War of the worlds: When Marty took on Marvel
After sharing his opinion on the MCU with Empire, MARTIN SCORSESE sparked a debate on what cinema is, and what it isn’t. Two Empire writers defend each corner
HE SADDENED JAMES Gunn and disappointed Karen Gillan. Robert Downey Jr and Samuel L. Jackson also responded to Empire’s interview with Martin Scorsese, in which the filmmaking legend said Marvel movies “aren’t cinema”. The comments came in response to a question about the de-ageing process on The Irishman, but the conversation has since grown beyond. The craft of the MCU is accepted, but ultimately Marty finds more similarities with theme parks than films, explaining, “It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”
In the year of Avengers: Endgame — where do we go now? One staunch Marvel fan takes on a long-time Scorsese stan to find balance in one of the most animated cinematic crossover debates of the year.
Chris Hewitt: Marty has placed me in an invidious position. I love him, but the problem I have is that Marvel is such an easy target. I can see why the default position would be, ‘Marvel movies are bad, Marvel movies are not cinema.’ But that’s massively insulting first of all, and secondly, it does have a touch of ‘Old Man Yells At Cloud’ about it. I mean, this is
Scorsese, who is such a rampant consumer of cinema, so for him to dismiss something that has become such a cultural touchstone so blithely…
Ian Freer: To be fair he said he tried but… Chris: What was it, The Incredible Hulk? Iron Man 2? Marty, if you’re reading this, I have a spreadsheet that could really, really help you in terms of the order of this.
Ian: … but I just feel that from where he’s coming from, his idea of cinema is something that’s emotionally demanding, intellectually challenging and cinematically daring. And most of all, human. And however entertaining the MCU films are, I don’t think any of them do any of that. The human element is paper thin.
Chris: I think him saying, “It’s not cinema,” has rubbed people up the wrong way. Those movies are! I think most filmmakers would give them a fair shake. For example, Barry Jenkins put Film Twitter, the most snobbish of all the Twitters, in a tizzy because he loved Endgame. And not just
praised it, he praised the action directing of the Russos, saying it blew his mind how they were able to marshal something on a scale like that.
Ian: But this is the ‘theme-park ride’ analogy he’s talking about. When you think about the similar films he was weaned on — say, George Pal’s science-fiction films such as The War
Of The Worlds — there is more of a human element there. Let alone if you compare it to the emotional complexity of his own work…
Chris: But I don’t think that diminishes the fact that for millions, me included, the end of Endgame, the death of Tony Stark, moved me in a way that very few films have.
Ian: You can’t sit there and tell me that Age Of Ultron is more emotional and human than Age Of Innocence, because it’s not. It’s not Scorsese — let alone a master like Bergman.
Chris: No, it’s not, because Bergman, as great as Bergman is, has never had a fucking scene where all his characters appear out of portals at the end of the movie making an audience punch the air. Ian: You clearly haven’t seen Cries & Whispers. But the MCU films are also not doing anything interesting aesthetically either. There’s a lot of talk about a filmmaker such as Taika Waititi injecting his own voice into Thor: Ragnarok. And maybe tonally he does that, but cinematically they still feel safe and same-y, especially visually. Even the films by clearly great filmmakers such as Waititi, Ryan Coogler, and Boden & Fleck still feel machine-processed.
Chris: It is a bit of a machine, they have three release dates to hit every year.
Ian: Is there a way these two worlds could fuse? Could you imagine a Martin Scorsese Marvel film?
Chris: No. Having said that, he just did executive produce Joker, so who knows? Maybe if someone comes to him with a Captain America movie where he can executive produce…
Ian: Can’t you see Joe Pesci as Cap?
Chris: Yeah. “I can do this all day, you fuckin’ fuck.”