Scorsese Slams Big Blockbusters For Hurting Culture: 'We've Got To Save Cinema'

Director Martin Scorsese has once again made his opinion clear on superhero movies and other big blockbusters: he's not a fan, and he thinks they're detrimental to the art form as a whole. In a wide-ranging profile from GQ, Scorsese was asked about Marvel movies and franchise films, to which he replied, "The danger is what it's doing to our culture. Because there are going to be generations now that think movies are only those — that's what movies are."

According to Scorsese, this perceived threat can only be fought against by filmmakers, directors, and other people engaged in the craft of cinema. "It's got to come from the grassroots level," he said. "It's gotta come from the filmmakers themselves." As for who he sees leading that charge, the "Killers of the Flower Moon" director named two examples directly: the Safdie Brothers, best known for the harrowing thriller "Uncut Gems," and Christopher Nolan, fresh off the box-office success of "Oppenheimer." "Go reinvent. Don't complain about it," he said. "But it's true, because we've got to save cinema."

Scorsese finished by comparing franchise films to computer-generated art. "It's manufactured content," he told the magazine. "It's almost like AI making a film." He was quick to praise directors and special effects workers, but finished by asking what people are getting out of such movies. "What do these films, what will it give you?"

With his latest comments, Martin Scorsese is returning to well-tread ground. In 2019, he sparked fierce debate after making comments about superhero movies that were perceived as disparaging, then followed up with a New York Times op-ed entitled, "I Said Marvel Movies Aren't Cinema. Let Me Explain." His argument therein, strikingly more cogent than his detractors made it out to be, was that superhero movies are more like theme park rides than an art form, also noting that his dislike was a matter of personal taste.

The director's latest comments, though, are harder to parse. He begins by asserting that future generations will think the only movies that exist are franchise and comic book fare, a puzzling assertion mere months after Christopher Nolan's historical biopic "Oppenheimer" became one of the summer's hottest flicks. Scorsese continues by claiming that filmmakers need to lead the change, citing Nolan as one source of hope — despite the fact that Nolan helped kick off the decade-plus superhero boom with his "Dark Knight" trilogy.

As the current situation in Hollywood proves, with the WGA wrapping up a strike against conditions that left them ever more vulnerable to exploitation by large media companies and SAG-AFTRA still in the midst of its own, non-franchised media is vital to the overall health of the industry. At the same time, in the years since his op-ed, Scorsese has, perhaps unintentionally, created a cottage industry of directors who get a quick rush of press by scorning superhero cinema. In their own respective interviews, Quentin Tarantino and Francis Ford Coppola have joined him in such degenerations. Of course, interviewers keep popping "the Marvel question," perpetuating that press cycle.