Martin Scorsese’s war with Marvel seems to be over as filmmaker George Lucas recently revealed that the director might have eased his opinions about the MCU. The Departed filmmaker came under fire back in 2019 when he compared Marvel with theme park rides and said that they were not cinema, sparking controversy and a bunch of memes.
While the filmmaker was commenting on the lack of originality in Hollywood and how the only films getting made were superhero films, many fans took issue with him insulting their beloved franchise. However, the director seemed to have calmed down about the issue, according to George Lucas.
Did Martin Scorsese End His War With Marvel?
Martin Scorsese has been the mastermind behind many of Hollywood’s greatest films in the New Wave era. The filmmaker helmed classics such as Goodfellas, Casino, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and more. He won the Oscar for The Departed and he has been regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.
Scorsese came under fire back in 2019 when he told Empire Magazine that he did not consider Marvel films to be cinema. The controversy erupted when he compared the MCU films to theme park rides as they were not, as he put it, ‘the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.’
However, the filmmaker has reportedly eased up on the franchise since then. George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars and a friend of Scorsese recently spoke to Brut 9 at the Cannes Film Festival and mentioned that Scorsese’s opinion on Marvel has since been less stringent. He said,
Look. Cinema is the art of a moving image. So if the image moves, then it’s cinema. I think Marty has kind of changed his mind a little bit.
The filmmaker also went on to say that he had similar conflicts with Scorsese and other filmmakers such as Christopher Nolan on using digital cameras instead of traditional film cameras. Though Nolan still uses film, Scorsese went digital with the film Hugo.
Martin Scorsese’s Opinion Was Shared By Many Filmmakers
Martin Scorsese’s comments on Marvel and the MCU were ridiculed by fans. Some new-age filmmakers such as James Gunn and Joss Whedon, who helmed Marvel films, also took issue with his statements and spoke against it. However, Scorsese’s core idea of the superhero genre as more crowd-pleasing was echoed by many other creators.
Scorsese’s long-time friend and fellow new wave filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola was the first to come to his aid and mentioned in an interview that the Taxi Driver director was absolutely right. Speaking at the Lumière Festival in 2019, Coppola said (via The Independent),
When Martin Scorsese says that the Marvel pictures are not cinema, he’s right because we expect to learn something from cinema, we expect to gain something, some enlightenment, some knowledge, some inspiration…I don’t know that anyone gets anything out of seeing the same movie over and over again.
Actor Christian Bale expressed his boredom while on set as Gorr in Thor: Love and Thunder and mentioned that he could not differentiate from one stage to another. Filmmaker Ken Loach and actress Jodie Foster also spoke about the commodification of movies and referred to Marvel for creating bad content in large quantities. Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino also criticized the franchise.
