Film Martin Scorsese - Marvel movies are 'not cinema'

Iker Quesadillas said:
Besides the money there are other finite resources, like the talent, equipment, studio time, etc. Talent is a big one, in that you see more and more that people go from making a decent indie movie to being put in charge of a $100m studio production.
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You would assume though that that would be the goal for most directors/actors would it not?

To make money and become well known/regarded making blockbusters which then allows them to make their own passion projects further down the road in their career. Certainly seems to have worked for the likes of Taika Waititi.
 
stevoc said:
You would assume though that that would be the goal for most directors/actors would it not?

To make money and become well known/regarded making blockbusters which then allows them to make their own passion projects further down the road in their career. Certainly seems to have worked for the likes of Taika Waititi.
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Yup, there have been multiple directors and actors for the fact that say being in a hit blockbuster allows them to fund their smaller creative projects.

You could look at it as Marvel hoovering up all the talent (which would assume theres only a finite amount of talent) or look at it as Marvel increasing the amount of jobs. Also if Marvel used the Michael bays of the world people would complain the indie directors get overlooked. A bit like the young english managers being overlooked for top 6 jobs.
 
Wow he’s finally using de Niro and di Caprio in the same flick.
 
stevoc said:
You would assume though that that would be the goal for most directors/actors would it not?
To make money and become well known/regarded making blockbusters which then allows them to make their own passion projects further down the road in their career. Certainly seems to have worked for the likes of Taika Waititi.
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That's probably the pitch they're given. I doubt it's actually what happens.

For example, The Russo Brothers worked for Marvel for quite a while. They directed Cherry, and in their own words:
When you talk about making character movies like “Cherry,” even we are finding that is becoming increasingly difficult as the months pass — not as the years pass, as the months pass. It is a tough market, even for us coming off of “Endgame,” to make a darker, character-driven movie like “Cherry.” It’s not what the market was even two years ago.
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They are now directing... a $200m action-thriller franchise starring Ryan Reynolds. I don't imagine this is a passion project.

Since Jon Favreau directed Iron Man, he's directed four other big-budget studio movies. He's done one 'passion project', Chef, which cost 11m. That's not too different than the 5m he could get for an independent movie in 2001. Colin Trevorrow has not done any passion projects since he got involved with Jurassic World and Star Wars. Rian Johnson had directed 30m Looper and then directed 40m Knives Out. I don't think Last Jedi had much to do with that. Joss Whedon, who was already a well-known television creator, got involved with Avengers and DC for a while, and got... another tv show greenlit. Chloe Zhao, who won a Best Director oscar, finished Eternals and is now doing... a sci-fi western about Dracula. I doubt this was her calling. Even someone like Kenneth Branagh, who was already a respected director, has spent the bulk of the last decade directing big budget studio stuff. In exchange for what, Belfast, which barely cost any money?

This career path works best when you want to make big-budget movies in the first place. If you're Christopher Nolan, you want to make big movies, whether they have Batman in them or not. So it works for you. Ditto if you're Zach Snyder. But if you want to make something else and are only getting into Marvel/DC stuff for reputation, it's probably not going to pay off.

Also it should be said that a lot of these people are talented, but you need to hone your skills. If you spend your formative years directing $100m big budget movies where a lot of the work is done for you, you're not going to have the skills to make these passion projects.
 
Iker Quesadillas said:
That's probably the pitch they're given. I doubt it's actually what happens.

For example, The Russo Brothers worked for Marvel for quite a while. They directed Cherry, and in their own words:


They are now directing... a $200m action-thriller franchise starring Ryan Reynolds. I don't imagine this is a passion project.

Since Jon Favreau directed Iron Man, he's directed four other big-budget studio movies. He's done one 'passion project', Chef, which cost 11m. That's not too different than the 5m he could get for an independent movie in 2001. Colin Trevorrow has not done any passion projects since he got involved with Jurassic World and Star Wars. Rian Johnson had directed 30m Looper and then directed 40m Knives Out. I don't think Last Jedi had much to do with that. Joss Whedon, who was already a well-known television creator, got involved with Avengers and DC for a while, and got... another tv show greenlit. Chloe Zhao, who won a Best Director oscar, finished Eternals and is now doing... a sci-fi western about Dracula. I doubt this was her calling. Even someone like Kenneth Branagh, who was already a respected director, has spent the bulk of the last decade directing big budget studio stuff. In exchange for what, Belfast, which barely cost any money?

This career path works best when you want to make big-budget movies in the first place. If you're Christopher Nolan, you want to make big movies, whether they have Batman in them or not. So it works for you. Ditto if you're Zach Snyder. But if you want to make something else and are only getting into Marvel/DC stuff for reputation, it's probably not going to pay off.

Also it should be said that a lot of these people are talented, but you need to hone your skills. If you spend your formative years directing $100m big budget movies where a lot of the work is done for you, you're not going to have the skills to make these passion projects.
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For the Russo brothers making Marvel movies probably was their passion projects.

For the rest of the directors doing a big budget movie isn't a guarantee that the rest of their careers will go 100% how they imagined but I imagine for some it is and if it isn't then at least they've made a lot of money. At the end of the day no one's forcing any of these directors to make Blockbuster movies.
 
stevoc said:
What was it he said that Dune and No Time to Die feel 'similar'?

Seems obvious they would feel similar as ones a reboot and the other one is the latest in a series of about 30 movies based on the same character.
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That was his quote

The talented people — you could take ‘Dune,’ made by Denis Villeneuve, an extremely talented, gifted artist, and you could take ‘No Time to Die,’ directed by…Cary Fukunaga — extremely gifted, talented, beautiful artists, and you could take both those movies, and you and I could go and pull the same sequence out of both of them and put them together. The same sequence where the cars all crash into each other.”
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I think he might be mixing Dune with another Villeneuve film.
 
Personally, I’ll take Scorsese’s body of work over Marvel’s.

Marvel’s stuff is very formulaic and it’s quite amazing the run theyve been on before people get burnt out and tired of it all. I‘ve enjoyed watching a lot of them but I’ve never had a burning desire to go back and rewatch them. They’re essentially the peak of popcorn movies.

Scorsese‘s work is fairly varied and he makes stuff that he wants to work on and the principle of ‘1 for me, 1 for you’ logic applies between him and movie studios. He can go make Kundun if the studio wanted him to make Casino, but he does a good job in both of those movie types when that stipulation applies. I’m not a rabid Scorsese fanboy as I think Kundun and Silence weren’t to my tastes and a bit boring but I enjoy a lot of his other stuff like The Color of Money and The King of Comedy, not to mention all the big hitters like Goodfellas, The Wolf of Wall Street etc. Even though you’d never associate him with children/family movies, he did a pretty great job with Hugo.

My opinion on this is I hope studios don’t shift into doing all this major franchise stuff, and neglect people like Scorsese from doing something great. It feels like unless you’re Nolan, Spielberg, Scorsese, PTA or Tarantino, you’re never going to get that kind of creative freedom from studios because the cape stuff is taking up the majority of the budget, so you’re working with pennies and the marketing is going to be shit and a potentially great movie is then reliant on word of mouth.
 
So I just watched Shang-Li and the 10 Rings. Definitely one of the better Marvel movies. After 30 minutes I thought I was going to end up here saying that maybe I was being a bit harsh. But the second half of the movie is just unbelievably formulaic. Even the inevitable final boss battle seems to follow an identical ebb and flow to every Marvel movie ever. I wonder are there SOPs that the producers are told to follow to make sure they hit the precise notes that all their test audiences expect? It’s mad how samey they all are. I don’t understand how anyone can watch a Marvel movie more than once every several years without very quickly starting to hate them.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
So I just watched Shang-Li and the 10 Rings. Definitely one of the better Marvel movies. After 30 minutes I thought I was going to end up here saying that maybe I was being a bit harsh. But the second half of the movie is just unbelievably formulaic. Even the inevitable final boss battle seems to follow an identical ebb and flow to every Marvel movie ever. I wonder are there SOPs that the producers are told to follow to make sure they hit the precise notes that all their test audiences expect? It’s mad how samey they all are. I don’t understand how anyone can watch a Marvel movie more than once every several years without very quickly starting to hate them.
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I don't either. It's a mystery to me.
 
Salt Bailly said:
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:lol:


FrankDrebin said:
Ah, Sorcerer, one of W.F best films. Took a long while to get acknowledge as one though. Too many comparisons with the original I guess.
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Also opened on the same weekend as the first Star Wars film. :(

Somewhere there is a better alternative universe of people dressing up every year as Bruno Cremer and demanding a 5 series long tv show about the old lady in the bar at the end of the film.
 
Gringo said:
Think I watched a making of of the bridge scene, but it's still surreal how they filmed that. Probably the most tense I've ever been, felt so real.
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I might be wrong but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a interview with Friedkin where he talks about losing one of the trucks in the river. They are also on the very edge. Even on rewatches I can tense watching it. Just a brilliant piece of film making.
 
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