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.
Itās been that way for a loooong time.
Movies became so expensive to produce that studios canāt 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 bankās 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 thereās any risk, e.g. this has never been done before, or thereās no recognizable franchise branding, or if something could be controversial in a meaningful way, the bank wonāt 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.
Thatās why Hollywood doesnāt make daring, experimental, and controversial movies much anymore.
Capitalism ruins everything.
Enshittification doesnāt just happen to online platforms.
And itās 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.
Thatāsā¦ 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
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
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 donāt think Scorsese is wrong necessarily, but thereāre a lot of old man yells at cloud vibes happening. He still makes movies he wants but heās butthurt he doesnāt get the accolades he did in his heyday?
Peopleās tastes ebb and flow and this will ācorrectā eventually. I mean, punk rock happened because rock and disco got so overwrought and bland in the 70s. Cinema will evolve but Iām willing to bet itāll be into something Scorsese hates before noir esque gangster films are de rigeur again
āCinemaā as Scorsese knows it probably really is dead. When people go to a movie theater they typically want spectacle to justify the price tag.
Iām 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.
I still enjoy comic book movies when theyāre good. The problem is theyāre 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 didnāt 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
So in a way itās going right back to the way things were during the Golden Age of Hollywood. I hope this means more musicals are on the way.