Martin Scorsese is urging filmmakers to save cinema, by doubling down on his call to fight comic book movie culture.
The storied filmmaker is revisiting the topic of comic book movies in a new profile for GQ. Despite facing intense blowback from filmmakers, actors and the public for the 2019 comments he made slamming the Marvel Cinematic Universe films — he called them theme parks rather than actual cinema — Scorsese isn’t shying away from the topic.
“The danger there is what it’s doing to our culture,” he told GQ. “Because there are going to be generations now that think … that’s what movies are.”
GQ’s Zach Baron posited that what Scorsese was saying might already be true, and the “Killers of the Flower Moon” filmmaker agreed.
“They already think that. 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,” Scorsese continued to the outlet. “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. … Go reinvent. Don’t complain about it. But it’s true, because we’ve got to save cinema.”
Scorsese referred to movies inspired by comic books as “manufactured content” rather than cinema.
“It’s almost like AI making a film,” he said. “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?”
His forthcoming film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” had been on Scorsese’s wish list for several years; it’s based on David Grann’s 2017 nonfiction book of the same name. He called the story “a sober look at who we are as a culture.”
The film tells the true story of the murders of Osage Nation members by white settlers in the 1920s. DiCaprio originally was attached to play FBI investigator Tom White, who was sent to the Osage Nation within Oklahoma to probe the killings. The script, however, underwent a significant rewrite.
“After a certain point,” the filmmaker told Time, “I realized I was making a movie about all the white guys.”
The dramatic focus shifted from White’s investigation to the Osage and the circumstances that led to them being systematically killed with no consequences.
The character of White now is played by Jesse Plemons in a supporting role. DiCaprio stars as the husband of a Native American woman, Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), an oil-rich Osage woman, and member of a conspiracy to kill her loved ones in an effort to steal her family fortune.
Scorsese worked closely with Osage Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear and his office from the beginning of production, consulting producer Chad Renfro told Time. On the first day of shooting, the Oscar-winning filmmaker had an elder of the nation come to set to say a prayer for the cast and crew.
You could be right. But I distinctly remember there being a lot more enjoyable movies from the 90s. I’ve noticed that the format changed quite a bit between movies in the 90s vs movies today. Movie makers figured out a formula that maximizes their return on investment, but to me that has limited the depth and variability between movies these days. The exact same can be said about the music industry as well. To be me the more interesting movies/bands tend to be the obscure ones, which modern industry has strategically eliminated.
In other words some of the best and most interesting movies I’ve watched came from the 90s where those movies did poorly in the box office.
Movie makers today are only interested in making movies that perform well in the box office and so they take less risks. The lack of those risks means making movies that only fit a certain format. In my opinion that format gets old.
You’re defeating your own point. You’re basically saying the same thing that happened then ( a bunch of crap made, but among the crap was some golden treasures you had to find) is happening now, but you’re complaining about it happening now and not then.
Take off your rose glasses. There has always been crap shovelled at us and if you wade through the crap you can find some real gems. It’s not different now, you are.
You were also at least 23 years younger, presumably less jaded etc.
For as long as there’s been art, people have pined for the art of their youth that was just “better.” Boomers do it all the time with music still and joke about how their parents called their music noise.
There are amazing movies being made nowadays, from sociological fun Like Barbie to fresh horrors like Barbarian, X or Talk to Me, from intellectual commentaries like Tar to action brilliance like the Northman, social commentaries like Triangle of Sadness to wild action like RRR, beautiful anime like Suzume to soul searchers like Banshees of Inishiren, all of which are from the last 2 years. I’d say few of those would have been made in the 90s as we’ve just come farther, been able to make more daring and more interesting films.
Which 90s movies are you thinking of that stand unparalleled in modern times?
I was born in '85, so grew up in the 90s. And I thought I just didnt like music. It was crap. And played over and over again on every radio, every TOP X Hits CD, and in every gymnastic class. I tried searching, but the local music shops just contained the most pop stuff and nothing else. '01 was when I first found I actually enjoy music. One guy burned a CD with some progressive metal on it. And not long after that I found so damn much good music that just wasnt available to me before we had internet and could share mp3s.
So the good music was already eliminated in the 90s, at least where I live. And came back with internet sharing, despite the music industri trying their best to strangle it instead of embracing it. They havent stopped. Notice how out of trends mp3s are now? All is about the damn streaming. Thats them doing surprisingly well at controlling, imho.
This doesnt disprove your experience, of course. We need a bigger sample for that.