Wednesday, November 6, 2019

Hey Scorsese, We've Been Down This Road Before, And Your Side Was Proven Wrong

For those of you living in caves, Academy Award-Winning Director Martin Scorsese has recently started a odd war on super-hero movies that feels more about him being an outdated elitist who is upset that his work is being upstaged by films he calls 'theme park' movies.

I am all for people having their opinions and they don't all have to align with mine. But his words are reflective of outdated attitudes.

Here are his actual claims: "It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”

“It’s not cinema,” he said. “It’s something else. We shouldn’t be invaded by it. We need cinemas to step up and show films that are narrative films.”

Has he actual seen these films? A huge part of why the present Marvel movies are so popular, is because they do such a great job of conveying emotional, psychological experiences to another human being. Go and watch Captain America: The First Avenger and tell me the story of Steve Rodgers is not emotional. Just because there are super powers and fantasy/sci-fi elements added in does not mean the movie lacks the human elements that help tell a good story.

This attitude is one we have seen before. Back in the '80s there are those in the literary circles who held similar outdated elitist ideas about comic books not being 'real literature'. The Watchmen series was being heralded as a literary masterpiece and Neil Gaiman's Sandman stories were winning prestigious literary awards, and these old men clung to their notions that is was all garbage, without actually reading any of them. After all just because something is being called brilliant, doesn't mean you actually have to give it a chance in order to say otherwise.

I am not at all saying Scorsese is not a brilliant film maker. But his ideas are outdated and very much give off the feeling of someone who is jealous that he is not as popular as he wants to be. While his films have been successful, he has not really made any 'mega-blockbusters'. Theaters are going to show what makes money for them, and his films are not the money makers.

In a truly interesting show of support for Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola has come out calling the super hero films “despicable.” To understand the irony of that statement, it is Coppola's own prodigy, George Lucas, who you can say more or less created and fanned the flames that led to the modern blockbuster trend that has allowed super hero movies to become what they are. When Star Wars was breaking records and becoming the new face of motion pictures, Coppola was congratulating Lucas on his achievements. In essence, Star Wars is the same style of movie as the Marvel movies are.

Their remarks reflect a fear that they are outdated and irrelevant, and instead of working with the changes, they want things back they way they used to be. Scorsese even admits this if you read his attempt to backtrack and defend his remarks. He praises films and film makers from his childhood and earlier on career, but says nothing about the bigger films of the modern era. He outright says that if the films are not the style he thinks they should be, then they are not worth watching.

Makes me wonder about how he felt about those who criticized his movies for being too violent, because that kind of thing was not what real movies focused on. There is not doubt that as he left his mark on motion pictures, there were those who disliked the direction he and other directors of that time, were ruining the whole experience and taking attention away from the 'real cinema'.

'The times they are a changing', as they always are. Scorsese makes it clear he dislikes the current business climate in Hollywood, where his style of movies are not in high demand and so he has to find different ways to get his visions made and distributed. Yet even without the popularity of the super hero films, the business side of things would still have gone that direction. Netflix and the whole video on demand market really has had a much bigger influence on how movies get distributed than any one genre of films could.

Scorsese is coming off like a bitter old man who dislikes change and is confused and angry that the world is not how it was when he was younger. He is pointing his finger at super hero movies, but in truth the problems he is facing would have happened no matter what as technology and attitudes change. He needs to sit down with an open mind and watch the Marvel Movies and see that they are legitimate cinema, containing all the elements he claims are missing.

1 comment:

  1. Well and then there is the sad fact that Scorsese sunk a big chunk of change into Coppola's Godfatherland park, featuring Colonel Kurtz' jungle adventure ride. They took a bath on that one. I love the smell of abandoned theme parks in the morning. smells like... bitter old men!

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