Martin Scorsese offers more thoughts on Marvel in NYT op-ed piece

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Well here we are again folks, another week and another take about the cinematic value of Marvel films from director Martin Scorsese. In recent weeks Scorsese has become a lightning rod for criticism beginning when he claimed that Marvel movies are not in fact cinema and likened them to theme parks. Since then 1001 think pieces have been written regarding Marty's comments, with some chastising him for being an elitist cinematic snob, to contemporaries like Francis Ford Coppola echoing Scorsese's sentiments.

As tends to be the case with hot takes like Scorsese's, the originator of said comments will often "clarify" their remarks after the Internet loses its collective mind. The Academy Award winning director of such films as GOODFELLAS and THE WOLF OF WALL STREET did just that, penning an op-ed piece in the New York Times on Monday. However, if you were expecting a degree of conciliation from the acclaimed director, think again.

In the lengthy article, which you can read here, Scorsese doubled down on his Marvel comments offering occasional back handed praise but excoriating the sameness of Marvel movies:

“Some say that Hitchcock’s pictures had a sameness to them, and perhaps that’s true — Hitchcock himself wondered about it. But the sameness of today’s franchise pictures is something else again. Many of the elements that define cinema as I know it are there in Marvel pictures. What’s not there is revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk. The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes.”

Scorsese went on to say his reluctance to watch Marvel movies has more to do with his own personal tastes and that if he were born in a different era he might have felt differently:

“Many franchise films are made by people of considerable talent and artistry. You can see it on the screen. The fact that the films themselves don’t interest me is a matter of personal taste and temperament. I know that if I were younger, if I’d come of age at a later time, I might have been excited by these pictures and maybe even wanted to make one myself. But I grew up when I did and I developed a sense of movies — of what they were and what they could be — that was as far from the Marvel universe as we on Earth are from Alpha Centauri.”

In a somewhat scathing indictment, Scorsese also commented on the pre-packaged and carefully tested nature of Marvel films and their sequels:

“They are sequels in name but they are remakes in spirit, and everything in them is officially sanctioned because it can’t really be any other way. That’s the nature of modern film franchises: market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, revetted and remodified until they’re ready for consumption. Another way of putting it would be that they are everything that the films of Paul Thomas Anderson or Claire Denis or Spike Lee or Ari Aster or Kathryn Bigelow or Wes Anderson are not. When I watch a movie by any of those filmmakers, I know I’m going to see something absolutely new and be taken to unexpected and maybe even unnameable areas of experience. My sense of what is possible in telling stories with moving images and sounds is going to be expanded.”

Wow, there's a lot to unpack here. On the one hand I believe there is some validity to Scorsese's comments. Marvel films and comic book films in general are often very carefully assembled and many of these movies are made by committee. You're not going to get a lot of creative control if you're a filmmaker, that's why directors leave Marvel projects like Edgar Wright did with ANT-MAN. I also respect the fact that he acknowledges his age plays a part on how he views Marvel movies.

However, I categorically reject the idea that there is no "revelation, mystery, or emotional danger" in these films. I don't see how you can watch a film like ENDGAME and agree with that statement. The fact that Martin Scorsese, by his own admission, has never watched a full Marvel movie, calls into question the validity of some of his comments.

What's also incredibly disingenuous to me is that he refuses to extend this criticism to the STAR WARS, ALIEN, and JURASSIC PARK franchises, all of which were begun by Scorsese's contemporaries George Lucas, Ridley Scott, and Steven Spielberg. Viewed through that lens, it comes off hypocritical.

While I believe that if anyone has earned the right to a film opinion it's Martin Scorsese, I personally am getting really tired of this ongoing debate. With each passing comment Scorsese sounds more and more like Grandpa Simpson shaking his first at a cloud. The fact is, it's all cinema whether or not Scorsese believes it is or not. Putting films in boxes and labeling them as cinema or not cinema does nothing but perpetuate bitter Twitter arguments that too often devolve into shouting matches. Can't we all just agree that movies are awesome and move on? Please?

Martin Scorsese's THE IRISHMAN is currently playing in select theaters and hits Netflix November 27.