Matt’s backing Martin in the Marvel debate
The Departed and Thor: Ragnarok actor weighs in on the Marvel v Martin Scorsese debate. Gary Thompson reports.
Matt Damon, star of Ford v Ferrari, is also right in the middle of another heated rivalry, Marvel v Martin. That’s the smackdown between Marvel Studios and Martin Scorsese – the legendary director (The Irishman) who recently said the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies did not qualify as cinema or art, took some heat for it, then doubled down with an essay repeating and refining his position.
The Marvel movies are by definition unoriginal, he wrote: ‘‘Everything in them is officially sanctioned because it can’t really be any other way. That’s the nature of modern film franchises: market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, revetted and remodified until they’re ready for consumption.’’
Damon is in a unique position to referee, as he’s one of the few stars who has worked for Scorsese (The Departed) and Marvel (Thor: Ragnarok). And he’s deeply sympathetic to the point of view of Scorsese, whose work, ironically, was the artistic inspiration for Joker.
‘‘I think it’s understandable that some of the film-makers in the old guard would be concerned, because [Marvel] movies take up so much real estate,’’ Damon says. ‘‘I think he’s lamenting a generation of filmgoers being acculturated to believe that’s what movies are – and that’s all they are. He’s thinking of the movies he loves, the movies that he’s made, and he knows that nobody’s making them any more.’’
Damon is quick to add that Marvel is clearly giving the marketplace what it wants, but he said the changing nature of that marketplace is changing movies. ‘‘The movies that have the best chance of making a lot of money are the movies that travel around the world. Those are the movies with the least amount of cultural confusion, the least amount of language.
‘‘So, you’re talking about superhero movies, which are graspable everywhere. There’s a good guy and a bad guy, they fight three times, the good guy wins twice, and you go home,’’ he says.
‘‘And people never seem to tire of seeing that story and, to people like Scorsese, that’s what’s so frightening. He feels that the point of cinema is to expose us to the moral uncertainty and emotional confusion of real life, which is not a binary contrast of good and bad, but something more nuanced and complex.’’
It’s why Damon wanted to make Ford v Ferrari, the fact-based account of Ford Motor Company’s all-out bid in the mid-1960s to end the Ferrari domination of the international racing scene.
To build a winning car, staid Ford turned to maverick racer/designer Carroll Shelby (Damon), who, in turn, recruited an erratic driver and engineer, Ken Miles (Christian Bale), to pilot one of Shelby’s now-legendary vehicles in 1966 during the decisive 24-hour race at Le Mans.
‘‘I think it’s understandable that some of the film-makers in the old guard would be concerned, because [Marvel] movies take up so much real estate.’’
Matt Damon
‘‘I think people are going to love the racing scenes, which are incredible, but I also think people will be surprised by how emotionally powerful the movie is,’’ Damon says.
‘‘And that’s the bond between these two men. In researching Shelby, I watched a lot of interviews with him, and he lived into his 80s and, right up until the end, he had a hard time talking about Miles. He would tear up every time. That’s how close they were.’’
Damon says the movie’s character-driven storyline is a bit of a secret – it’s being marketed as an action film – and there are plenty of action scenes in it. And he’s aware it was surely cast because of the superhero and franchise bona fides that Bale and Damon acquired through Batman and Bourne.
It’s the Jason Bourne franchise that Damon credits with resurrecting his career and making him a bankable star in the movie business. Actors in Hollywood, he says, are always a few underperforming movies away from career distress. That’s where Damon found himself in 2002, even though he’d won an Oscar (screenplay for Good Will Hunting) and had starred in The Talented Mr Ripley and Saving
Private Ryan.
‘‘All the Pretty Horses lost a bunch of money, [The Legend of] Bagger Vance didn’t do very well and there’s this kind of three-strikes-and-you’reout rule in Hollywood.
‘‘I had no reason to believe that rule wouldn’t apply to me,’’ says Damon, who had also been previously unnerved by a conversation with Tom Cruise at a post-Oscars party.
‘‘I was 27, he’d been a movie star since I was an adolescent and he’d always been the biggest thing out there.
‘‘Here, he’s talking about how he doesn’t really have job security and, I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, if he’s not safe, no-one’s safe’,’’ Damon recalls.
By 2002, Damon was at a major ‘‘inflection point’’ in his career. He was betting everything on the yet-to-be-released The Bourne Identity, a project that had been plagued by production delays and reshoots, and was a year behind schedule.
His career was riding on the opening weekend. ‘‘I just wasn’t getting calls. For anything. You know, there really is a list in Hollywood. Nobody’s ever seen it, but all the studio heads know if you’re on it. The movie opened Friday. By Monday, I had seven offers.’’
To gain more control over his career, Damon eventually turned to producing, and got even more sobering lessons in the disappearing market for adult movies.
Damon talked about pitching his Liberace movie (co-starring Michael Douglas and directed by Steven Soderbergh) Behind the Candelabra and getting turned down by every major studio. He eventually made it with HBO, but the studio picture he wanted to make was considered too expensive, even though it was budgeted at a modest US$25 million.
When Damon produced Manchester by the Sea (which won an Oscar for friend Casey Affleck), he did so for less than US$10m, and had to rely on a deep-pocketed indie investor to foot the bill.
Ford v Ferrari is a handsomely budgeted movie (close to US$100m), with lots of money on screen in the ample racing sequences.
It has Damon, Bale and director James Mangold (Logan), who Damon notes, has ‘‘made a lot of money for Fox’’.
Still, there are never guarantees, and everyone on the film worried when Disney swallowed up Fox and Ford v Ferrari into the bargain.
‘‘You never know what’s going to happen after a regime change like that, but Disney liked it, and really got behind it,’’ he says.
So has Damon, working the phones for the movie while taking a break from the film he’s currently shooting – Stillwater, with writerdirector Tom McCarthy (Spotlight), inspired by the Amanda Knox murder trial in Italy.
On set, he listened to McCarthy complain about some of the same things that bother Scorsese.
‘‘Tom said to me that his beef with Marvel is they hog all the great actors. They have all these wonderful actors locked into long-term contracts,’’ he says.
No wonder so many directors, like Scorsese, have found a home at Netflix.
‘‘Look, Marty made The Irishman and they say it’s his best movie since GoodFellas, so it’s not all doom and gloom,’’ says Damon.
‘‘Netflix really backed him and we have all these platforms where they are still generating all this good stuff. But in many cases, it’s not going to the theatres.’’
Increasingly, that space belongs to Marvel, DC and endless franchise iterations.
‘‘The experience of cinema as we knew it growing up? It’s gone, really.’’ – TNS
Ford v Ferrari (M) is screening in cinemas now.