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.
In the late-70s/80s it was slasher movies. In the 80s/90s it was Rambo-style action movies, or Lethal Weapon and Fatal Attraction-style thrillers.
There have always been Hollywood bandwagons.
The difference is that back then the major studios made a bunch of films of all scopes and budgets, while today those same studios make fewer, more expensive movies.
If Scorsese was a young man today - or Robert Altman or William Friedkin, whoever - he probably wouldn’t get a chance to make a Raging Bull, he’d be steered towards a superhero film with - of course - NO final cut. The one exception is Christopher Nolan. And even he did an entire superhero TRILOGY.
Taking what Marty is saying and putting it another way - major studio content is not driven by a director’s creative vision in the current environment, but by producers… the suits and their market research.
I’m by no means an expert but was that ever different? Making movies always was very expensive, so the people in charge obviously had to have money and then try to use that to make more money. That alone leads to rather conservative decisions regarding which movies should be produced and which shouldn’t. Artistic merit isn’t something I believe ever had much sway in Hollywood unless some directors actually used their previous success to bully the rich cats in charge to trust them or outright finance the movie themself. And that I guess is rather rare. I think the only thing really different today, is that market research today is way more advanced than it was in the 60’s or 70’s.
Making lower budget films and giving artistic freedom to their directors allowed them to:
This was also in the days when a film could play in theaters for months, breathe and grow.
Now, they want every movie they release to make 200 million in the first weekend, with a marketing carpet-bombing blitz.
In Scorsese’s 70s heyday, a “modest success” was seen by the studio suits as a success, they made many of these and were happy about it.
Nowadays, a “modest success” is seen as a fizzle. Half a billion or bust.
There probably are hundreds of weird movies made that cannot be explained by financial interest alone. In fact one was given above which you ignored. Raging Bull.