Film Martin Scorsese - Marvel movies are 'not cinema'

SteveJ

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Yeah I hate Jesus and Dalai Lama too. You couldn't empathise with that dweeb kid who molests robots and set fire to all of Méliés' filmstock?
I failed to point out that I was referring to Scorsese's gangster films, chief.
 

Wedge

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I mean there are a couple of white characters for sure but the emotional story arcs are very much focused on two black actors.


They've always had a voice but I don't think they ever quite captured the general public's attention as much as they have in recent years with Black panther, get out and Straight Out of Compton. To suggest this new wave is not significant would be wrong and to say that Black panther is not a huge part of this would also be wrong.


Sure, with no small thanks to the likes of Scorsese and Coppola whose movies are predominantly populated by white males. But hey, the art of film making must prevail above equality.
And populated by the same white actors.
 

Wedge

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completely agree. with so many better/worse examples to choose from, it's weird that Marvel movies are the ones that get all the criticism. that's because vast majority actually enjoy them and most importantly - vast majority of people actually like characters from those movies and will remember their names for years after watching them, which isn't the case with your typical blockbuster.

also, fecking J. Statham and S. Pegg talking about good taste and childish things is surreal.
Consider statham is part of the fast and furious franchise and pegg is in mission impossible, has been in star wars and star trek.
 

Vault Dweller

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I love the Marvel films. I have been a comic book geek going on 12 years or so and I love probably everything about the medium, the comics especially but I think the films are brilliant.

I also love Scorsese. Goodfellas is one of my all time favourites, and when you throw in the Departed and WOWS amongst others it shows how incredible he is as a director. I don't agree with his stance, as surely it all comes down to what each individual prefers going to the cinema for?

I have been a fan of cinema my entire life, since my parents took me as a young kid to see Aladdin or the Lion King, to start going and watching sci-fi's and action films and then until the adult I am now, where I will literally go to the cinema to watch many different types of film. I go to lose myself in another world for those few hours, to watch as some of the best in the business put on absolute masterclasses in acting that make you think they actually are that character. To experience the world that the director has presented to you, like Nolan's Gotham or Jackson's Middle Earth, or even the nitty gritty streets of New York I imagine most might not see. Sometimes I go just to see sh**e get blown up, like in Mad Max Fury Road or any of the Marvel films. For me, Marvel is cinema. But again, it comes down to what each individual is looking for I suppose.

Mr. Scorsese, you are a genius film maker. And I can't wait to watch the Irishman and experience another (probable) masterclass from you. But I cannot agree with you here.
 

dumbo

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Yes.

I can tell you all day why those films are bad and wrong and cinematic entropy, but if you come out and say that you simply enjoy them, then that kind of trumps any argument I have.
 

Dr. Dwayne

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we need to talk more about the departed. is it good? is it bad? overrated/underrated? does anyone have any thinkpieces i can read? or maybe a guy with sunglasses and a beard filming himself in the front seat of his car talking about it and then putting it on youtube?
It's a great film but I love any cinema where a character played by Leonard Di Caprio dies.
 

Mr Pigeon

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I have a beard and I enjoyed it. Also I'm French and we invented cinema.
Mate that tuft of bum fluff on your chin isn't a beard. And French cinema is predominantly four hours of two men playing chess saying "baguette" after every move with increasing fervour, in black and white, with a giant dancing rabbit in the background.
 

kidbob

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I'm sure Martin only listens to experimental jazz because anyone who likes Mozart is a supporter of music that isn't 'real' music. Of course the rest of the posters here that agree with him only listen to it too.
 

kidbob

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I failed to point out that I was referring to Scorsese's gangster films, chief.
But don't you see Steve that every Scorcese movie was designed for you to develop a hate of them? The colour of red in a jumper in the background of two and a half scenes in the Aviator just to make you think of Two and a Half Men. The same two and a half men that he cast in the Snowman to make you think that the colour of skin is really just a Chinese product that you bought to look at the electrical circuits in your house better. Didn't he explain to you that the Argent scale was just a way to deem that man's reaction was related purely to a single woman's reaction to Brett Hart beating Shawn Michaels in Montreal, only to be ignited further by the lighter of a young kid lighting a cigarette in 1930s Italy. Didn't you realise that they lied to us and that the only way we could reach them was by surfing along the wave cast by a dyslexic letter that couldn't remember his place in a word? Surely life was meant to be more meaningful than this, surely we were meant to be more than just arguing if Jesus showed the way to more than just White Supremacy. I mean the Dalai Lama told him just to think. But was is better just to think just for thinking if thinking is just thinking about thinking and having the thought to think just results in more thinking. Surely a World without Marvel can result in a better place for Scorcese but would a better place for Scorcese result in more mindfulness or would his clear disdain for Buddhist practices result in more mindlessness? And surely wouldn't more mindfulness for mindlessness result in more Marvel movies?

/End Scorcese Art Script

(Disclaimer: Tell my girlfriend I died of love for her instead of taking too many drugs.)
 

JPRouve

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Mate that tuft of bum fluff on your chin isn't a beard. And French cinema is predominantly four hours of two men playing chess saying "baguette" after every move with increasing fervour, in black and white, with a giant dancing rabbit in the background.
Look at you being into experimental movies, you snob rapscallion.
 

Van Piorsing

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Martin is only about vintage superhero movies and they were like best Sicilian wine in his time.

 

Godfather

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They are easy and dumb entertainment. Good technical level but that's about it. I've watched quite a few of them. If you want to watch a movie that entertains and you can shut your brain out they are alright. But he has a pointre
They are becoming worse though I feel. Marvel that is.
 

Mr Pigeon

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Be right back gonna watch The Dep-ahhh-ted again...
You know I'm right. I'm not saying it's bad, it's actually quite impressive for an entire country of inbred grape squeezers.

Look at you being into experimental movies, you snob rapscallion.
I once saw a French film that was just like a two hour perfume advert. Made as much sense as one of those things as well. One minute she was holding a glowing ball, and then she was walking up a mountain and handing it to a horse. And then the horse bit into it and the ball turned into a family value pack of smoked bacon.
 

SteveJ

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:lol:

At the risk of sounding fashionably sexist (cheers, Ole!), the women in French films are always magnificent in some way or another.
 

SalfordRed18

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I just watched terminator and I'd be interested to hear his opinion on that.
 

VorZakone

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:lol:

At the risk of sounding fashionably sexist (cheers, Ole!), the women in French films are always magnificent in some way or another.
There's a different feminine vibe to these French women.
 

stevoc

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Looks like Scorsese has clarified his comments and is now trying to be a bit more diplomatic this time (not that his initial opinion was that controversial), calling Marvel movies a new art form. Interesting that he mentioned Paul Thomas Anderson given his view on people who think Superhero movies are ruining the industry.

"Let's say a family wants to go to an amusement park. That's a good thing, you know. And at theme parks there's these cinematic expressions. They're a new art form. It's something different from films that are shown normally in theaters, that's all."

"My concern is losing the screens to massive theme park films," Scorsese continued, "which I say again, they're their own new art form. Cinema now is changing. We have so many venues, there are so many ways to make films. So enjoyable."

"Fine, go and it's an event and it's great to go to an event like an amusement park," he added, "but don't crowd out Greta Gerwig and don't crowd out Paul Thomas Anderson and Noah Baumbach and those people, in terms of theaters.''
https://uk.ign.com/articles/2019/10...n-james-gunn-samuel-l-jackson-natalie-portman
 
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Rooney in Paris

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Marvel movies are not just cinema; they’re good cinema. At the end of Marvel Studios’ 2018 hit Black Panther, there is a moment that unfailingly reduces audiences to a stunned silence. The film’s villain, Erik Killmonger (played by Michael B Jordan) is carried, dying, by its eponymous hero (Chadwick Boseman) to a high ridge to watch the sun set. Bitter and in pain, he refuses medical treatment and says: “Just bury me in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped from the ships, ’cause they knew death was better than bondage.”

In a big Hollywood movie, a superhero movie no less, he delivers a stinging rebuke to those who would overlook the history of racial injustice. It may come from a villain, but the line echoes in our hero’s actions afterwards, as he opens his hi-tech African nation’s borders to help the oppressed.
I'm not reading any further.
 

dumbo

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Nice words, and well worth saying to a wider audience but what is Scorsese going to gain by trying to engage with the Marvel gimps in this faux-dialogue on the nature of art? It would be like trying to explain cufflinks to a clump of chimps. They can't understand, they have no use for it, they don't even care, and they'll just get mad, try to bite off your nose, or shit in their hands and throw it at you. AND THE CHIMPS WILL DO THE SAME.
 

Oldyella

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This is never going to end is it?

Shock, not all people like the same things. Latest at 11.
 

Grande

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Nice words, and well worth saying to a wider audience but what is Scorsese going to gain by trying to engage with the Marvel gimps in this faux-dialogue on the nature of art? It would be like trying to explain cufflinks to a clump of chimps. They can't understand, they have no use for it, they don't even care, and they'll just get mad, try to bite off your nose, or shit in their hands and throw it at you. AND THE CHIMPS WILL DO THE SAME.
I enjoy many of the Marcel movies, sometimes mostly because they catch on to the modern myths and fairytales I grew up with (Spiderman, Black Panther and X-Men where favorites alongside Batman and The Phantom), but also some have dramatic qualities.

I don’t have a problem seeing what Scorsese is pointing at, which is nothing against the Marvel Universe, or Super Hero Movies, or entetaining movies, or blockbusters. Maybe it’s a bit pretentious reserving the word ‘cinema’ for films of a certain kind, but that neither the point.

There is a difference between films. Some films (‘cinema’) are trying to evoke feelings, thoughts, beauty and reality in order to really open up the mind, or make us think and feel in a different way, or look differently at ourselves or the world afterwards, or help us explore something we don’t manage to explore sitting on our own in a pub telling anyone who’ll listen our two cents about everything (which I love to do).

Other films (‘theme parks’) are trying to evoke or prevent feelings to help us feel in a certain way (curious, elated, excited, relieved) that we dig and want to return and pay in order to feel that way again.

Of course there are many films in the middle of this, and I for one want and need both kinds of films in my life. What Scorsese is pointing towards, is that the parts of the industry merely concerned with making money have only the incentive to make films that are of the last kind, so if most parts of the movie industry is forced/driven to focus on profit, it will make only the ‘theme park’ films available for people as such - we’ll get robbed of a major part of what movies can do.