A lot of people just want something enjoyable to shut off and not think for 2 hours. Think of people rewatching comfort tv shows, most of the points you made apply to those and people still watch...
A lot of people just want something enjoyable to shut off and not think for 2 hours. Think of people rewatching comfort tv shows, most of the points you made apply to those and people still watch things like that.
But that's literally it? That's why they are releasing multiple movies in a year. It's popcorn that needs to tick those certain boxes to work. And that's not to say there isn't any artistry within...
But that's literally it? That's why they are releasing multiple movies in a year. It's popcorn that needs to tick those certain boxes to work.
And that's not to say there isn't any artistry within the movie itself (of course there are multiple talented people) but it's made to be consumed, and for that it needs to follow the studio's constraints which sadly do mostly make them simple and safe comfort food.
I asked Tardigrade based on their specific comment, which seemed to me to have a point beyond "markets market", one that seemed to dispense with concern for artistry.
I asked Tardigrade based on their specific comment, which seemed to me to have a point beyond "markets market", one that seemed to dispense with concern for artistry.
Hm, sorry I didn't get that from their comment at all. I appreciate your candid but nice response even though I just wasted your time. Hopefully you'll get your answer from them. Cheers.
Hm, sorry I didn't get that from their comment at all. I appreciate your candid but nice response even though I just wasted your time. Hopefully you'll get your answer from them. Cheers.
I don't think it holds no artistic value as it takes a lot of craft to make something you can suspend your disbelief for and to care enough about to watch and rewatch for 40 films or more in one...
I don't think it holds no artistic value as it takes a lot of craft to make something you can suspend your disbelief for and to care enough about to watch and rewatch for 40 films or more in one series. I do think similar to Gunnar they're made because they make money primarily but I also think they're impressive with how well they've pushed forward CGI and how well they can integrate human actors within that to where you never know what is CGI and what isn't on screen. Sure they might not be high brow pieces of art that make you think but if millions of people enjoy watching them is the cost of making them not worth it to provide that enjoyment? Not sure how coherantly my thoughts come across here.
I guess I don't see how one can care about characters and plot stakes while shutting their brain off for two hours. The "high brow pieces of art that make you think" are definitely not the only...
I guess I don't see how one can care about characters and plot stakes while shutting their brain off for two hours. The "high brow pieces of art that make you think" are definitely not the only valid forms of "artistic" film, but the criticisms of these movies are not limited to complaining about how it wasn't made for the critics' taste. There are objective qualities, like diversity of tone and story, effectiveness of visual and literal language, general strength of character, which impact even the least contemplative viewer's experience.
I think you're coming across clearly enough, let me know if that doesn't seem true.
I don't know about you, but CGI sticks out to me like a sore thumb. It's always painfully obvious to me when people have been digitally "touched-up" or are standing in front of a greenscreen.
I don't know about you, but CGI sticks out to me like a sore thumb. It's always painfully obvious to me when people have been digitally "touched-up" or are standing in front of a greenscreen.
The irony is that you only notice CGI when it's obvious or poorly done. A lot of productions use CGI in reality, and it goes unnoticed. Off the top of my head, The Joker used CGI extensively to...
The irony is that you only notice CGI when it's obvious or poorly done.
A lot of productions use CGI in reality, and it goes unnoticed. Off the top of my head, The Joker used CGI extensively to give Gotham's architecture a sense of oppression.
And there's plenty other examples that are not comic book/superhero related.
And this is mostly due to cost cutting. Sometimes it seems CGI has gotten worse over the years, but this has more to do with studios cutting cost and settling for "good enough" - whereas when CGI...
And this is mostly due to cost cutting. Sometimes it seems CGI has gotten worse over the years, but this has more to do with studios cutting cost and settling for "good enough" - whereas when CGI was new, no expenses were spared to make it look as good as technically possible.
I still think CGI is best suited to enhance practical effects. Like Mad Max: Fury Road is renowned for its practical effects but did heavily use CGI, though mostly to fix the backgrounds and enhance the explosions. It wasn't CGI cars.
When you've seen something for long enough, anything, you get an eye for it. Like watching films for over 30 years. CGI isn't nearly as clean and 'undetectable' as people seem to think.
When you've seen something for long enough, anything, you get an eye for it. Like watching films for over 30 years. CGI isn't nearly as clean and 'undetectable' as people seem to think.
We don't need to. And we aren't. You and I aren't. The people who are profiting off these movies are, and they are doing so because they are profiting off them. If you are asking why so much...
We don't need to. And we aren't. You and I aren't. The people who are profiting off these movies are, and they are doing so because they are profiting off them.
If you are asking why so much effort needs to be spent just to have people "turn their brains off", that's because turning your brain off is actually pretty hard. People who specifically try to empty their mind, like in meditation, struggle because your mind naturally wanders.
So instead people pick a thing and try to focus on that one thing, like focusing on their breathing or watching a candle. Having one specific thing to align your focus on is easier than trying to think nothing at all.
But that too can still be difficult. So if try to make that easier, you make the thing you are focused on more dynamic, because that draws your attention more. Thus, spectacle in movies. Lots of action and lots of events to keep you constantly paying attention.
I'm not saying this is equivalent to meditation, but if you are trying to take a break from all the shit you have to deal with on a day to day basis, it's not a bad way to get your mind off of things for a bit.
I think something about modern culture has actually made it harder, and partly it might have to do with how we're socialized to consume film and other media. Watching moves from the 80s and 90s...
If you are asking why so much effort needs to be spent just to have people "turn their brains off", that's because turning your brain off is actually pretty hard. People who specifically try to empty their mind, like in meditation, struggle because your mind naturally wanders.
I think something about modern culture has actually made it harder, and partly it might have to do with how we're socialized to consume film and other media.
Watching moves from the 80s and 90s it's kind of striking how they're paced. It usually takes a while for them to get going. There's often a decently long opening credits sequence that can take the length of an entire song. Then at least the first third of the first act is just setting up the dramatis personae and establishing everyone's relationships to each other and their motivations. It takes a little while before the movie even really makes clear what it's own premise is.
Contrast to now and it feels like screenplays tend to get right into it. Established IPs have an advantage here, because all the setup has already been done in some bundle of previous movies and, if they need to catch you up, they cheat with flashbacks or exposition. I think "going to the movies" used to be a bigger deal. People got dressed up and went into a theater and there was a whole ritual around making an evening of it. Even watching at home people made popcorn, turned down the lights, and settled in. Now, even if people aren't pulling out their phones, they're sort of just dropping in but they're not getting in the headspace to really get into the movie. We don't view it as special anymore.
Indie theaters still maintain some of that vibe, but I think this is largely because a lot of them are just kind of old. New ones they build tend to have bars and restaurants attached and the movie is just sort of part of a night out rather than the main and central feature of it.
I think you are right. The progression of technology gives people more and more access to stimulation whenever they want it. Then your mind acclimates to that base level and needs higher...
I think you are right. The progression of technology gives people more and more access to stimulation whenever they want it. Then your mind acclimates to that base level and needs higher stimulation to feel it. A movie doesn't feel quite as special when you just binged a whole season of a TV show over the weekend on Netflix. And producers know that, so the editing style of modern movies changes to account for that.
I haven't gotten bored of pizza and I've been eating it since I was very little. Now that I'm in my 30s, I am well aware of all the complex flavors and textures and compositions of foods, foods...
I haven't gotten bored of pizza and I've been eating it since I was very little. Now that I'm in my 30s, I am well aware of all the complex flavors and textures and compositions of foods, foods that could blow my mind, this whole dance of chemistry and magic. But I still tend to order pizza on the weekend instead of exploring my local restaurant scene or expanding my grocery selection. Wonder why I'm not bored with something so simple and childish yet?
Food maintains its appeal because we have a strong biological drive to consume it. We need to keep eating the same foods over and over again to replenish lost nutrients. Entertainment is...
Food maintains its appeal because we have a strong biological drive to consume it. We need to keep eating the same foods over and over again to replenish lost nutrients.
Entertainment is different. It's less like food and more like exercise: we seek increasing challenge and variety over time in order to build on the prior training that our brain/muscles have already received.
I like this analogy, though I'd probably characterize it more as "sport" since those are supposed to be fun while exercise has the connotation of being a chore.
I like this analogy, though I'd probably characterize it more as "sport" since those are supposed to be fun while exercise has the connotation of being a chore.
Pizza being palatable to children is some kind of magic. Seriously, cured meats, spices, vegetables, that much "crust"? In any other configuration, the kids would scream in terror. Point being,...
Pizza being palatable to children is some kind of magic. Seriously, cured meats, spices, vegetables, that much "crust"? In any other configuration, the kids would scream in terror.
Point being, loving pizza isn't childish, refusing to eat anything else is. It's bread with sauce and cheese, topped with meat and/or vegetables, what's not sophisticated about that? It's hardly chicken tenders or noodles with butter, which are still great in their own ways.
Is there anything about the Marvel films of the last decade or so, that’s significantly different from action blockbusters from the decade prior? I’m just wondering if your criticism is towards...
Is there anything about the Marvel films of the last decade or so, that’s significantly different from action blockbusters from the decade prior? I’m just wondering if your criticism is towards the marvel films in particular, or if it’s a more broad criticism that just happens to hit the marvel films at the moment.
This really became an issue with prestige television as well. The Game of Thrones series also suffered from having a central cast that they needed to have on the hook for 10 years. And their...
if a character lives or dies depends more on the contract than the writing, everything becomes formulaic and predictable, and so on.
This really became an issue with prestige television as well. The Game of Thrones series also suffered from having a central cast that they needed to have on the hook for 10 years. And their profile would grow every year, meaning it gets harder and harder to coordinate with them as they cost more and have more demands on their time. For a big ensemble cast that's a lot of complexity being introduced that negatively impacts just getting footage in the can.
Feel free to mark this as noise, but reading this comment section was Reddit deja vu. While a few posters did decent jobs trying to dig into the topic, most were too busy trying to dismiss...
Exemplary
Feel free to mark this as noise, but reading this comment section was Reddit deja vu. While a few posters did decent jobs trying to dig into the topic, most were too busy trying to dismiss Scorsese's opinion on film as if he's some kind of has-been or were otherwise using poor analogies that gloss over and don't allow any nuance.
I'm not against comfort cinema, but his main points have only gotten truer as the MCU and DCEU have gotten progressively worse. Flip side is that people are seeing that now, and Barbenheimer was a thing.
I generally read a refusal to take other points into consideration or to dig into the finer details of the points being made. I don't know that it's worth trying to salvage this particular discussion as it's pretty rampant. If it were just in a thread or something, maybe the vibe from just a couple months ago could still be found. But this is for all intents and purposes a Reddit comment section.
Yeah I didn’t want to say anything but I noticed the same issue with a lot of really trite and dismissive comments that didn’t even try to understand the different sides of the subject.
Yeah I didn’t want to say anything but I noticed the same issue with a lot of really trite and dismissive comments that didn’t even try to understand the different sides of the subject.
I was just about to post the GQ article, but I liked the composite you did of all of these better so thanks for that. I wonder if this is gonna spark another giant debate again like his Superhero...
I was just about to post the GQ article, but I liked the composite you did of all of these better so thanks for that.
I do agree, as far as so many people think movies are just blockbusters and you run into a lot of people who don't watch anything other than those. I run into a lot of people who say they're into movies but really they just like comic book movies, or at best like other types of blockbusters. It's like someone saying they're a big reader and they love literature, but then you find out all they read is YA fiction.
He's probably gonna get called elitist (again), and there's gonna be a bunch of teenagers calling him an old white guy who's out of touch (again) and imply that superheroes are modern mythology or whatever (again). Or maybe not, maybe the internet as a whole will be more receptive to this message.
Elitist? No, but certainly pretentious. It's not like people are now in the 2020s abandoning "serious" media in favor of shallow thrills. Here are some big-budget films from forty years ago:...
Elitist? No, but certainly pretentious. It's not like people are now in the 2020s abandoning "serious" media in favor of shallow thrills. Here are some big-budget films from forty years ago: Superman III, Return of the Jedi, Octopussy, WarGames, and Trading Places. Not exactly high art. That same year Terms of Endearment was second highest grossing and won many awards.
Now here we are again, most of the top 10 gross are exciting action flicks, comedies, or family movies but there's a high-performing drama guaranteed to capture awards. Scorsese is yelling at clouds.
They all have a lot more creativity involved in them than the paint-by-numbers content mill production model that comic book movies have settled into. The abominable working conditions in VFX...
Here are some big-budget films from forty years ago: Superman III, Return of the Jedi, Octopussy, WarGames, and Trading Places. Not exactly high art.
They all have a lot more creativity involved in them than the paint-by-numbers content mill production model that comic book movies have settled into.
The abominable working conditions in VFX shops these movies rely on are legendary. And they've steadily been "optimized" into being singularly soulless enterprises.
It's not fair to paint all comic book movies as creatively lacking. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse are visually striking and have solid stories. Across...
Logan had a fantastic story and was very creative.
Are the majority of comic book movies creative? No, not really. I'd agree with that - but neither are the other "genres" or "themes" of many movies. A majority of all movies could be more creative.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)? V for Vendetta (2005)? Sin City (2005)? Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)? A History of Violence (2005)? The Crow (1994)?
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)? V for Vendetta (2005)? Sin City (2005)? Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)? A History of Violence (2005)? The Crow (1994)?
As NaraVara expanded on, pre-2010 is really rather different from post-2010 in this "genre". We're discussing "comic book movie" as a genre of film, not every adaptation of comic book characters...
As NaraVara expanded on, pre-2010 is really rather different from post-2010 in this "genre". We're discussing "comic book movie" as a genre of film, not every adaptation of comic book characters to film. This isn't some issue with the premise of a comic book adaptation.
If Guardians of the Galaxy were around the median of quality for MCU, I doubt anyone would be complaining, but instead, even that predictable "work as a team!" plot, with the quiet giant, overliteral alien, badass female space mercenary, renegade cute animal, and gifted manchild is near the top of the pack. It's a good movie, I liked it, but it's not something I'll ever return to.
If I had to draw a line I'd put it after the end of Marvel Phase 1 (The Avengers). It still had steam going after that, but by Age of Ultron you can start to see the beginnings of the tendencies...
If I had to draw a line I'd put it after the end of Marvel Phase 1 (The Avengers). It still had steam going after that, but by Age of Ultron you can start to see the beginnings of the tendencies that would start to drag the whole enterprise down.
They really should have pushed pause and taken a breath after the Infinity Saga instead of trying to intensify their exploitation of the IP. They're killing the goose that laid the golden egg there. They wouldn't even have needed to give up on using Marvel properties, they could have just pulled back to tell smaller scale, stand-alone stories instead of going into these massive, connected event-driven ones. Over-reliance on that tendency is also what sort of killed my interest in collecting comic books, so it's not a surprise it's started to kill my interest in the movies as well.
Even when they adapted some of my favorite stories--like how Hawkeye was supposed to be based off the Matt Fraction/David Aja series--they leeched everything fun about them by being overly obsessed with including hooks and teasers for the next thing or anchors to the last thing. It's bad enough now that I don't even want to see their attempts at adapting other runs I've liked.
There is no way they wouldn't botch the Matt Fraction Iron Fist series, or any of the iconic Daredevil runs. And I don't even what to think about what a dog's breakfast they're going to make out of the X-Men when they finally cave and introduce them.
At least with Star Wars, after they utterly botched the end of the sequel trilogy, it seems like they decided to scale down. Even the TV series runs seem like they're going to slow up a bit after Obi Wan failed to make much of a splash.
I was tired of the schtick by the time Avengers came out. They've been paint-by-numbers from the start. From a market perspective, I think you're right about needing to lay off the throttle...
I was tired of the schtick by the time Avengers came out. They've been paint-by-numbers from the start. From a market perspective, I think you're right about needing to lay off the throttle post-Endgame.
The fact of the matter is, regardless of how trite a chosen one narrative with the world at stake can be, at least it feels self-serious. It's earnestly hard to believe any of the characters care, and when they clearly do, it's hard to believe that they're making decisions. Most of the MCU movies have a ridiculously monotonous pace, the cinematography in most seems entirely pointed at telling the viewer what's going to happen rather than show them, somehow. There are bright spots in the catalog, and I love superhero stories, but everything fun about them is drained out by the time they hit the big screen, at this point.
They were basic, but they were fun in the way a Van Damme or Schwarzenegger action movie in the 90s was fun. The newer crop requires too much mental investment and engagement just to appreciate...
I was tired of the schtick by the time Avengers came out. They've been paint-by-numbers from the start. From a market perspective, I think you're right about needing to lay off the throttle post-Endgame.
They were basic, but they were fun in the way a Van Damme or Schwarzenegger action movie in the 90s was fun. The newer crop requires too much mental investment and engagement just to appreciate something that's little more than "Aha! I recognize that you're doing a thing I'm supposed to recognize!"
The Nolan Batman movies got heavier, and I actually found the latest Pattinson The Batman to be quite good. But they do just tell fairly self-contained stories. It's not like "Hey look it's Catwoman! You recognize her don't you!?"
Yeah, exactly. I'm fine with paint-by-numbers, and if someone wants to watch it, I won't sit around grumbling. I'll watch and have a good time and probably move on. It's the zeitgeist's reaction,...
Yeah, exactly. I'm fine with paint-by-numbers, and if someone wants to watch it, I won't sit around grumbling. I'll watch and have a good time and probably move on. It's the zeitgeist's reaction, and the demand that you stay up-to-date to understand any individual film's plot, that spoils the fun for me.
I really enjoyed the first two Dark Knight movies, and didn't hate Rises either. They've got issues, but at least they were interesting and it didn't feel like you were supposed to be laughing at the premise. Less a fan of The Batman, but it made some really interesting choices.
It's a semantics issue. I would classify those as shared universe franchises in the same vein as Harry Potter, Star Trek, and Star Wars. Star Trek is Scifi, but also a shared universe.
It's a semantics issue. I would classify those as shared universe franchises in the same vein as Harry Potter, Star Trek, and Star Wars.
I don't give a damn what we call them. Everyone I know calls them "comic book" or "superhero" movies, articles refer to them as such, and, frankly, the Harry Potter movies have almost nothing in...
I don't give a damn what we call them. Everyone I know calls them "comic book" or "superhero" movies, articles refer to them as such, and, frankly, the Harry Potter movies have almost nothing in common with the style that the MCU trades on.
The Wizarding World is the cinematic universe containing the Harry Potter books. The Fantastic Beasts scores are 74%, 36%, 46% for the three movies. There is a massive dip in quality. The original...
The Wizarding World is the cinematic universe containing the Harry Potter books.
The Fantastic Beasts scores are 74%, 36%, 46% for the three movies. There is a massive dip in quality.
The original Harry Potter movies are rated substantially higher. The Fantastic Beasts series is clearly in the manufactured content vein that Scorsese complains about in the source article.
I don't think guys like Scorsese really view animated film as being the same medium as what they're doing. So it's not really being included in the net. I also wouldn't categorize movies like From...
I don't think guys like Scorsese really view animated film as being the same medium as what they're doing. So it's not really being included in the net. I also wouldn't categorize movies like From Hell,300, or Road to Perdition as "comic book movies" either even though they're adaptations from comic book source material.
"Comic book movies" I term as specifically stuff coming out as these big blockbuster, "shared universe," content production mill. And I'd include things that aren't necessarily from comic books in that net either, like Universal Studio's attempts at creating a "monsterverse." It's all stuff that relies primarily on familiarity with an IP, and plugging it into basically a permanent rolling production infrastructure to crank out content. This is in contrast to a focus on specific stories worth telling.
Even the crop of comic book movies didn't start this way, but they sort of evolved into it over time. It's that routinization of the production process that leeches the artistry out of things.
Comic book movies are not the same thing as shared universe movies. They are different genres and shared universes are not specific to comic book themes. Star Wars and Star Trek are shared...
Comic book movies are not the same thing as shared universe movies. They are different genres and shared universes are not specific to comic book themes. Star Wars and Star Trek are shared universes - but they are most certainly not comic book movies.
It's also a little odd to try to segment the good comic book movies out of the category to validate the argument that comic book movies are bad. From Hell, 300, etc.. are comic book movies.
It's important to interpret words to understand the meaning the speaker/writer intends them to convey rather than just deciding on a definition to suit your argument. It's pretty clear for film...
Comic book movies are not the same thing as shared universe movies.
It's important to interpret words to understand the meaning the speaker/writer intends them to convey rather than just deciding on a definition to suit your argument. It's pretty clear for film people what Scorsese is talking about when he talks about "comic book movie." No, no term is going to be perfectly semantically precise in all contexts. But comic book movies are a genre with specific and expected genre conventions, not just any adaptation from a comic book. And I laid out exactly which parts of those conventions people like Scorsese likely object to.
Fair enough, but the words do matter. Not all shared universes are bad, either. Shared universes are an okay concept - the manufactured content mentioned in the article is terrible. Disney is...
Fair enough, but the words do matter. Not all shared universes are bad, either. Shared universes are an okay concept - the manufactured content mentioned in the article is terrible. Disney is doing this to Star Wars now. The same thing is being done to Star Trek. They aren't making risky or innovative new content within these shared universes using world-building as a foundation. Instead, Yoda or Luke Skywalker must appear in every spin-off as a nostalgia anchor.
This is a problem with the studios, not with any specific genre. They are extremely risk-adverse and want to market to the largest audience possible. Content with broad appeal is rarely innovative.
Yeah and even the "risks" they're taking are in the contexts of the existing IPs. I don't even know why they hire avant garde directors, like Chloe Zhao, and then have them not put anything of...
Yeah and even the "risks" they're taking are in the contexts of the existing IPs. I don't even know why they hire avant garde directors, like Chloe Zhao, and then have them not put anything of themselves into the work.
In 30 years these same directors will be talking back about how much they live the comic book movies from today. "It's just good, lighthearted fun!" We've been on this ride a few times already.
In 30 years these same directors will be talking back about how much they live the comic book movies from today. "It's just good, lighthearted fun!" We've been on this ride a few times already.
Tomayto-Tomatho. It's all about painting Scorsese as this snobby wanna-be intellectual for insulting real people and what they really watch and using that as a way to say that Marvel movies are...
Elitist? No, but certainly pretentious.
Tomayto-Tomatho. It's all about painting Scorsese as this snobby wanna-be intellectual for insulting real people and what they really watch and using that as a way to say that Marvel movies are the underdog or something.
Scorsese is yelling at clouds.
Scorsese is the most well respected filmmaker alive. This is his industry analysis. Hardly an old man yelling into the clouds. His opinion is obviously coming from an informed and passionate lens.
Miles Davis is a legend in jazz but would frequently trash-talk rock music. That doesn't make rock bad just because Miles Davis is an expert in music. It's important not to confuse opinion with...
Miles Davis is a legend in jazz but would frequently trash-talk rock music. That doesn't make rock bad just because Miles Davis is an expert in music. It's important not to confuse opinion with fact. Movies can change over time while still being movies.
I think this Variety article misses the point a bit or trying to fan some flames. Scorsese isn't against blockbuster films. He's against studios pumping out formulaic stuff that means nothing....
I think this Variety article misses the point a bit or trying to fan some flames. Scorsese isn't against blockbuster films. He's against studios pumping out formulaic stuff that means nothing.
There's a difference between the primary John Wick film franchise and the TV show/spinoff in-universe or copycat movies that the studio is going to pump out. John Wick was a refreshing action movie with a good character and universe around him. The sequels fleshed that out and told his story. Now the studio is going to milk that formula as much as they can. John Wick, but he's a cowboy. John Wick, but it's a ballerina from his nation. John Wick, but in the past and about a side character.
Barbie is another a good movie, but now we're probably going to see other Mattel/toy based movies trying to copy it.
I believe Scorsese wants studios to take more chances on "original" blockbusters that just playing out safe. That's my take at least
Out of curiosity, why is that wrong? It just seems like unnecessary gatekeeping. Why can't someone be a big reader and love literature and read YA? Is it impossible to be a "serious" car collector...
I do agree, as far as so many people think movies are just blockbusters and you run into a lot of people who don't watch anything other than those. I run into a lot of people who say they're into movies but really they just like comic book movies, or at best like other types of blockbusters. It's like someone saying they're a big reader and they love literature, but then you find out all they read is YA fiction.
Out of curiosity, why is that wrong? It just seems like unnecessary gatekeeping. Why can't someone be a big reader and love literature and read YA? Is it impossible to be a "serious" car collector if you only collect Datsuns? Can you not be a serious sports card collector if you only collect 1 team? I'll never understand trying to tell people simply enjoying their hobby that they're doing it "wrong" unless it is an actual safety issue like in woodworking..
Well, because if you don't expose yourself to anything but a slim subgenre of the larger medium, then you aren't a fan of the medium, just the subgenre. And that's fine in isolation. It's less...
Well, because if you don't expose yourself to anything but a slim subgenre of the larger medium, then you aren't a fan of the medium, just the subgenre. And that's fine in isolation. It's less fine when you like a piece of art, and people without experience analyzing the medium have a false sense of authority about their interpretations, or simply refuse to engage with anything they don't already have a mental scaffold to digest. It's even less fine when that limited lens becomes the target of the supply-side. At that point, because mass media, there can be a monstrously large minority of people who really, really wish they could watch something with some creativity or depth, but their dollar vote can only go toward shades of the same thing they don't like.
This doesn't really happen, but...it kind of does? Novels are a great example, where it seems like the average reader, compared to 40 years ago, has almost no patience for a story that doesn't subscribe to the conventions of a YA-appropriate romance or mystery, or worldbuilding-centric scifi/fantasy. And, again, those genres are as objectively good as any of the more "literary" ones, but if a JK Rowling or Colleen Hoover is sucking up all the publishing and marketing money, leaving little oxygen for more diverse stuff, then it isn't great for the fans of every other genre.
I don't mind some older 'blockbusters'; things like Jaws are still engaging to watch. The stuff that comes out now is just...meh. Sure, it's shinier, the production values are higher, but most of...
I don't mind some older 'blockbusters'; things like Jaws are still engaging to watch. The stuff that comes out now is just...meh. Sure, it's shinier, the production values are higher, but most of the 'content' that releases really has no soul. It exists to make numbers go up and keep shareholders/investors happy, and to create the environment for more 'content' that continues to make numbers go up. I hate to sound cynical, but as an avid movie buff for many years, I've been watching the slow death of creativity in the cinema space as studios become obsessed with creating more and more multiverses of interconnected, banal, super-safe dreck that can be edited to suit the whims of whatever dictatorship decides they don't like 'the gays' kissing. It's really depressing, and I can understand where directors like Scorsese are coming from.
I'm of the opinion that since about 2008, it really feels like there's very little new under the sun. The stories are old and already told in different medium. Even when they are new stories,...
I'm of the opinion that since about 2008, it really feels like there's very little new under the sun.
The stories are old and already told in different medium. Even when they are new stories, they're nothing fantastic and leave you feel quite jaded and resentful at your place in the world.
In my 40+ years movies have always been mocked for sequal-itis or unoriginality. Even Back to the Future made fun of the number of Jaws movies in like 1989. During that time there has always been...
In my 40+ years movies have always been mocked for sequal-itis or unoriginality. Even Back to the Future made fun of the number of Jaws movies in like 1989.
During that time there has always been a debate of "popular vs good" that seems to pop up every year during Oscar season: Popular movies or blockbusters are the wrong kind of "good" movie. If it makes $500m+ then surely enough people must have decided it was "good" enough? This is the same reason why I stopped caring what movie critics or the Oscars say. Millions of people go watch a movie (some more than once) and then rant and rave about it and then some stuffy old critic will day "Worst.Movie.Ever" and expects his voice to carry more weight.
Movie releases always seem to follow cycles where Hollywood chases the current "hot" thing. How many horror movies were rushed into/through production after Blair Witch hit it big? How many "buddy cop" movies came out in the 80s or "one man army" movies like Rambo First Blood or Missing in Action? It always seems that a genre has a steady flow of movies then a breakout hit happens and the next few years are flooded with movies of that genre and then that genre falls out of favor for a little bit. Rinse, cycle, repeat.
I don't think he's necessarily wrong and it's good to have industry bellwethers. Push back against commoditization of art is good, but it is a tension that has existed for decades and will...
I don't think he's necessarily wrong and it's good to have industry bellwethers. Push back against commoditization of art is good, but it is a tension that has existed for decades and will continue to.
Nolan is a weird shout, his movies are much better than Marvel films but not what I would consider haute cinema.
It's not really about being high-brow. It's about using the medium to it's full advantage, and using it to say something about the human condition. This was the basis of his essay on Fellini, in...
Nolan is a weird shout, his movies are much better than Marvel films but not what I would consider haute cinema.
It's not really about being high-brow. It's about using the medium to it's full advantage, and using it to say something about the human condition. This was the basis of his essay on Fellini, in which he criticized Superhero blockbusters, back in 2019.
From the full quote. Nolan was just an example, I think.
And you’ll have, you know, the Safdie brothers, and you’ll have Chris Nolan, you know what I mean? And hit ’em from all sides. Hit ’em from all sides, and don’t give up.
From the full quote. Nolan was just an example, I think.
To be honest, this article is pretty incomprehensible. Scorsese says essentially nothing actionable and is just rambling. He doesn't elaborate on how superhero movies are "killing" cinema (unlike...
To be honest, this article is pretty incomprehensible. Scorsese says essentially nothing actionable and is just rambling. He doesn't elaborate on how superhero movies are "killing" cinema (unlike such deep summer blockbusters like Transformers), who should be doing something about, or how.
There's also a barely intelligible rant about streaming... for some reason?
The director also spoke about the streaming-era definition of content, as opposed to actual cinema.
“I do think that the manufactured content isn’t really cinema,” he said, adding, “It’s almost like AI making a film. And that doesn’t mean that you don’t have incredible directors and special effects people doing beautiful artwork. But what does it mean? What do these films, what will it give you? Aside from a kind of consummation of something and then eliminating it from your mind, your whole body, you know? So what is it giving you?”
Ironically, that whole paragraph seems AI generated? It one sense it's contradictory with the superhero point - many of the films made for streaming platforms are exactly the sort of artsy, experimental cinema that is in direct opposition to Marvel movies, and exist because for a while streaming platforms had infinitely deep pockets to throw at anyone with an interesting idea. It's also just a lot of words to express very little ideas.
Rant ahead: Oh, my. I just can't... Did he feels uncomfortable because no one listen to him and people still likes Marvel movies? What exactly wrong with Marvel movies? Because money and fame goes...
What do these films, what will it give you?
Rant ahead:
Oh, my. I just can't... Did he feels uncomfortable because no one listen to him and people still likes Marvel movies? What exactly wrong with Marvel movies? Because money and fame goes to Marvel instead of Scorsese? So what? Does existing of Marvel movies stop Scorsese from creating new movie that people will like?
Does all people around the world should absolutely love Scorsese movies? Why?
Why people should love only what Scorsese love?
Is it bad and forbidden to enjoy Scorsese and Marvel movies both?
Scorsese can still make movies but this shift in the industry at least makes it harder for the next Scorsese to appear. Most of the money in Hollywood currently goes to movies with gigantic...
Scorsese can still make movies but this shift in the industry at least makes it harder for the next Scorsese to appear. Most of the money in Hollywood currently goes to movies with gigantic budgets, which means the studios takes less risk with those. The mid budget films have usually been where new directors have made their names and where we have seen new creativity in filmmaking. Now we mostly have either super low budget indie films or massive budget Blockbusters.
I think if you assert that art can go bad in some sense, or is somehow inferior to your preferred art, disregards the idea that art is meant to be interpreted and reimagined by the person...
Exemplary
I think if you assert that art can go bad in some sense, or is somehow inferior to your preferred art, disregards the idea that art is meant to be interpreted and reimagined by the person beholding it. It's very artist centric to act like any one person can see what is and isn't art. It's a sign of inflated ego.
You know what the best DragonBall Z dub is? The team four star abridged version. Like, no joke, the parody dub understands the themes and characters better than the actual company that translated the official release did. Because they saw a somewhat poorly paced and underwritten show on Toonami when they were 16 and fell in love with it, and then channeled that love to create something amazing in tribute to it.
That, I think, is what art is about at its core. It comes from anywhere and is inspired by anything because it's a reflection of the soul. Modern cinema doesn't appeal to Scorsese and he can't get much out of it and so he thinks no one else will either, but that's probably not true. Fairy tales are trite, but we tell them to children and it still manages to shape their whole worldview. Mostly because small children aren't trying to act sophisticated yet and appreciate everything for what it is.
And that's not even counting the fact that there absolutely is a ton of more artsy movies out there, just mostly in smaller venues made by smaller independent creators.
Reminds me of how Futari Wa Precure was directed by the same guy as Dragonball Z and had similar quality fighting but much much better writing (it systematically explores the religious ideas of...
Reminds me of how Futari Wa Precure was directed by the same guy as Dragonball Z and had similar quality fighting but much much better writing (it systematically explores the religious ideas of Shinto for one thing) but around episode 25 when they beat the sub-boss they weren't so sure if they'd get renewed so the writing and direction really fell apart for a few episodes and it fell back to Dragonball Z or Hokuto no Ken levels of incoherence of just big Kung Fu guys walking around and being tough.
It's funny to imagine that show getting canceled now because Precure has run on for more than 20 seasons since then and seems to dominate the market for magical girl anime aimed at girls (as opposed to Strike Witches or Madoka or Nanoha), up to the point where they are making one now about magical boys.
But that's one thing I like about television anime, how sometimes their reach exceeds their grasp but they air it anyway. (My Hollywood contacts won't let me say anything to the effect of "people will watch anything as long as your sound track is good", they say it all has to be good.) Some examples are that scene where they fire the wave motion gun in Uchuu Senkan Yamato where they put one of the cells in backwards or how they ran out of money to make the last episode of Evangelion. The continuity errors you see in Hollywood films have nothing on that.
Taika Waititi is a great director I follow after JoJo rabbit and the Hunt for the Wilder People. I'm looking forward to Killers of the Flower Moon and the Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar But I...
Taika Waititi is a great director I follow after JoJo rabbit and the Hunt for the Wilder People.
I'm looking forward to Killers of the Flower Moon and the Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
But I think the movie industry faces the same problem as journalism does.
I can't speak for Scorsese, but my objection is being asked to keep with all the ins and outs of a series when what I want to do is relax and enjoy one film.
I can't speak for Scorsese, but my objection is being asked to keep with all the ins and outs of a series when what I want to do is relax and enjoy one film.
I got to see a screening of Waititi's next movie, Next Goal Wins, at TIFF. It was a delight, and an unorthodox sports movie. I doubt it will be a huge hit but it certainly will have a good...
I got to see a screening of Waititi's next movie, Next Goal Wins, at TIFF. It was a delight, and an unorthodox sports movie. I doubt it will be a huge hit but it certainly will have a good following. I was surprised to learn how much of it was actually true as well but I'd suggest going in blind and learning about it after.
Why does this have to be a "fight?" Watch movies you like, don't watch movies you don't like, and don't throw shade at people for what movies they enjoy. Sounds to me like he's jealous after...
Why does this have to be a "fight?" Watch movies you like, don't watch movies you don't like, and don't throw shade at people for what movies they enjoy.
Sounds to me like he's jealous after seeing the bank that MCU makes, and he's scared that there won't be film snobs in the future.
Well, much like for gaming, as the market expands the 'original' audience gets pushed out. If all of a sudden 'dance football' became popular and took over Superbowl Sunday, do you think football...
Well, much like for gaming, as the market expands the 'original' audience gets pushed out. If all of a sudden 'dance football' became popular and took over Superbowl Sunday, do you think football fans would be happy? For 'film people' who make their whole persona going to the movies, of course they're going to be mad when their favorite art house theater by the train station has to start showing marvel schlock to make ends meet because the next Last Miyazaki film hasn't come out yet. It's like if your favorite restaurant has to start serving McDonald's happy meals, except now there's only maybe one restaurant in town in most places. I'm not gonna have a table for Killers of Flower Moon if the latest Marvel 'flop' is still going to bring in double the bodies for concession sales.
The theater in my home town shut down and the next closest one has four screens. I would've never been exposed to so many films if we didn't have a Blockbuster and a mom who loved Gerard Depardieu. In his (Scorsese's) view, each Marvel movie made takes away from a chance for a 'better' movie to have the big screen. I don't necessarily agree with him but it's not like the huge Marvel grosses mean that studios are taking more risks with more 'artsy' movies.
The problem with this is that he has no way of knowing that. He doesn't have the ability to go back to an alternate reality where marvel movies don't exist. It's just as (maybe even more) likely...
In his (Scorsese's) view, each Marvel movie made takes away from a chance for a 'better' movie to have the big screen.
The problem with this is that he has no way of knowing that. He doesn't have the ability to go back to an alternate reality where marvel movies don't exist. It's just as (maybe even more) likely that without giant franchises like marvel and star wars, movie theaters just cease existing in the year 2023.
Going out to the movies isn't a draw like it was 30 years ago. Most people have affordable, gigantic, beautiful 60+" flatscreen displays in their house with pretty decent sound bars. They have the ability to stream big new movies pretty shortly after they're released in ultra HD. Meanwhile, going out to the movies has never been more expensive.
It's not like it was in the 90s where your options if you wanted a movie was to to to blockbuster and watch something that came out six months ago on a shitty VHS on your 32" tube set, or go to the theater for 4 bucks.
Watching movies at home or playing video games is going to be more appealing to people 95% of the time. They'll only go to the theaters for a true cinematic event, and marvel has managed to consistently make their movies events in a way that few other movies have.
If marvel and other large franchise blockbusters never existed, it's very likely that movie theaters would have become some sort of small niche thing for artsy people, and each city would have one or two instead of dozens, like performing arts theaters, vinyl shops, arcades, or any other type of entertainment that just isn't popular anymore.
Wouldn't that be a perfect example of "the customer is always right in matters of taste"? Art, for art's sake, has never been a money maker since "the people" don't "get it" most of the time....
In his (Scorsese's) view, each Marvel movie made takes away from a chance for a 'better' movie to have the big screen.
Wouldn't that be a perfect example of "the customer is always right in matters of taste"? Art, for art's sake, has never been a money maker since "the people" don't "get it" most of the time. That's why patrons have historically been important to the arts. Great artists from Michelangelo and daVinci to more recent artists like Picasso and Salvador Dali have had patrons. Perhaps Scorsese could be a patron for artistic movies? (No snark, I'm making an honest suggestion)
I don't necessarily agree with him but it's not like the huge Marvel grosses mean that studios are taking more risks with more 'artsy' movies.
There is one thing I never really see mentioned in these types of conversations: Not every studio has the budget to make a Marvel type movie. MCU movies seem to cost between $200-365 million to make.
Certainly there's got to be a studio out there that's willing to make cinema masterpieces on the (relative) cheap. Jordan Peele shot "Get Out" on a $4.5 million budget.
I think your point of movie theaters closing down is a whole different issue than whatever Marvel releases. If anything, the success of Marvel movies are helping the movie theaters stay open. Personally, I stopped going to the movies regularly between the mid-90s to around 2010 for the usual reasons-- the ticket prices kept going up, they put regular tv ads at the start of the movies (not just trailers which I always enjoyed) and the cost of concessions were just stupid. Our movie theater also has horrible sound mixing that would constantly give me a headache if I watched a movie in the theater where they put all the blockbusters. Anyways, I started going again around the time of Iron Man 2 and not only have watched the MCU movies since but also got the Regal Unlimited pass for quite some time and watched all manners of movies during the last 13 years--including artsy films like "Uncut Gems" and "The Goldfinch". I never would have went to see those movies if the MCU hadn't gotten me back into the theaters. I know this is just an anecdote but I don't think I'm really alone in my experience.
I kind of get the analogy you're going for but since Disney doesn't make Miyazaki films I can't see how Captain America 4 would delay the latest Studio Ghibli release..
It seems one of the point Scorsese makes is also how the general movie audience gets their habits developed, and in recent they have been going in the direction of mostly going to theater for...
It seems one of the point Scorsese makes is also how the general movie audience gets their habits developed, and in recent they have been going in the direction of mostly going to theater for massive big blockbusters, and just stream the rest. Financially that might be okay on the short term, but a concern is how it will affect the future for the industry. The studios still make a substantial amount of their money on ticket sales and even Netflix are stating to have issues with spending billions on making new content.
We are already starting to see an audience fatigue with Marvel movies, and what will replace them? In the past there was a lot of mid-budget movies that still drew people in to the theater. Those type of movies are way fewer now. With the strategy of the last decade, the industry has learned people that going to the theater is for massive big budget blockbusters. There is no guarantee that the audience that previously went to Marvel movies will suddenly replace that with indie flicks and there are hardly anything left in the mid-budget category that might drew them in. So even from a purely business perspective, I think the strategy on spending billions on big budget movies is quite risky for the industry - because it leaves a void in its tail and it might lead to people not going to the theater at all once the fatigue with the current trend kicks in.
Thank you for the well thought out response. I guess my biggest gripe about Scorsese's line of thinking is that I feel like he's blaming me for liking the type of movies I like and that I need to...
Thank you for the well thought out response.
I guess my biggest gripe about Scorsese's line of thinking is that I feel like he's blaming me for liking the type of movies I like and that I need to dish out quite a bit of money to see movies that don't interest me.
We used to have 6 Regal Unlimited subscriptions for our family and we would watch at least 2-3 movies a week, never seeing the same movie twice. If we had a few hours to kill we'd head to the movie theater and watch just about anything. Blockbusters, movies we kind of wanted to see, movies I had no interest in seeing but she did, etc. Our tickets were essentially "free" after the first movie and concession discount so the only cost was time and like $5 for a snack pack at the concession. We kept our subscriptions throughout COVID to support the theaters (when they didn't suspend subscriptions for lockdowns). However, since COVID they've really slowed movie releases. We cancelled 5 of our Regal Unlimiteds months ago because the value wasn't there anymore. Gone were the weeks with 3-4 new releases. Now we have movies like "The Super Mario Bros Movie" taking up half of the 6 screens at the local theater. That's not the fault of the MCU.
Without the unlimited subscription movies are expensive AF. Tickets are just shy of $15 each now and there are no matinee shows anymore. There is no way I would have spent $90 for us to have seen "Uncut Gems".
Economically, I think theaters are in the same "want" category as ice cream and cereal which have had their own threads here recently. The cost of essentials like food, electric and insurance are so high that people don't have as much disposable cash at the moment. I certainly can't blame the MCU for that.
Let us address the elephant in the room: streaming. While streaming is relatively new (compared to movies) it is the exact same argument that was brought against VHS tapes and places like Blockbuster. Simply put, I assign more value to a month of Netflix (or similar streaming service) than most single movie tickets. If there is value in seeing a movie in the theater I will pay for that ticket. If I do not see the value in it, I will either not see the movie at all or I might stream it. It is hard to blame the MCU for that.
I fully agree with your last paragraph about the riskiness of Holllywood only focusing on big budget movies. However, Disney (while huge) isn't the only movie company. It's hard for my to be sympathetic if multiple multi-billion dollar companies want to all lemming themselves off a cliff. If multiple high-dollar CEOs and board rooms with decades of experience aren't worried enough to change what they're doing then I assume they have faith in their plans. While the MCU might have had a hand in this one, I can't fully blame the MCU for what MGM, Universal, Sony, Columbia, Dreamworks, Paramount, Legendary, WB, etc choose to do.
I think Scorsese should take a look at the whole landscape instead of blaming movie-goers or a single genre. At the very least maybe he should chip in and be a patron to the movies he feels should be made.
Of course no one should feel ashamed for whatever taste in movies they have and it is not right to be condescending towards what other people watched. I didn't quite catch that vibe from Scorsese,...
Of course no one should feel ashamed for whatever taste in movies they have and it is not right to be condescending towards what other people watched. I didn't quite catch that vibe from Scorsese, but I can certainly understand if one goes on the defensive if his remarks comes off as that.
And sure, it is overly simplified to blame everything on MCU movies. As you say, ticket prices also has a good deal to say. I personally will put a good deal of blame on the 3D fad that had all the theaters spending tons of movie to upgrade their equipment and raised ticket prices even more. It is understandable that when ticket prices gets so high, people will want it to be a big movie with tons of effects and preferably a running time past two and a half hours.
That is also why I am afraid the industry has locked itself in a corner, where they can only bet their money on the big spectacles to draw people to buy tickets. And money talks of course, because it is better for business to spend $200 million with a $1 billion revenue, than spend $50 million on a mid-budget movie that "only" earn $150 million back. But in that process, I feel like we have lost movies like The Truman Show, Fight Club and Forrest Gump.
And yes, streaming is sort where that money has gone. The indie scene is actually mostly thriving, because they don't need millions to make a movie and get by smaller audiences. But even though Netflix has spent billions on making their own movies, I think they have little to show for it in the grand scheme of things. Only a small handful of movies I can recall have made a dent. Also, how sustainable is that approach? Almost all the streaming services are running with big losses and are starting to back down on their spending, including Netflix.
I totally agree that no one should have any sympathy for the big studios and their maybe failing business decisions. Of course, from a selfish standup - I am just worried what we lose in the process. Maybe it will be for the better. The studio crisis in the 60s let to a whole lot of creativity in the 70s with smaller budgets.
And you are totally on point about that it is not fair to blame movie-goers. Everything starts with what is being produced in the first, but I can understand his frustration that it seems more difficult to get to make these kind of movies today. He has a name for himself already, but it is with mid-budgets new directors can grow a wider audience and that is getting harder in todays climate. Like who even cares or knows who directed all the Marvel movies?
Anyways, thanks for the well formulated comments on the subject.
My analogy was just more that big artsy movies are much fewer and far between that annualized mass market releases. Even if you only want to show art house movies, you're either digging into a...
My analogy was just more that big artsy movies are much fewer and far between that annualized mass market releases. Even if you only want to show art house movies, you're either digging into a back catalog for 'the greats' or taking your chances on a lot of smaller movies. You can't get a sure thing art house movie every year.
People hate on comic book movies because it’s now popular to hate them. But frankly the marvel run up to endgame is something that has never been done so cohesively before or since. It’s one of...
People hate on comic book movies because it’s now popular to hate them.
But frankly the marvel run up to endgame is something that has never been done so cohesively before or since. It’s one of the greatest achievements in cinema history precisely because it was a single vision and a formula that bashed you over the head in every movie. Whether you love or hate the individual movies, it’s remarkable that they were tied together pretty well up until endgame.
The post endgame stuff (and end of the captain America and Iron Man) has been really just a shadow of its former self lacking vision.
Is it possible that it's "now popular to hate them" due to your last paragraph? The one that (effectively, to me) says they've sucked for years now? Which would mean it's not "popular to hate...
Is it possible that it's "now popular to hate them" due to your last paragraph? The one that (effectively, to me) says they've sucked for years now? Which would mean it's not "popular to hate them," but it's more that they're being hated because they've been bad?
Yeah I think it’s probably both. Even if they remained good, people would have gotten fatigued, I think their dipping quality just made it faster. The cross over to also doing TV shows has made it...
Yeah I think it’s probably both.
Even if they remained good, people would have gotten fatigued, I think their dipping quality just made it faster.
The cross over to also doing TV shows has made it feel like an onslaught to sell Disney+ subscriptions.
Yeah, I was somewhat interested in them up until endgame because of what you said. It was amazing seeing all of these movies coming out and tying into each other. It was exactly like reading a...
Yeah, I was somewhat interested in them up until endgame because of what you said. It was amazing seeing all of these movies coming out and tying into each other. It was exactly like reading a comic book that's come to life. After endgame though, I got what I needed from the franchise. It was over in my book. I don't know if any of the newer movies are any good, because I haven't seen them, and even if they were fantastic I wouldn't be interested in seeing them. I'm just no longer interested in them.
The logical move would have been to end the franchise after endgame because the writing is very much on the wall at this point, but we all know that corporations are completely helpless to the draw of easy short term profits, despite how much of a bad idea it is long-term.
The speed of which they've cranked them out is a factor as well. Disney is doing the same thing with their other franchises (Star Wars and real action remakes) to the same detriment. Per this...
The logical move would have been to end the franchise after endgame because the writing is very much on the wall at this point, but we all know that corporations are completely helpless to the draw of easy short term profits, despite how much of a bad idea it is long-term.
The speed of which they've cranked them out is a factor as well. Disney is doing the same thing with their other franchises (Star Wars and real action remakes) to the same detriment.
Per this article:
Phase 1 released 6 movies in 4 years (2008-2012).
Phase 2 released 6 movies in 2 years (2013-2015).
Phase 3 was 11 movies in 3 years (2016-2019).
Phase 4 peaked with 7 movies in a little over a year (July 2021-Nov 2022).
Phase 5 (current) expects 7 movies in 2 years (2023-2025).
From a start of 6 movies in 4 years to a peak of 7 movies within 16 months. Of course this doesn't take into account the live actionshorts, the animated specials/shorts and the series.
There isn't time to digest any of it anymore. The year spent between Infinity War and Endgame gave people time to get excited. People came up with what they hope would happen, discuss "what if" scenarios, etc. Would it have been as epic of a phenomenon if Endgame came out 4 months after Infinity War?
Given the often glacial pace of comic book stories this honestly baffles me a bit. It is nothing for a storyline to last a year in a comic book at a speed of 32 pages (1 issue) a month.
As an activist Martin Scorsese often picked the wrong horse. Circa 1980 there was a panic about color films fading which is talked about a lot in this book...
As an activist Martin Scorsese often picked the wrong horse.
Circa 1980 there was a panic about color films fading which is talked about a lot in this book
Scorsese said it was about the art but around this time Home Video was out and proved you could turn old movies into gold if you could just get them transferred. Scorsese backed the idea that you could make three different monochrome reels for Red, Green, and Blue. That's problematic in so many ways not least the process of putting the colors back correctly is easier said than done (you will wind up color grading it all anyway today.) It was discovered pretty shortly though that even the most fugitive dyes will last for a century if you just keep the film reels in the freezer.
Holy cow, couldn't agree more. Having lived through the era where the first Star Wars movie came out, as a teenager (1977) I've been really disappointed in what passes for a 'ground breaking,...
Holy cow, couldn't agree more. Having lived through the era where the first Star Wars movie came out, as a teenager (1977) I've been really disappointed in what passes for a 'ground breaking, blockbuster' movie these days. And pardon my unpopular opinion but that goes for things like cosplay (really, is it still Halloween little one?) and even video games. At some point you put away the toys of your childhood and start living an adult life and that means you watch movies that have some depth, character, creativity... thought provoking cinema, not comic book drivel. There has been very little in theatres that makes me want to peel $20 out of my wallet these days - but Oppenheimer was a great start.
From Variety Related News Variety Martin Scorsese Compares Marvel Movies to Theme Parks: ‘That’s Not Cinema’(2019) GQ Martin Scorsese: “I Have To Find Out Who The Hell I Am.” by Zach Baron
Exemplary
From Variety
When asked about those blockbusters, Scorsese said that their omnipresence could be negative to audiences who aren’t well-versed in other types of film.
“The danger there is what it’s doing to our culture,” he said. “Because there are going to be generations now that think movies are only those — that’s what movies are.”
When the interviewer posited that audiences might already believe that, Scorsese agreed.
“They already think that,” he said. “Which means that we have to then fight back stronger. And it’s got to come from the grassroots level. It’s gotta come from the filmmakers themselves. And you’ll have, you know, the Safdie brothers, and you’ll have Chris Nolan, you know what I mean? And hit ’em from all sides. Hit ’em from all sides, and don’t give up. Let’s see what you got. Go out there and do it. Go reinvent. Don’t complain about it. But it’s true, because we’ve got to save cinema.”
The director also spoke about the streaming-era definition of content, as opposed to actual cinema.
“I do think that the manufactured content isn’t really cinema,” he said, adding, “It’s almost like AI making a film. And that doesn’t mean that you don’t have incredible directors and special effects people doing beautiful artwork. But what does it mean? What do these films, what will it give you? Aside from a kind of consummation of something and then eliminating it from your mind, your whole body, you know? So what is it giving you?”
Scorsese’s next film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” will be released in theaters on Oct. 20.
“I don’t see them. I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema,” Scorsese told Empire magazine. “Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”
What’s left? The work, of course. Family. Faith, in Scorsese’s case. “I grew up that way, and I pushed, rejected, came back. But all the themes I deal with are those. So that must mean that I’m still part of it, or it’s still part of me. And then I have to find out who the hell I am. Meaning, how that fits into who I am or how I fit into it, whatever it is. You know, Flannery O’Connor, she talks about faith as being in a dark room and stumbling until you get the light switch. And so it’s a dark room. And there’s that little bit of light maybe somewhere, you know?”
“I don’t think it’s a matter of one last great thing,” he told me. “It’s a matter of continuing, exploring. Getting right with God, that’s always the case. You’re in the process of it. It becomes more evident as you age that you may not have the time. So it is a matter of dealing with that aspect of it every day. It’s who you’re dealing with, how you’re dealing with them, the best way you can.
When you say, ‘Get right with God,’ do you think it’s a matter of learning the mystery of life? I don’t see how you can get the answer to this. You’re not going to get any. Is it a matter of expiration of guilt? Probably won’t happen. But that doesn’t matter because it’s who you are anyway. You’ve got to learn to live with it. And so the thing is, when it hits you, to say: ‘That’s me again. That’s that ache again right over here. All right, let’s move on. Oh, he hit me in the head here, didn’t he? Oh goodness. All right, let’s do it. Oh, there’s that same old problem you had 50 years ago. It’s coming back up.’ ”
He continued. All those battles with yourself, the man you keep meeting and trying to know, whose flaws and hopes and dreams you’ve been trying to solve through your work since the very beginning? All those confrontations, the past bubbling back up, over and over again: “I think what happens is you tend to put them in their place,” Scorsese said. “And it doesn’t mean they don’t hurt.”
He smiled, gave the shrug of the New Yorker he’ll always be. “It’s just like: What are you gonna do about it?”
Yeah, support directors like Taika Waititi, Chris Nolan, Kenneth Branagh and Jon Favreau–you know, independent types who'd never stoop to making superhero trash!
Yeah, support directors like Taika Waititi, Chris Nolan, Kenneth Branagh and Jon Favreau–you know, independent types who'd never stoop to making superhero trash!
A lot of people just want something enjoyable to shut off and not think for 2 hours. Think of people rewatching comfort tv shows, most of the points you made apply to those and people still watch things like that.
Why do we need to pour so much money into something that you're claiming holds no artistic value, then?
Because of the ROI.
Please don't treat my question like it was frivolous. Obviously I know that.
But that's literally it? That's why they are releasing multiple movies in a year. It's popcorn that needs to tick those certain boxes to work.
And that's not to say there isn't any artistry within the movie itself (of course there are multiple talented people) but it's made to be consumed, and for that it needs to follow the studio's constraints which sadly do mostly make them simple and safe comfort food.
I asked Tardigrade based on their specific comment, which seemed to me to have a point beyond "markets market", one that seemed to dispense with concern for artistry.
Hm, sorry I didn't get that from their comment at all. I appreciate your candid but nice response even though I just wasted your time. Hopefully you'll get your answer from them. Cheers.
Eh, I might have read into it. No worries, I appreciate your apology.
I don't think it holds no artistic value as it takes a lot of craft to make something you can suspend your disbelief for and to care enough about to watch and rewatch for 40 films or more in one series. I do think similar to Gunnar they're made because they make money primarily but I also think they're impressive with how well they've pushed forward CGI and how well they can integrate human actors within that to where you never know what is CGI and what isn't on screen. Sure they might not be high brow pieces of art that make you think but if millions of people enjoy watching them is the cost of making them not worth it to provide that enjoyment? Not sure how coherantly my thoughts come across here.
I guess I don't see how one can care about characters and plot stakes while shutting their brain off for two hours. The "high brow pieces of art that make you think" are definitely not the only valid forms of "artistic" film, but the criticisms of these movies are not limited to complaining about how it wasn't made for the critics' taste. There are objective qualities, like diversity of tone and story, effectiveness of visual and literal language, general strength of character, which impact even the least contemplative viewer's experience.
I think you're coming across clearly enough, let me know if that doesn't seem true.
I don't know about you, but CGI sticks out to me like a sore thumb. It's always painfully obvious to me when people have been digitally "touched-up" or are standing in front of a greenscreen.
The irony is that you only notice CGI when it's obvious or poorly done.
A lot of productions use CGI in reality, and it goes unnoticed. Off the top of my head, The Joker used CGI extensively to give Gotham's architecture a sense of oppression.
And there's plenty other examples that are not comic book/superhero related.
And this is mostly due to cost cutting. Sometimes it seems CGI has gotten worse over the years, but this has more to do with studios cutting cost and settling for "good enough" - whereas when CGI was new, no expenses were spared to make it look as good as technically possible.
I still think CGI is best suited to enhance practical effects. Like Mad Max: Fury Road is renowned for its practical effects but did heavily use CGI, though mostly to fix the backgrounds and enhance the explosions. It wasn't CGI cars.
I notice it regardless.
How do you know?
When you've seen something for long enough, anything, you get an eye for it. Like watching films for over 30 years. CGI isn't nearly as clean and 'undetectable' as people seem to think.
We don't need to. And we aren't. You and I aren't. The people who are profiting off these movies are, and they are doing so because they are profiting off them.
If you are asking why so much effort needs to be spent just to have people "turn their brains off", that's because turning your brain off is actually pretty hard. People who specifically try to empty their mind, like in meditation, struggle because your mind naturally wanders.
So instead people pick a thing and try to focus on that one thing, like focusing on their breathing or watching a candle. Having one specific thing to align your focus on is easier than trying to think nothing at all.
But that too can still be difficult. So if try to make that easier, you make the thing you are focused on more dynamic, because that draws your attention more. Thus, spectacle in movies. Lots of action and lots of events to keep you constantly paying attention.
I'm not saying this is equivalent to meditation, but if you are trying to take a break from all the shit you have to deal with on a day to day basis, it's not a bad way to get your mind off of things for a bit.
I think something about modern culture has actually made it harder, and partly it might have to do with how we're socialized to consume film and other media.
Watching moves from the 80s and 90s it's kind of striking how they're paced. It usually takes a while for them to get going. There's often a decently long opening credits sequence that can take the length of an entire song. Then at least the first third of the first act is just setting up the dramatis personae and establishing everyone's relationships to each other and their motivations. It takes a little while before the movie even really makes clear what it's own premise is.
Contrast to now and it feels like screenplays tend to get right into it. Established IPs have an advantage here, because all the setup has already been done in some bundle of previous movies and, if they need to catch you up, they cheat with flashbacks or exposition. I think "going to the movies" used to be a bigger deal. People got dressed up and went into a theater and there was a whole ritual around making an evening of it. Even watching at home people made popcorn, turned down the lights, and settled in. Now, even if people aren't pulling out their phones, they're sort of just dropping in but they're not getting in the headspace to really get into the movie. We don't view it as special anymore.
Indie theaters still maintain some of that vibe, but I think this is largely because a lot of them are just kind of old. New ones they build tend to have bars and restaurants attached and the movie is just sort of part of a night out rather than the main and central feature of it.
I think you are right. The progression of technology gives people more and more access to stimulation whenever they want it. Then your mind acclimates to that base level and needs higher stimulation to feel it. A movie doesn't feel quite as special when you just binged a whole season of a TV show over the weekend on Netflix. And producers know that, so the editing style of modern movies changes to account for that.
I haven't gotten bored of pizza and I've been eating it since I was very little. Now that I'm in my 30s, I am well aware of all the complex flavors and textures and compositions of foods, foods that could blow my mind, this whole dance of chemistry and magic. But I still tend to order pizza on the weekend instead of exploring my local restaurant scene or expanding my grocery selection. Wonder why I'm not bored with something so simple and childish yet?
Food maintains its appeal because we have a strong biological drive to consume it. We need to keep eating the same foods over and over again to replenish lost nutrients.
Entertainment is different. It's less like food and more like exercise: we seek increasing challenge and variety over time in order to build on the prior training that our brain/muscles have already received.
I like this analogy, though I'd probably characterize it more as "sport" since those are supposed to be fun while exercise has the connotation of being a chore.
Pizza being palatable to children is some kind of magic. Seriously, cured meats, spices, vegetables, that much "crust"? In any other configuration, the kids would scream in terror.
Point being, loving pizza isn't childish, refusing to eat anything else is. It's bread with sauce and cheese, topped with meat and/or vegetables, what's not sophisticated about that? It's hardly chicken tenders or noodles with butter, which are still great in their own ways.
Is there anything about the Marvel films of the last decade or so, that’s significantly different from action blockbusters from the decade prior? I’m just wondering if your criticism is towards the marvel films in particular, or if it’s a more broad criticism that just happens to hit the marvel films at the moment.
This really became an issue with prestige television as well. The Game of Thrones series also suffered from having a central cast that they needed to have on the hook for 10 years. And their profile would grow every year, meaning it gets harder and harder to coordinate with them as they cost more and have more demands on their time. For a big ensemble cast that's a lot of complexity being introduced that negatively impacts just getting footage in the can.
Feel free to mark this as noise, but reading this comment section was Reddit deja vu. While a few posters did decent jobs trying to dig into the topic, most were too busy trying to dismiss Scorsese's opinion on film as if he's some kind of has-been or were otherwise using poor analogies that gloss over and don't allow any nuance.
I'm not against comfort cinema, but his main points have only gotten truer as the MCU and DCEU have gotten progressively worse. Flip side is that people are seeing that now, and Barbenheimer was a thing.
I generally read a refusal to take other points into consideration or to dig into the finer details of the points being made. I don't know that it's worth trying to salvage this particular discussion as it's pretty rampant. If it were just in a thread or something, maybe the vibe from just a couple months ago could still be found. But this is for all intents and purposes a Reddit comment section.
Yeah I didn’t want to say anything but I noticed the same issue with a lot of really trite and dismissive comments that didn’t even try to understand the different sides of the subject.
I was just about to post the GQ article, but I liked the composite you did of all of these better so thanks for that.
I wonder if this is gonna spark another giant debate again like his Superhero movie comments did in 2019 where journalists would ask other filmmakers over and over again what they thought about Marvel movies.
I do agree, as far as so many people think movies are just blockbusters and you run into a lot of people who don't watch anything other than those. I run into a lot of people who say they're into movies but really they just like comic book movies, or at best like other types of blockbusters. It's like someone saying they're a big reader and they love literature, but then you find out all they read is YA fiction.
He's probably gonna get called elitist (again), and there's gonna be a bunch of teenagers calling him an old white guy who's out of touch (again) and imply that superheroes are modern mythology or whatever (again). Or maybe not, maybe the internet as a whole will be more receptive to this message.
Elitist? No, but certainly pretentious. It's not like people are now in the 2020s abandoning "serious" media in favor of shallow thrills. Here are some big-budget films from forty years ago: Superman III, Return of the Jedi, Octopussy, WarGames, and Trading Places. Not exactly high art. That same year Terms of Endearment was second highest grossing and won many awards.
Now here we are again, most of the top 10 gross are exciting action flicks, comedies, or family movies but there's a high-performing drama guaranteed to capture awards. Scorsese is yelling at clouds.
They all have a lot more creativity involved in them than the paint-by-numbers content mill production model that comic book movies have settled into.
The abominable working conditions in VFX shops these movies rely on are legendary. And they've steadily been "optimized" into being singularly soulless enterprises.
It's not fair to paint all comic book movies as creatively lacking. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse are visually striking and have solid stories. Across the Spider-Verse has a 96/94% score on Rotten Tomatoes and relatively high scores across other rating aggregation platforms.
Logan had a fantastic story and was very creative.
Are the majority of comic book movies creative? No, not really. I'd agree with that - but neither are the other "genres" or "themes" of many movies. A majority of all movies could be more creative.
It's also not fair to act like three movies out of the past decade of a genre are remotely representative.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)? V for Vendetta (2005)? Sin City (2005)? Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)? A History of Violence (2005)? The Crow (1994)?
As NaraVara expanded on, pre-2010 is really rather different from post-2010 in this "genre". We're discussing "comic book movie" as a genre of film, not every adaptation of comic book characters to film. This isn't some issue with the premise of a comic book adaptation.
If Guardians of the Galaxy were around the median of quality for MCU, I doubt anyone would be complaining, but instead, even that predictable "work as a team!" plot, with the quiet giant, overliteral alien, badass female space mercenary, renegade cute animal, and gifted manchild is near the top of the pack. It's a good movie, I liked it, but it's not something I'll ever return to.
If I had to draw a line I'd put it after the end of Marvel Phase 1 (The Avengers). It still had steam going after that, but by Age of Ultron you can start to see the beginnings of the tendencies that would start to drag the whole enterprise down.
They really should have pushed pause and taken a breath after the Infinity Saga instead of trying to intensify their exploitation of the IP. They're killing the goose that laid the golden egg there. They wouldn't even have needed to give up on using Marvel properties, they could have just pulled back to tell smaller scale, stand-alone stories instead of going into these massive, connected event-driven ones. Over-reliance on that tendency is also what sort of killed my interest in collecting comic books, so it's not a surprise it's started to kill my interest in the movies as well.
Even when they adapted some of my favorite stories--like how Hawkeye was supposed to be based off the Matt Fraction/David Aja series--they leeched everything fun about them by being overly obsessed with including hooks and teasers for the next thing or anchors to the last thing. It's bad enough now that I don't even want to see their attempts at adapting other runs I've liked.
There is no way they wouldn't botch the Matt Fraction Iron Fist series, or any of the iconic Daredevil runs. And I don't even what to think about what a dog's breakfast they're going to make out of the X-Men when they finally cave and introduce them.
At least with Star Wars, after they utterly botched the end of the sequel trilogy, it seems like they decided to scale down. Even the TV series runs seem like they're going to slow up a bit after Obi Wan failed to make much of a splash.
I was tired of the schtick by the time Avengers came out. They've been paint-by-numbers from the start. From a market perspective, I think you're right about needing to lay off the throttle post-Endgame.
The fact of the matter is, regardless of how trite a chosen one narrative with the world at stake can be, at least it feels self-serious. It's earnestly hard to believe any of the characters care, and when they clearly do, it's hard to believe that they're making decisions. Most of the MCU movies have a ridiculously monotonous pace, the cinematography in most seems entirely pointed at telling the viewer what's going to happen rather than show them, somehow. There are bright spots in the catalog, and I love superhero stories, but everything fun about them is drained out by the time they hit the big screen, at this point.
They were basic, but they were fun in the way a Van Damme or Schwarzenegger action movie in the 90s was fun. The newer crop requires too much mental investment and engagement just to appreciate something that's little more than "Aha! I recognize that you're doing a thing I'm supposed to recognize!"
The Nolan Batman movies got heavier, and I actually found the latest Pattinson The Batman to be quite good. But they do just tell fairly self-contained stories. It's not like "Hey look it's Catwoman! You recognize her don't you!?"
Yeah, exactly. I'm fine with paint-by-numbers, and if someone wants to watch it, I won't sit around grumbling. I'll watch and have a good time and probably move on. It's the zeitgeist's reaction, and the demand that you stay up-to-date to understand any individual film's plot, that spoils the fun for me.
I really enjoyed the first two Dark Knight movies, and didn't hate Rises either. They've got issues, but at least they were interesting and it didn't feel like you were supposed to be laughing at the premise. Less a fan of The Batman, but it made some really interesting choices.
It's a semantics issue. I would classify those as shared universe franchises in the same vein as Harry Potter, Star Trek, and Star Wars.
Star Trek is Scifi, but also a shared universe.
I don't give a damn what we call them. Everyone I know calls them "comic book" or "superhero" movies, articles refer to them as such, and, frankly, the Harry Potter movies have almost nothing in common with the style that the MCU trades on.
The Wizarding World is the cinematic universe containing the Harry Potter books.
The Fantastic Beasts scores are 74%, 36%, 46% for the three movies. There is a massive dip in quality.
The original Harry Potter movies are rated substantially higher. The Fantastic Beasts series is clearly in the manufactured content vein that Scorsese complains about in the source article.
Yes, and the Hobbit movies are set in Middle Earth, but Peter Jackson's movies are not relevant to the formulaic structure of MCU films.
I don't think guys like Scorsese really view animated film as being the same medium as what they're doing. So it's not really being included in the net. I also wouldn't categorize movies like From Hell, 300, or Road to Perdition as "comic book movies" either even though they're adaptations from comic book source material.
"Comic book movies" I term as specifically stuff coming out as these big blockbuster, "shared universe," content production mill. And I'd include things that aren't necessarily from comic books in that net either, like Universal Studio's attempts at creating a "monsterverse." It's all stuff that relies primarily on familiarity with an IP, and plugging it into basically a permanent rolling production infrastructure to crank out content. This is in contrast to a focus on specific stories worth telling.
Even the crop of comic book movies didn't start this way, but they sort of evolved into it over time. It's that routinization of the production process that leeches the artistry out of things.
Comic book movies are not the same thing as shared universe movies. They are different genres and shared universes are not specific to comic book themes. Star Wars and Star Trek are shared universes - but they are most certainly not comic book movies.
It's also a little odd to try to segment the good comic book movies out of the category to validate the argument that comic book movies are bad. From Hell, 300, etc.. are comic book movies.
It's important to interpret words to understand the meaning the speaker/writer intends them to convey rather than just deciding on a definition to suit your argument. It's pretty clear for film people what Scorsese is talking about when he talks about "comic book movie." No, no term is going to be perfectly semantically precise in all contexts. But comic book movies are a genre with specific and expected genre conventions, not just any adaptation from a comic book. And I laid out exactly which parts of those conventions people like Scorsese likely object to.
Fair enough, but the words do matter. Not all shared universes are bad, either. Shared universes are an okay concept - the manufactured content mentioned in the article is terrible. Disney is doing this to Star Wars now. The same thing is being done to Star Trek. They aren't making risky or innovative new content within these shared universes using world-building as a foundation. Instead, Yoda or Luke Skywalker must appear in every spin-off as a nostalgia anchor.
This is a problem with the studios, not with any specific genre. They are extremely risk-adverse and want to market to the largest audience possible. Content with broad appeal is rarely innovative.
Yeah and even the "risks" they're taking are in the contexts of the existing IPs. I don't even know why they hire avant garde directors, like Chloe Zhao, and then have them not put anything of themselves into the work.
It's literally just marketing. Names like that try to keep these movies relevant for the cinefile crowd.
In 30 years these same directors will be talking back about how much they live the comic book movies from today. "It's just good, lighthearted fun!" We've been on this ride a few times already.
Tomayto-Tomatho. It's all about painting Scorsese as this snobby wanna-be intellectual for insulting real people and what they really watch and using that as a way to say that Marvel movies are the underdog or something.
Scorsese is the most well respected filmmaker alive. This is his industry analysis. Hardly an old man yelling into the clouds. His opinion is obviously coming from an informed and passionate lens.
Miles Davis is a legend in jazz but would frequently trash-talk rock music. That doesn't make rock bad just because Miles Davis is an expert in music. It's important not to confuse opinion with fact. Movies can change over time while still being movies.
Like big budget movies today, most of those...have not aged well.
I think this Variety article misses the point a bit or trying to fan some flames. Scorsese isn't against blockbuster films. He's against studios pumping out formulaic stuff that means nothing.
There's a difference between the primary John Wick film franchise and the TV show/spinoff in-universe or copycat movies that the studio is going to pump out. John Wick was a refreshing action movie with a good character and universe around him. The sequels fleshed that out and told his story. Now the studio is going to milk that formula as much as they can. John Wick, but he's a cowboy. John Wick, but it's a ballerina from his nation. John Wick, but in the past and about a side character.
Barbie is another a good movie, but now we're probably going to see other Mattel/toy based movies trying to copy it.
I believe Scorsese wants studios to take more chances on "original" blockbusters that just playing out safe. That's my take at least
Out of curiosity, why is that wrong? It just seems like unnecessary gatekeeping. Why can't someone be a big reader and love literature and read YA? Is it impossible to be a "serious" car collector if you only collect Datsuns? Can you not be a serious sports card collector if you only collect 1 team? I'll never understand trying to tell people simply enjoying their hobby that they're doing it "wrong" unless it is an actual safety issue like in woodworking..
Well, because if you don't expose yourself to anything but a slim subgenre of the larger medium, then you aren't a fan of the medium, just the subgenre. And that's fine in isolation. It's less fine when you like a piece of art, and people without experience analyzing the medium have a false sense of authority about their interpretations, or simply refuse to engage with anything they don't already have a mental scaffold to digest. It's even less fine when that limited lens becomes the target of the supply-side. At that point, because mass media, there can be a monstrously large minority of people who really, really wish they could watch something with some creativity or depth, but their dollar vote can only go toward shades of the same thing they don't like.
This doesn't really happen, but...it kind of does? Novels are a great example, where it seems like the average reader, compared to 40 years ago, has almost no patience for a story that doesn't subscribe to the conventions of a YA-appropriate romance or mystery, or worldbuilding-centric scifi/fantasy. And, again, those genres are as objectively good as any of the more "literary" ones, but if a JK Rowling or Colleen Hoover is sucking up all the publishing and marketing money, leaving little oxygen for more diverse stuff, then it isn't great for the fans of every other genre.
I don't mind some older 'blockbusters'; things like Jaws are still engaging to watch. The stuff that comes out now is just...meh. Sure, it's shinier, the production values are higher, but most of the 'content' that releases really has no soul. It exists to make numbers go up and keep shareholders/investors happy, and to create the environment for more 'content' that continues to make numbers go up. I hate to sound cynical, but as an avid movie buff for many years, I've been watching the slow death of creativity in the cinema space as studios become obsessed with creating more and more multiverses of interconnected, banal, super-safe dreck that can be edited to suit the whims of whatever dictatorship decides they don't like 'the gays' kissing. It's really depressing, and I can understand where directors like Scorsese are coming from.
I'm of the opinion that since about 2008, it really feels like there's very little new under the sun.
The stories are old and already told in different medium. Even when they are new stories, they're nothing fantastic and leave you feel quite jaded and resentful at your place in the world.
In my 40+ years movies have always been mocked for sequal-itis or unoriginality. Even Back to the Future made fun of the number of Jaws movies in like 1989.
During that time there has always been a debate of "popular vs good" that seems to pop up every year during Oscar season: Popular movies or blockbusters are the wrong kind of "good" movie. If it makes $500m+ then surely enough people must have decided it was "good" enough? This is the same reason why I stopped caring what movie critics or the Oscars say. Millions of people go watch a movie (some more than once) and then rant and rave about it and then some stuffy old critic will day "Worst.Movie.Ever" and expects his voice to carry more weight.
Movie releases always seem to follow cycles where Hollywood chases the current "hot" thing. How many horror movies were rushed into/through production after Blair Witch hit it big? How many "buddy cop" movies came out in the 80s or "one man army" movies like Rambo First Blood or Missing in Action? It always seems that a genre has a steady flow of movies then a breakout hit happens and the next few years are flooded with movies of that genre and then that genre falls out of favor for a little bit. Rinse, cycle, repeat.
I don't think he's necessarily wrong and it's good to have industry bellwethers. Push back against commoditization of art is good, but it is a tension that has existed for decades and will continue to.
Nolan is a weird shout, his movies are much better than Marvel films but not what I would consider haute cinema.
It's not really about being high-brow. It's about using the medium to it's full advantage, and using it to say something about the human condition. This was the basis of his essay on Fellini, in which he criticized Superhero blockbusters, back in 2019.
From the full quote. Nolan was just an example, I think.
To be honest, this article is pretty incomprehensible. Scorsese says essentially nothing actionable and is just rambling. He doesn't elaborate on how superhero movies are "killing" cinema (unlike such deep summer blockbusters like Transformers), who should be doing something about, or how.
There's also a barely intelligible rant about streaming... for some reason?
Ironically, that whole paragraph seems AI generated? It one sense it's contradictory with the superhero point - many of the films made for streaming platforms are exactly the sort of artsy, experimental cinema that is in direct opposition to Marvel movies, and exist because for a while streaming platforms had infinitely deep pockets to throw at anyone with an interesting idea. It's also just a lot of words to express very little ideas.
Rant ahead:
Oh, my. I just can't... Did he feels uncomfortable because no one listen to him and people still likes Marvel movies? What exactly wrong with Marvel movies? Because money and fame goes to Marvel instead of Scorsese? So what? Does existing of Marvel movies stop Scorsese from creating new movie that people will like?
Does all people around the world should absolutely love Scorsese movies? Why?
Why people should love only what Scorsese love?
Is it bad and forbidden to enjoy Scorsese and Marvel movies both?
Scorsese can still make movies but this shift in the industry at least makes it harder for the next Scorsese to appear. Most of the money in Hollywood currently goes to movies with gigantic budgets, which means the studios takes less risk with those. The mid budget films have usually been where new directors have made their names and where we have seen new creativity in filmmaking. Now we mostly have either super low budget indie films or massive budget Blockbusters.
I can't agree. This all is very subjective in my opinion.
I see nothing wrong with voting with money.
We are talking about art so that seems appropriate.
What? that's not subjective at all
Sorry, can't agree. One person likes one art creation, another person - different art creation. There nothing objective about art.
Not really. Streaming platforms have funded a ton of mid budget movies over the past 10 years.
I think if you assert that art can go bad in some sense, or is somehow inferior to your preferred art, disregards the idea that art is meant to be interpreted and reimagined by the person beholding it. It's very artist centric to act like any one person can see what is and isn't art. It's a sign of inflated ego.
You know what the best DragonBall Z dub is? The team four star abridged version. Like, no joke, the parody dub understands the themes and characters better than the actual company that translated the official release did. Because they saw a somewhat poorly paced and underwritten show on Toonami when they were 16 and fell in love with it, and then channeled that love to create something amazing in tribute to it.
That, I think, is what art is about at its core. It comes from anywhere and is inspired by anything because it's a reflection of the soul. Modern cinema doesn't appeal to Scorsese and he can't get much out of it and so he thinks no one else will either, but that's probably not true. Fairy tales are trite, but we tell them to children and it still manages to shape their whole worldview. Mostly because small children aren't trying to act sophisticated yet and appreciate everything for what it is.
And that's not even counting the fact that there absolutely is a ton of more artsy movies out there, just mostly in smaller venues made by smaller independent creators.
Reminds me of how Futari Wa Precure was directed by the same guy as Dragonball Z and had similar quality fighting but much much better writing (it systematically explores the religious ideas of Shinto for one thing) but around episode 25 when they beat the sub-boss they weren't so sure if they'd get renewed so the writing and direction really fell apart for a few episodes and it fell back to Dragonball Z or Hokuto no Ken levels of incoherence of just big Kung Fu guys walking around and being tough.
It's funny to imagine that show getting canceled now because Precure has run on for more than 20 seasons since then and seems to dominate the market for magical girl anime aimed at girls (as opposed to Strike Witches or Madoka or Nanoha), up to the point where they are making one now about magical boys.
But that's one thing I like about television anime, how sometimes their reach exceeds their grasp but they air it anyway. (My Hollywood contacts won't let me say anything to the effect of "people will watch anything as long as your sound track is good", they say it all has to be good.) Some examples are that scene where they fire the wave motion gun in Uchuu Senkan Yamato where they put one of the cells in backwards or how they ran out of money to make the last episode of Evangelion. The continuity errors you see in Hollywood films have nothing on that.
Taika Waititi is a great director I follow after JoJo rabbit and the Hunt for the Wilder People.
I'm looking forward to Killers of the Flower Moon and the Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
But I think the movie industry faces the same problem as journalism does.
Has everyone just forgotten that Waititi and Nolan both produced excellent superhero movies?
I can't speak for Scorsese, but my objection is being asked to keep with all the ins and outs of a series when what I want to do is relax and enjoy one film.
I got to see a screening of Waititi's next movie, Next Goal Wins, at TIFF. It was a delight, and an unorthodox sports movie. I doubt it will be a huge hit but it certainly will have a good following. I was surprised to learn how much of it was actually true as well but I'd suggest going in blind and learning about it after.
Why does this have to be a "fight?" Watch movies you like, don't watch movies you don't like, and don't throw shade at people for what movies they enjoy.
Sounds to me like he's jealous after seeing the bank that MCU makes, and he's scared that there won't be film snobs in the future.
Well, much like for gaming, as the market expands the 'original' audience gets pushed out. If all of a sudden 'dance football' became popular and took over Superbowl Sunday, do you think football fans would be happy? For 'film people' who make their whole persona going to the movies, of course they're going to be mad when their favorite art house theater by the train station has to start showing marvel schlock to make ends meet because the next Last Miyazaki film hasn't come out yet. It's like if your favorite restaurant has to start serving McDonald's happy meals, except now there's only maybe one restaurant in town in most places. I'm not gonna have a table for Killers of Flower Moon if the latest Marvel 'flop' is still going to bring in double the bodies for concession sales.
The theater in my home town shut down and the next closest one has four screens. I would've never been exposed to so many films if we didn't have a Blockbuster and a mom who loved Gerard Depardieu. In his (Scorsese's) view, each Marvel movie made takes away from a chance for a 'better' movie to have the big screen. I don't necessarily agree with him but it's not like the huge Marvel grosses mean that studios are taking more risks with more 'artsy' movies.
The problem with this is that he has no way of knowing that. He doesn't have the ability to go back to an alternate reality where marvel movies don't exist. It's just as (maybe even more) likely that without giant franchises like marvel and star wars, movie theaters just cease existing in the year 2023.
Going out to the movies isn't a draw like it was 30 years ago. Most people have affordable, gigantic, beautiful 60+" flatscreen displays in their house with pretty decent sound bars. They have the ability to stream big new movies pretty shortly after they're released in ultra HD. Meanwhile, going out to the movies has never been more expensive.
It's not like it was in the 90s where your options if you wanted a movie was to to to blockbuster and watch something that came out six months ago on a shitty VHS on your 32" tube set, or go to the theater for 4 bucks.
Watching movies at home or playing video games is going to be more appealing to people 95% of the time. They'll only go to the theaters for a true cinematic event, and marvel has managed to consistently make their movies events in a way that few other movies have.
If marvel and other large franchise blockbusters never existed, it's very likely that movie theaters would have become some sort of small niche thing for artsy people, and each city would have one or two instead of dozens, like performing arts theaters, vinyl shops, arcades, or any other type of entertainment that just isn't popular anymore.
Wouldn't that be a perfect example of "the customer is always right in matters of taste"? Art, for art's sake, has never been a money maker since "the people" don't "get it" most of the time. That's why patrons have historically been important to the arts. Great artists from Michelangelo and daVinci to more recent artists like Picasso and Salvador Dali have had patrons. Perhaps Scorsese could be a patron for artistic movies? (No snark, I'm making an honest suggestion)
There is one thing I never really see mentioned in these types of conversations: Not every studio has the budget to make a Marvel type movie. MCU movies seem to cost between $200-365 million to make.
Certainly there's got to be a studio out there that's willing to make cinema masterpieces on the (relative) cheap. Jordan Peele shot "Get Out" on a $4.5 million budget.
I think your point of movie theaters closing down is a whole different issue than whatever Marvel releases. If anything, the success of Marvel movies are helping the movie theaters stay open. Personally, I stopped going to the movies regularly between the mid-90s to around 2010 for the usual reasons-- the ticket prices kept going up, they put regular tv ads at the start of the movies (not just trailers which I always enjoyed) and the cost of concessions were just stupid. Our movie theater also has horrible sound mixing that would constantly give me a headache if I watched a movie in the theater where they put all the blockbusters. Anyways, I started going again around the time of Iron Man 2 and not only have watched the MCU movies since but also got the Regal Unlimited pass for quite some time and watched all manners of movies during the last 13 years--including artsy films like "Uncut Gems" and "The Goldfinch". I never would have went to see those movies if the MCU hadn't gotten me back into the theaters. I know this is just an anecdote but I don't think I'm really alone in my experience.
I kind of get the analogy you're going for but since Disney doesn't make Miyazaki films I can't see how Captain America 4 would delay the latest Studio Ghibli release..
It seems one of the point Scorsese makes is also how the general movie audience gets their habits developed, and in recent they have been going in the direction of mostly going to theater for massive big blockbusters, and just stream the rest. Financially that might be okay on the short term, but a concern is how it will affect the future for the industry. The studios still make a substantial amount of their money on ticket sales and even Netflix are stating to have issues with spending billions on making new content.
We are already starting to see an audience fatigue with Marvel movies, and what will replace them? In the past there was a lot of mid-budget movies that still drew people in to the theater. Those type of movies are way fewer now. With the strategy of the last decade, the industry has learned people that going to the theater is for massive big budget blockbusters. There is no guarantee that the audience that previously went to Marvel movies will suddenly replace that with indie flicks and there are hardly anything left in the mid-budget category that might drew them in. So even from a purely business perspective, I think the strategy on spending billions on big budget movies is quite risky for the industry - because it leaves a void in its tail and it might lead to people not going to the theater at all once the fatigue with the current trend kicks in.
Thank you for the well thought out response.
I guess my biggest gripe about Scorsese's line of thinking is that I feel like he's blaming me for liking the type of movies I like and that I need to dish out quite a bit of money to see movies that don't interest me.
We used to have 6 Regal Unlimited subscriptions for our family and we would watch at least 2-3 movies a week, never seeing the same movie twice. If we had a few hours to kill we'd head to the movie theater and watch just about anything. Blockbusters, movies we kind of wanted to see, movies I had no interest in seeing but she did, etc. Our tickets were essentially "free" after the first movie and concession discount so the only cost was time and like $5 for a snack pack at the concession. We kept our subscriptions throughout COVID to support the theaters (when they didn't suspend subscriptions for lockdowns). However, since COVID they've really slowed movie releases. We cancelled 5 of our Regal Unlimiteds months ago because the value wasn't there anymore. Gone were the weeks with 3-4 new releases. Now we have movies like "The Super Mario Bros Movie" taking up half of the 6 screens at the local theater. That's not the fault of the MCU.
Without the unlimited subscription movies are expensive AF. Tickets are just shy of $15 each now and there are no matinee shows anymore. There is no way I would have spent $90 for us to have seen "Uncut Gems".
Economically, I think theaters are in the same "want" category as ice cream and cereal which have had their own threads here recently. The cost of essentials like food, electric and insurance are so high that people don't have as much disposable cash at the moment. I certainly can't blame the MCU for that.
Let us address the elephant in the room: streaming. While streaming is relatively new (compared to movies) it is the exact same argument that was brought against VHS tapes and places like Blockbuster. Simply put, I assign more value to a month of Netflix (or similar streaming service) than most single movie tickets. If there is value in seeing a movie in the theater I will pay for that ticket. If I do not see the value in it, I will either not see the movie at all or I might stream it. It is hard to blame the MCU for that.
I fully agree with your last paragraph about the riskiness of Holllywood only focusing on big budget movies. However, Disney (while huge) isn't the only movie company. It's hard for my to be sympathetic if multiple multi-billion dollar companies want to all lemming themselves off a cliff. If multiple high-dollar CEOs and board rooms with decades of experience aren't worried enough to change what they're doing then I assume they have faith in their plans. While the MCU might have had a hand in this one, I can't fully blame the MCU for what MGM, Universal, Sony, Columbia, Dreamworks, Paramount, Legendary, WB, etc choose to do.
I think Scorsese should take a look at the whole landscape instead of blaming movie-goers or a single genre. At the very least maybe he should chip in and be a patron to the movies he feels should be made.
Of course no one should feel ashamed for whatever taste in movies they have and it is not right to be condescending towards what other people watched. I didn't quite catch that vibe from Scorsese, but I can certainly understand if one goes on the defensive if his remarks comes off as that.
And sure, it is overly simplified to blame everything on MCU movies. As you say, ticket prices also has a good deal to say. I personally will put a good deal of blame on the 3D fad that had all the theaters spending tons of movie to upgrade their equipment and raised ticket prices even more. It is understandable that when ticket prices gets so high, people will want it to be a big movie with tons of effects and preferably a running time past two and a half hours.
That is also why I am afraid the industry has locked itself in a corner, where they can only bet their money on the big spectacles to draw people to buy tickets. And money talks of course, because it is better for business to spend $200 million with a $1 billion revenue, than spend $50 million on a mid-budget movie that "only" earn $150 million back. But in that process, I feel like we have lost movies like The Truman Show, Fight Club and Forrest Gump.
And yes, streaming is sort where that money has gone. The indie scene is actually mostly thriving, because they don't need millions to make a movie and get by smaller audiences. But even though Netflix has spent billions on making their own movies, I think they have little to show for it in the grand scheme of things. Only a small handful of movies I can recall have made a dent. Also, how sustainable is that approach? Almost all the streaming services are running with big losses and are starting to back down on their spending, including Netflix.
I totally agree that no one should have any sympathy for the big studios and their maybe failing business decisions. Of course, from a selfish standup - I am just worried what we lose in the process. Maybe it will be for the better. The studio crisis in the 60s let to a whole lot of creativity in the 70s with smaller budgets.
And you are totally on point about that it is not fair to blame movie-goers. Everything starts with what is being produced in the first, but I can understand his frustration that it seems more difficult to get to make these kind of movies today. He has a name for himself already, but it is with mid-budgets new directors can grow a wider audience and that is getting harder in todays climate. Like who even cares or knows who directed all the Marvel movies?
Anyways, thanks for the well formulated comments on the subject.
My analogy was just more that big artsy movies are much fewer and far between that annualized mass market releases. Even if you only want to show art house movies, you're either digging into a back catalog for 'the greats' or taking your chances on a lot of smaller movies. You can't get a sure thing art house movie every year.
People hate on comic book movies because it’s now popular to hate them.
But frankly the marvel run up to endgame is something that has never been done so cohesively before or since. It’s one of the greatest achievements in cinema history precisely because it was a single vision and a formula that bashed you over the head in every movie. Whether you love or hate the individual movies, it’s remarkable that they were tied together pretty well up until endgame.
The post endgame stuff (and end of the captain America and Iron Man) has been really just a shadow of its former self lacking vision.
Is it possible that it's "now popular to hate them" due to your last paragraph? The one that (effectively, to me) says they've sucked for years now? Which would mean it's not "popular to hate them," but it's more that they're being hated because they've been bad?
Yeah I think it’s probably both.
Even if they remained good, people would have gotten fatigued, I think their dipping quality just made it faster.
The cross over to also doing TV shows has made it feel like an onslaught to sell Disney+ subscriptions.
Yeah, I was somewhat interested in them up until endgame because of what you said. It was amazing seeing all of these movies coming out and tying into each other. It was exactly like reading a comic book that's come to life. After endgame though, I got what I needed from the franchise. It was over in my book. I don't know if any of the newer movies are any good, because I haven't seen them, and even if they were fantastic I wouldn't be interested in seeing them. I'm just no longer interested in them.
The logical move would have been to end the franchise after endgame because the writing is very much on the wall at this point, but we all know that corporations are completely helpless to the draw of easy short term profits, despite how much of a bad idea it is long-term.
The speed of which they've cranked them out is a factor as well. Disney is doing the same thing with their other franchises (Star Wars and real action remakes) to the same detriment.
Per this article:
Phase 1 released 6 movies in 4 years (2008-2012).
Phase 2 released 6 movies in 2 years (2013-2015).
Phase 3 was 11 movies in 3 years (2016-2019).
Phase 4 peaked with 7 movies in a little over a year (July 2021-Nov 2022).
Phase 5 (current) expects 7 movies in 2 years (2023-2025).
From a start of 6 movies in 4 years to a peak of 7 movies within 16 months. Of course this doesn't take into account the live actionshorts, the animated specials/shorts and the series.
There isn't time to digest any of it anymore. The year spent between Infinity War and Endgame gave people time to get excited. People came up with what they hope would happen, discuss "what if" scenarios, etc. Would it have been as epic of a phenomenon if Endgame came out 4 months after Infinity War?
Given the often glacial pace of comic book stories this honestly baffles me a bit. It is nothing for a storyline to last a year in a comic book at a speed of 32 pages (1 issue) a month.
As an activist Martin Scorsese often picked the wrong horse.
Circa 1980 there was a panic about color films fading which is talked about a lot in this book
http://wilhelm-research.com/book_toc.html
Scorsese said it was about the art but around this time Home Video was out and proved you could turn old movies into gold if you could just get them transferred. Scorsese backed the idea that you could make three different monochrome reels for Red, Green, and Blue. That's problematic in so many ways not least the process of putting the colors back correctly is easier said than done (you will wind up color grading it all anyway today.) It was discovered pretty shortly though that even the most fugitive dyes will last for a century if you just keep the film reels in the freezer.
Holy cow, couldn't agree more. Having lived through the era where the first Star Wars movie came out, as a teenager (1977) I've been really disappointed in what passes for a 'ground breaking, blockbuster' movie these days. And pardon my unpopular opinion but that goes for things like cosplay (really, is it still Halloween little one?) and even video games. At some point you put away the toys of your childhood and start living an adult life and that means you watch movies that have some depth, character, creativity... thought provoking cinema, not comic book drivel. There has been very little in theatres that makes me want to peel $20 out of my wallet these days - but Oppenheimer was a great start.
Oppenheimer was surface level Oscar bait just like First Man (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Man_(film))
From Variety
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Yeah, support directors like Taika Waititi, Chris Nolan, Kenneth Branagh and Jon Favreau–you know, independent types who'd never stoop to making superhero trash!