Film Martin Scorsese - Marvel movies are 'not cinema'

Yeah Spoons, they're a different genre. Not all genres are obliged to offer viewers deep, philosophical experiences.


No but the likes of Goodfellas are hardly deeply philosophical films. They're well acted and crafted entertainment. Look it comes down to what we all find entertaining I guess.
 
No but the likes of Goodfellas are hardly deeply philosophical films. They're well acted and crafted entertainment. Look it comes down to what we all find entertaining I guess.

I'm a huge Scorsese fan as I'm sure you know. As I said, this just seems like a lot of old man yells at cloud. People clearly find the superhero genre entertaining. Films offer us an escape from reality, it could be that our current reality is so shit that the ultra fantasy world of superhero films is where people want to escape to.
 
I'm a huge Scorsese fan as I'm sure you know. As I said, this just seems like a lot of old man yells at cloud. People clearly find the superhero genre entertaining. Films offer us an escape from reality, it could be that our current reality is so shit that the ultra fantasy world of superhero films is where people want to escape to.


Fair enough...and I'm not denying that at all. But that goes for all forms of art/music. Some forms are better but what we like or prefer is down to personal taste and mood.
 
Fair enough...and I'm not denying that at all. But that goes for all forms of art/music. Some forms are better but what we like or prefer is down to personal taste and mood.

Definitely. The genre doesn't need character building dialogue, clever cinematographic techniques or anything like that. We already know the characters and the action (fight scenes explosions, etc) replace the need for shots like the steadycam ones in Goodfellas.
 
Definitely. The genre doesn't need character building dialogue, clever cinematographic techniques or anything like that. We already know the characters and the action (fight scenes explosions, etc) replace the need for shots like the steadycam ones in Goodfellas.


Anyway, I am yet to see The Joker...I suspect it's unlike other comic book adaptations.

Watched Judy though (let's not go there....). And yes Rene was very good but I couldn't care less about JG's time in London.
 
What's so entertaining about these rehashed silly superhero movies though? I genuinely fail to see the entertainment value of it and I don't mind over-the-top brainless movies every once in a while.

In other words, I'd rather watch Speed or Con Air.
 
High and (supposedly) low culture is rarely that far apart, regardless of our personal preferences. As an example of such, the brief, happy accident of Shakespeare (King Lear) and The Beatles on I Am The Walrus - a fitting and resonant emblem of historic English culture high and low. Ominous too, in light of Lennon's 'untimely' death. Not to mention Lennon's deliberately nonsensical lyrics via Lewis Carroll.

The more I think about it the more I have decided that Marvel represents not low culture, trash, the generic, doggerel. Marvel Movies is more akin to a Halifax advert or a local pizza place menu they stuff in your door. They're the equivalent of a baby rattle for perpetually prepubescent adults that just want someone to numb their senses for a few hours. Utterly cynical, no value, insidious shit.

Surely we must be able to make a distinction between Hey Diddle Diddle and a money counting machine with Marvel branded on it.

There is Rembrandt and there is graffiti artist Twist, high and low, both great, both culture. Marvel is sticking a tube of acrylic up yourself further and further untill you feel something. That can't be art, that's just perverted. The sick fecks.

That should do it.
 
They're just modern day upbeat action films. Some of them are shite, some are decent action flicks, some just watchable.

When you get people hailing them as works of genius I kind of see where he's coming from, but they're not really that different from films like Men in Black, Ghostbusters, etc. There's always been a market there because they are entertaining and easy to watch, and fairly well made.

Films like Independence Day 2, Jurassic Park Fallen Kingdom, that newest Godzilla film etc. Aren't cinema. Just a bunch of meaningless nonsense that plays out more like a 7 year old's random dream than any kind of story.
 
He's right. Marvel is crap (except the Deadpool series those are funny as feck)
I cant believe people arent bored of them by now. We get like 2-3 every month, its insane.
 
The more I think about it the more I have decided that Marvel represents not low culture, trash, the generic, doggerel. Marvel Movies is more akin to a Halifax advert or a local pizza place menu they stuff in your door. They're the equivalent of a baby rattle for perpetually prepubescent adults that just want someone to numb their senses for a few hours. Utterly cynical, no value, insidious shit.

Surely we must be able to make a distinction between Hey Diddle Diddle and a money counting machine with Marvel branded on it.

There is Rembrandt and there is graffiti artist Twist, high and low, both great, both culture. Marvel is sticking a tube of acrylic up yourself further and further untill you feel something. That can't be art, that's just perverted. The sick fecks.

That should do it.
:lol:

Brilliant.
 
They're just modern day upbeat action films. Some of them are shite, some are decent action flicks, some just watchable.

When you get people hailing them as works of genius I kind of see where he's coming from, but they're not really that different from films like Men in Black, Ghostbusters, etc. There's always been a market there because they are entertaining and easy to watch, and fairly well made.

Films like Independence Day 2, Jurassic Park Fallen Kingdom, that newest Godzilla film etc. Aren't cinema. Just a bunch of meaningless nonsense that plays out more like a 7 year old's random dream than any kind of story.

I know people go straight to Marvel movies when complain about modern cinema or lack of creativity but I'd argue there are worse culprits in Hollywood than Marvel. The films you mentioned above with all the live action Disney cartoons and Dwayne Johnsons entire career all mostly terrible.
 
I know people go straight to Marvel movies when complain about modern cinema or lack of creativity but I'd argue there are worse culprits in Hollywood than Marvel. The films you mentioned above with all the live action Disney cartoons and Dwayne Johnsons entire career all mostly terrible.

Good thing about dwayne is that he doesnt pretend to be a deniro

He buys his own cliche, took a lightheart approach and sells it well. Nice bloke in real life to boot. Heard that he never complains on set and very down to earth.

Not every movie has to be oscar calibre, i don't mind a shallowly entertaining movie as long as they dont pretend to be anything more than that.
 
I cant believe people arent bored of them by now. We get like 2-3 every month, its insane.

there are about 20 of them in total and if I'm not mistaken, the first one was Iron Man back in 2007. I mean, you get to see 2 Marvel movies every year so if someone is bored by them, it's really easy to skip them and watch something else.
 
there are about 20 of them in total and if I'm not mistaken, the first one was Iron Man back in 2007. I mean, you get to see 2 Marvel movies every year so if someone is bored by them, it's really easy to skip them and watch something else.

Correct.

Before the current MCU, we still had a Batman every couple of years, 2006 Superman reboot, 3 Spider-Man film, an X—Men trilogy, Daredevil, Green Lantern, Elektra, 2 Hellboy films etc... Comic book adaptations are nothing new, it seems like people just have an axe to grind because of the accolades they received (which really isn’t that much, mostly still shunned at awards shows) and their popularity with the plebs, but the plebs have never had a taste for anything other than brain dead mind numbing escapism. Were the likes of 80s action stars like Stallone with his mumbling, Arnold etc... that much deeper?
 
I know people go straight to Marvel movies when complain about modern cinema or lack of creativity but I'd argue there are worse culprits in Hollywood than Marvel. The films you mentioned above with all the live action Disney cartoons and Dwayne Johnsons entire career all mostly terrible.

Michael Bay and his endless spewl of Transformers films seemed to open the gate for people to just make whatever crap they feel like into mainstream cinema.

I'm not a fan of all the Marvel films but they at least have some structure and standard. They're just family orientated action films. Action films have always been cinema. They've just happened to hit the jackpot because they also have the comic fan audience.
 
I think some Michael Kupperman is pertinent right about now

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Good thing about dwayne is that he doesnt pretend to be a deniro

He buys his own cliche, took a lightheart approach and sells it well. Nice bloke in real life to boot. Heard that he never complains on set and very down to earth.

Not every movie has to be oscar calibre, i don't mind a shallowly entertaining movie as long as they dont pretend to be anything more than that.


Plus people who like his films don't go overboard on Internet sites voting his films the greatest ever and getting annoyed if someone like Scorsese is critical of them
 
I know people go straight to Marvel movies when complain about modern cinema or lack of creativity but I'd argue there are worse culprits in Hollywood than Marvel. The films you mentioned above with all the live action Disney cartoons and Dwayne Johnsons entire career all mostly terrible.

I'm not sure how to feel about you disparaging my namesake.
 
The more I think about it the more I have decided that Marvel represents not low culture, trash, the generic, doggerel. Marvel Movies is more akin to a Halifax advert or a local pizza place menu they stuff in your door. They're the equivalent of a baby rattle for perpetually prepubescent adults that just want someone to numb their senses for a few hours. Utterly cynical, no value, insidious shit.

Surely we must be able to make a distinction between Hey Diddle Diddle and a money counting machine with Marvel branded on it.

There is Rembrandt and there is graffiti artist Twist, high and low, both great, both culture. Marvel is sticking a tube of acrylic up yourself further and further untill you feel something. That can't be art, that's just perverted. The sick fecks.

That should do it.
:lol:

Greatest description possible.
 


“When Martin Scorsese says that the Marvel pictures are not cinema, he’s right because we expect to learn something from cinema, we expect to gain something, some enlightenment, some knowledge, some inspiration…I don’t know that anyone gets anything out of seeing the same movie over and over again,” the 80-year-old filmmaker said, according to Yahoo! News. “Martin was kind when he said it’s not cinema. He didn’t say it’s despicable, which I just say it is.”
 
I think they are fun enough, but I am starting to get bored about some of the newer ones.
 
Surprisingly there's barely a major thread about Scorsese/Coppola's comments on r/movies. You'd think they'd be interested in discussing their comments.
 
Are there many 80 year olds who like comic book films? If there was a Last of the Summer Wine movie I bet they'd love it.


They would would ask the same question only changing 80 to 8 year olds
 
A second old man joined in the yelling at clouds.

Despicable :lol:
 
Are they any worse than most mainstream movies or the general dearth of ideas represented by most cinema? Worse than Mission impossible 5, Taken 6, Fast and Furious 7, Terminator 8? I went to see Joker recently and virtually every trailer before it looked just awful. If people want to switch off with some mindless fun then that's fine but I don't really see why people would pick on Marvel movies to make a point.

*I'm sure there probably isn't a Taken 6 but just substitute it for some other crappy Liam Neeson thriller :D
 
"Going to the movies has become like a theme park. Studios making bad content in order to appeal to the masses and shareholders is like fracking -- you get the best return right now but you wreck the earth. It’s ruining the viewing habits of the American population and then ultimately the rest of the world."
- Jodie Foster

"A lot of the modern sort of action movies I see, you know Marvel sort of things, I just think any guy can do it," "I have no ambition... I mean I can take my grandma and put here in a cape and they’ll have stunt doubles come in and do all the action. Anybody can do it. They are relying on green screen and 200 million dollar budgets. It's all CGI created. So to me that is not authentic. I'm inspired by all old real star -- guys that can really do their thing."
- Jason Statham

“Tentpole movies in general … they are not movies, generally. They are bloated exercises in two-hour trailers for another movie they are going to sell you in two years. There are so many characters that each character gets an arc of about six-and-a-half minutes at best, and I’m not exaggerating. You take 120 minutes, you take 45 of it for action, what are you left with, divide it by six characters, you have the character arc of Elmer Fudd in a Warner Brothers cartoon. That formula is empty for me.”
- James Mangold

“The problem is that sometimes they purport to be profound, based on some Greek mythological kind of thing and they are honestly very right wing. I always see them as killing people because they do not believe in what you believe, or they are not being who you want them to be. I hate that, and don’t respond to those characters. They have been poison -- this cultural genocide -- because the audience is so overexposed to plot and explosions and s**t that doesn’t mean nothing about the experience of being human.”
- Alejandro González Iñárritu

"Superhero movies are not my kind of thing -- that's why I've never really done one. [I've been asked] several times, but I can't believe in the thin, gossamer tightrope of the non-reality of the situation of the superhero. I've done that kind of movie -- Blade Runner really is a comic strip when you think about it, it's a dark story told in an unreal world. You could almost put Batman or Superman in that world, that atmosphere, except I'd have a f****ng good story, as opposed to no story!
- Ridley Scott

"Christopher Nolan's best movie is Memento, and that is an interesting movie. I don't think his Batman movies are half as interesting, though they're 20 million times the expense. A superhero movie, by definition, you know, it's comic book. It's for kids. It's adolescent in its core. That has always been its appeal, and I think people who are saying, you know, The Dark Knight Rises is supreme cinema art, I don't think they know what the f**k they're talking about."
- David Cronenberg

I’m very much a self-confessed fan of science-fiction and genre cinema. But part of me looks at society as it is now and thinks we’ve been infantilized by our own taste. We’re essentially all consuming very childish things – comic books, superheroes… Adults are watching this stuff, and taking it seriously! It is a kind of dumbing down in a way. Because it’s taking our focus away from real-world issues. Films used to be about challenging, emotional journeys or moral questions that might make you walk away and re-evaluate how you felt about… whatever. Now we’re walking out of the cinema really not thinking about anything, other than the fact that the Hulk just had a fight with a robot.”
- Simon Pegg
 
- Jodie Foster


- Jason Statham


- James Mangold


- Alejandro González Iñárritu


- Ridley Scott


- David Cronenberg

- Simon Pegg
Simon Pegg had the best comments on this topic IMO.
 
All of those quotes including Coppola and Scorsese are absolute truth.

Superhero films need to die a death.
 
Part 3 is alright, Jack on the other hand.
Part III is pretty bad in my opinion. It might be somewhat alright if you judge it on normal standards, but it doesn't even come remotely close to the standards of I and II.
Never saw Jack, though. Can't judge that one.
 
Also, if Marvel movies doesnt have big success like it is, people wont make any comment of it. Marvel doesnt even have 5 films every months at cinema. Success breeds jealousy even more when it involved billion dollars on it i guess.