors and the public for the 2019 comments he made slamming the Marvel Cinematic Universe films ā he called them theme parks rather than actual cinema ā Scorsese isnāt shying away from the topic.
āThe danger there is what itās doing to our culture,ā he told GQ. āBecause there are going to be generations now that think ā¦ thatās what movies are.ā
GQās Zach Baron posited that what Scorsese was saying might already be true, and the āKillers of the Flower Moonā filmmaker agreed.
āThey already think that. Which means that we have to then fight back stronger. And itās got to come from the grassroots level. Itās gotta come from the filmmakers themselves,ā Scorsese continued to the outlet. āAnd youāll have, you know, the Safdie brothers, and youāll have Chris Nolan, you know what I mean? And hit āem from all sides. Hit āem from all sides, and donāt give up. ā¦ Go reinvent. Donāt complain about it. But itās true, because weāve got to save cinema.ā
Scorsese referred to movies inspired by comic books as āmanufactured contentā rather than cinema.
āItās almost like AI making a film,ā he said. āAnd that doesnāt mean that you donāt have incredible directors and special effects people doing beautiful artwork. But what does it mean? What do these films, what will it give you?ā
His forthcoming film, āKillers of the Flower Moon,ā had been on Scorseseās wish list for several years; itās based on David Grannās 2017 nonfiction book of the same name. He called the story āa sober look at who we are as a culture.ā
The film tells the true story of the murders of Osage Nation members by white settlers in the 1920s. DiCaprio originally was attached to play FBI investigator Tom White, who was sent to the Osage Nation within Oklahoma to probe the killings. The script, however, underwent a significant rewrite.
āAfter a certain point,ā the filmmaker told Time, āI realized I was making a movie about all the white guys.ā
The dramatic focus shifted from Whiteās investigation to the Osage and the circumstances that led to them being systematically killed with no consequences.
The character of White now is played by Jesse Plemons in a supporting role. DiCaprio stars as the husband of a Native American woman, Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), an oil-rich Osage woman, and member of a conspiracy to kill her loved ones in an effort to steal her family fortune.
Scorsese worked closely with Osage Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear and his office from the beginning of production, consulting producer Chad Renfro told Time. On the first day of shooting, the Oscar-winning filmmaker had an elder of the nation come to set to say a prayer for the cast and crew.
Less conservative and more a product of its time, so letās say centre with a whiff of Reagan.
But yeah, hey, thatās a thing. If you learned it today and youāre curious about it there are decades of criticism and analysis about it. I am very far from being the first to point that out, among other things because I was a toddler when it came out.
Despite other people pointing it out Iām not really buying it.
There is a line āRonald Reagan, the actor? President?ā Which seems to indicate itās a ridiculous idea.
Then as others have pointed out, Biff in BTTF 2 is basically exactly trump and they couldnāt paint that character in a worse light. Heās an evil villain.
The reality is probably that the movies have nothing political in them other than the joke about Reagan which likely actually wasnāt meant to be a real critique
Thatās not how meaning works, though.
Look, I get it, not everybody cares or knows how semiotics work, but itās always baffling how much people get invested in the notion of āno politics in artā no matter how often this comes up.
Yes, there are politics in Back to the Future, as in any other film where the worldview of the creators becomes the perspective from which the entire film is put together. Things in movies donāt happen by accident, they get carefully written, acted and shot. Everything in a movie is something somebody is saying, and like any other thing you say it has both superficial and subtextual meaning.
So yes, BTTF does spend the entire movie boiling down maturity and success to being financially successful and self-confident. Because itās an American movie from the 80s and thatās how young Bob Zemeckis and Bob Gale saw being self-fulfilled looking like in 1985.
And yes, they poke good intentioned, light fun at Reagan being president. And they acknowledge some form of past racism in the form of Goldie being president, but also holy crap, the way Goldie is characterized also tells you a lot of how the Bobs saw race working and letās just say that nothing in BTTF2 and Forrest Gump was accidental.
Is it an active piece of propaganda? No, thatās not where the bar is for containing a political or even politicized worldview. But it does present a worldview, and that isā¦ a pretty centrist, eminently materialistic take on what was a fairly conservative world.
I promise thatās not an insult.
Never ever ever said that because itās untrue as fuck. You lost me completely
Youā¦ literally said
Itās right there, Iām looking at it.
I am now more curious to know how you think this works. Like, you think thereās a political take in some art, but not in all art, so thereās a line somewhere between explicit and implicit political stuff, I suppose?
Or is the confusion that you thought I understood you as advocating for no politics in art instead? Because thatās not what Iām saying.
I claimed 3 movies likely arenāt political. You extrapolated that to all art. Iām done here
I think youāre maybe mixing up ābeing politicalā with ābeing propagandisticā. Those arenāt the same thing.
BTTF or Guardians 3 are political in that they have a built-in political view. Theyāre movies where reality is painted from a specific perspective and lines up with a certain worldview. Theyāre not selling you on that perspective actively, itās built into the narrative as a framing, consicously or subsconsciously (itās probably more subconscious in BTTF, more conscious in G3, Iād say).
Die Hard is a bit of a different beast there. It may not be outright propagandistic or jingoistic, but it sure is flirting with that borderline there.
I absolutely agree that politics can be subtle and unintentional but to classify a movie with the word āpoliticalā as a topic unto itself implies an intentionally present political message.
Iād argue it implies a noticeable or identifiable political framing, but I donāt think intentionality is the line.
But hey, at that point weāre debating what we name it. Iād argue that we want to have a name for it, and if you donāt want to call it āpoliticalā Iām struggling to think what else to use. Itās not simply thematic, because a theme can be different from an implicit political worldview. A movie can be about, say, coming of age, thematically, but thatās different from its political framing.