Film Martin Scorsese - Marvel movies are 'not cinema'
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The answer is yes.
I hate people who say 'There, I said it'.
Black Panther was bad, very bad.
Surely creating a film with a majority black cast, that ignited such interest in the black community is better for the film industry as a whole (regardless of content) than casting your mates De Niro, Pacino and Pesci in yet another gangster movie.
Of course.
I cant think of many superhero movie, Marvel or otherwise, that are worth watching.
After hating the first Avengers film I have largely avoided the genre barring Guardians of The Galaxy which was ok and Deadpool that had some very funny bits.
After hating the first Avengers film I have largely avoided the genre barring Guardians of The Galaxy which was ok and Deadpool that had some very funny bits.
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Increased representation is a great thing. Even if it is in a shit film. Shame it wasn't in a good one.
Is this true ?
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Would explain why some parts were awful(Also the special effects team really fecked over the movie)
Why ? If I'm remembering correctly one of the good guys in Black Panter is member of the C.I.A. ? The idea that one of the heroes of a movie about a African country is someone from the C.I.A is insulting to everyone intelligence. Plus the 70's had blaxploitation, a whole genre of black film markers, actors and writers etc. The fact Black Panter(Its not even the first black superhero move - Blade) was celebrated for having a all majority black cast, just shows how much ground has been lost(Or well never gained).
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It was just marketing cos the film was mediocre so they could grasp onto that fact.
Also, just to be clear, it's not the special effects or action scenes that I didn't enjoy, I just found it as formulaic and poorly written as the worst Marvel films.
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.
You don't think that's an artist's priority?
Ok it was tongue in cheek. The overall point was that they are not without their merit. Scorsese and Coppola are writing them off as garbage when in fact they are representing a vast percentage of women and black people who are poorly portrayed in this artistic cinema that they are championing. Its just snobbish elitism to write off movies that have such a global and cultural impact as unequivocal trash.
They said "unequivocal trash"?
Then celebrate The Wire that was high art as well as opening up opportunities for hundreds of actors from minorities. Its not like there there aren't dozens of talented, unknown black and minority filmmakers that could use more exposure but can't because of the rubbish Hollywood machine.
Bad, low quality entertainment should never be celebrated just because the person making it is a nice guy or fits some desired image
While I don't oppose these type of movies in it's entirety and I agree with Mock and others who have said that we have had formulaic genres in the past as well, I think one issue is the sheer quantity of these movies that belong to the same universe. I mean you can call Terminator or whatever as mindless blockbuster cinema etc but it would usually be 2-3 instalments and beyond that it would be purely milking the cow like in the case of Die Hard but still for MCU we have had bloody 25 odd films since Iron Man 2 and it's just too much to have content being ripped out from the same world a lot of which is interconnected as well.
If you look at all these 25 odd films and what was this whole 'project', the entire content that is actually meaningful and progresses the storylines can possibly be shown in 4-5 movies max, while the rest of it is purely repetitive garbage. e.g. you can remove Avengers 2 entirely and it wouldn't matter a bit. But the volume at which MCU has churned these films out is crazy. Black Panther did not need a whole fecking film to tell us who the character was, while wasting 90 odd minutes in completely pointless action scenes whatsoever. Same with Dr. Strange and others. I don't know if something like this has a precedent where the same universe has gone on for 25 odd films, maybe James Bond? But that is something that is really problematic because if anything is worse than more of the same in one particular genre, it is more of the same in one particular genre in the same fecking world/universe.
If you look at all these 25 odd films and what was this whole 'project', the entire content that is actually meaningful and progresses the storylines can possibly be shown in 4-5 movies max, while the rest of it is purely repetitive garbage. e.g. you can remove Avengers 2 entirely and it wouldn't matter a bit. But the volume at which MCU has churned these films out is crazy. Black Panther did not need a whole fecking film to tell us who the character was, while wasting 90 odd minutes in completely pointless action scenes whatsoever. Same with Dr. Strange and others. I don't know if something like this has a precedent where the same universe has gone on for 25 odd films, maybe James Bond? But that is something that is really problematic because if anything is worse than more of the same in one particular genre, it is more of the same in one particular genre in the same fecking world/universe.
Ok not a direct quote but I don't think i am misrepresenting their feelings all the same.
I'm not celebrating Black Panther or saying that marvel is high art. I am just saying that its not all blockbuster CGI fests, they are doing some things that are being well received by certain audiences. I am a fan of both sides of the coin here, just find it a bit snobbish when older directors are coming out in force to knock whats popular.
I'm not suggesting they aren't significant(I think they are) and I agree you with that these movies have had more of mass appeal although thats down to million factors but still they aren't particular new, yet alone great works. Scorsese criticism for me works.
If comic movies are nothing more than a theme park ride or as about as artistic as the design on the bag of popcorn, you order before hand, then yes hopefully the best they can and should do is normalise people to the idea that there are other people in the world who don't look like them. Which in fairness the marvel has mostly done.
Laurence Fishburne first movie was Apocalypse Now. That movie also featured a multi racial cast, wasn't set in America and although its not some anti imperialist slideshow, the movie doesn't give impression that Colonel Bill Kilgore really just wants to help the people of Vietnam(Which Black Panther does with the C.I.A agent).
The case can be made against Scorsese of course(Although Italians are a protected class - THIS IS A JOKE)but we talking about individual directors. If the blame is anyone maybe it should be the giant studios ? As mentioned before I'm pretty sure the first black superhero movie was Blade, which released in 1998 and the next one was 20 years later and yet somehow CEO of Marvel isn't the bad guy ? Also Marvel made movie in 2016 where Tilda Swinton basically did yellow face.
Yeah, or Paid in Full
I don't think you can say that, it's not a great movie but it sets up lots of stuff that ends up being important for most of the later movies. That was after all one of the biggest criticisms of the film at the time it was released.
https://editorial.rottentomatoes.co...could-be-the-most-important-movie-in-the-mcu/
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I'm loving this tbh. 2 very accomplished directors taking no prisoners regarding Marvel/comic movies. 
Found some Reddit threads discussing their comments, and people felt so insulted. Especially by the theme park remark by Scorsese.
Found some Reddit threads discussing their comments, and people felt so insulted. Especially by the theme park remark by Scorsese.
Let's have a look.
clarity, rhythm, tension, ebb and flow, choreography, meaning.
crash,swoop,crash,zoop,bang,walllop,crashcracrashcrashcrashcrash,boom,crashcrashcrshcrshcwhatshcrhacssadsthacracxhscrashfeckcraschscrsahciscrachappeningrcrsachscrdachrshf. Rhino.
This is every MCU action scene. Marvels are literally the worst action films I have ever seen. How they settled on their cat-in-a-washing-machine approach to action and why they waste so much money constructing this visual diarrhea is a mystery. My own theory is that it's the simplest way to create content for the attention deficient and fool them into thinking they've experienced something. Writing and creativity are in short supply over there. Marvel effectively bludgeon their audience into submission.
As much as I tend to err heavily toward the side of "too much Superhero stuff = bad" ... I am equally apprehensive about the quasi-snobbishness of insisting that a lot of late 20th century films about white gangsters in America are somehow inherently more worthy cinematically than the entire blockbuster genre... something which invariably includes a great deal of seminal Spielberg, Cameron, Scott, Nolan, Raimi, Burton etc stuff.... Not to mention the intangible cultural impact the likes of a Coogler or Waititi can make with a big diverse breakthrough film, or the lasting positive influence a female lead Star Wars movie can have on the industry, compared to yet another long introspective gangster film about thuggish Irish/Italian Americans in New York during the 70s-90s, with a lot of gratuitous Rolling Stones tracks...
I mean, people who think The Joker is a masterpiece and The Dark Knight is a top 10 movie are philistines, sure.... But there's also a point where refusing to embrace the trend of modernity, is akin to being that boring cnut who only listens to music made before he turned 30...
The King of Comedy is a better film than Joker, standard... but The Dark Knight is better than The Departed. So who really wins!? Huh?
The Departed won Oscars for writing and directing FFS - despite being a poorly adapted thematically empty whitewashed version of a much more artistic foreign film... made with the intent of being a big Hollywood event movie....It’s basically Scorsese’s versions of a Marvel film. With boring gangsters in place of boring superheroes....
I mean, people who think The Joker is a masterpiece and The Dark Knight is a top 10 movie are philistines, sure.... But there's also a point where refusing to embrace the trend of modernity, is akin to being that boring cnut who only listens to music made before he turned 30...
The King of Comedy is a better film than Joker, standard... but The Dark Knight is better than The Departed. So who really wins!? Huh?
The Departed won Oscars for writing and directing FFS - despite being a poorly adapted thematically empty whitewashed version of a much more artistic foreign film... made with the intent of being a big Hollywood event movie....It’s basically Scorsese’s versions of a Marvel film. With boring gangsters in place of boring superheroes....
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There's seems to be hardly anyone to identify with or root for in Scorsese's films. Although a character's likeability is a cheap trick played to engage an audience, essentially, it's still a necessary component of fiction.
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?
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?
He’s an absolutely masterful filmmaker, but he’s in the same group as Kubrick and Nolan, where their admirable proficiency of craft disguises the fact that you never care a jot about anyone in their films...
Raging Bull is the pinnacle of this for Scorsese, as however beautiful and impeccably it’s made, it’s basically still the story of a cnut, being a cnut consistently for an hour and a half, before suddenly becoming a fat stand up in the last 5 minutes, as if that counts as a character arc!
never seen it. is it good?
Damn spoilers.
I hated it.
do you have a beard?
Of sorts
A goatee as I am no Jimmy Hill
unless you have a beard i dont care about your opinion
I think the problem is that these superhero films are now so pervasive and those who love them often take them so very seriously.
If you enjoy that sort of thing on a popcorn movie level - Armagedon with tights and capes - then go ahead. Just leave me out of it please.
If you enjoy that sort of thing on a popcorn movie level - Armagedon with tights and capes - then go ahead. Just leave me out of it please.
A goatee is a beard.
Of sorts
sorry pal, better luck next time
I had a beard but it went grey so I shaved (most of) it off.
My opinions are still awesome though.
Probably.
My opinions are still awesome though.
Probably.