Martin Scorsese’s public enemy number one is still comic book movies, but the battle against “theme park” cinema oversaturation will not end with him. The Killers of the Flower Moon filmmaker elaborated on his long-held belief that superhero-driven IP franchises are harmful to film culture in a new interview with British GQ.
“There are going to be generations now that think movies are only those — that’s what movies are,” he said. “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.”
In his opinion, we need to form an exclusive squad of Avengers to combat comic-book genre uniformity in theaters. Who is a member of that special force?
Who’s in that special force? “You’ll have, you know, the Safdie brothers, and you’ll have Chris Nolan, you know what I mean?” he name-dropped. “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.”
According to Scorsese, studios are not “interested any longer in supporting individual voices that express their personal feelings or their personal thoughts and personal ideas on a big budget.” “And what’s happened now is that they’ve pigeonholed it to what they call indies,” he concludes. He would keep up the good fight to make big-budget movies that are “saying something,” but hasn’t he done enough? “How much longer can it be me? I’m gonna be 81,” Scorsese noted. The Safdie brothers, Christopher Nolan — time to put on your super-suits.
