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 ā he called them theme parks rather than actual cinema ā Scorsese isnāt shying away from the topic.
āThe danger there is what itās doing to our culture,ā he told GQ. āBecause there are going to be generations now that think ā¦ thatās what movies are.ā
GQās Zach Baron posited that what Scorsese was saying might already be true, and the āKillers of the Flower Moonā filmmaker agreed.
āThey already think that. Which means that we have to then fight back stronger. And itās got to come from the grassroots level. Itās gotta come from the filmmakers themselves,ā Scorsese continued to the outlet. āAnd youāll have, you know, the Safdie brothers, and youāll have Chris Nolan, you know what I mean? And hit āem from all sides. Hit āem from all sides, and donāt give up. ā¦ Go reinvent. Donāt complain about it. But itās true, because weāve got to save cinema.ā
Scorsese referred to movies inspired by comic books as āmanufactured contentā rather than cinema.
āItās almost like AI making a film,ā he said. āAnd that doesnāt mean that you donāt have incredible directors and special effects people doing beautiful artwork. But what does it mean? What do these films, what will it give you?ā
His forthcoming film, āKillers of the Flower Moon,ā had been on Scorseseās wish list for several years; itās based on David Grannās 2017 nonfiction book of the same name. He called the story āa sober look at who we are as a culture.ā
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.
āAfter a certain point,ā the filmmaker told Time, āI realized I was making a movie about all the white guys.ā
The dramatic focus shifted from Whiteās 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.
How is Guardians 3 a conservative Christian movie? You know the director, James Gunn, is very outspokenly progressive, right?
I responded to this above, but just to clarify on this point, I mean small c conservative here. Which is absolutely not inconsistent with Gunn being a normal person who is not an actual fascist.
I mean that itās a conservative movie in that it explicitly religious and does take the stance that science and technocratic āletās change the worldā science is inherently equal to hubris and negative, while the positive flipside is enduring suffering, embracing spirituality and being rewarded with a happy afterlife. There is absolutely a progressive read of those beliefs, there has been for hundreds of years. Gunn seems to be explicitly aligning with it here, and thatās fine, but thatās still a (small c) conservative viewpoint.
Hell, Iāll go one further: a lot of people on the opposite side of that argument are today, in fact, actual fascists. Itās not hard to go find examples of atheist dicks online, or of technocratic tyrants. Turns out your religious beliefs are not connected to whether youāre a good person. That doesnāt mean the Catholic worldview isnāt inherently conservative. I was using the word philosophically, not politically.
Thatās a lot of mental gymnastics to make GOTG3 political.
Itās a movie about friendship, family, and a megalomaniac.
How is it mental gymnastics? Iām starting to feel bad for Gunn, because he put all that stuff on the movie super on purpose and apparently people will not just miss it they will actively try to ignore it.
Ehā¦ I may be late to this, butā¦ yeah, these are extreme SPOILERS. This thing really needs a content warning system, a spoiler alert system or both.
Anyway, dude, Rocket goes to actual heaven. They flag it as actual heaven. We see it on screen. Lyla straight up says there is a God and a heaven and Rocket gets to go to it.
Normally you expect this argument to be about some subtextual reinterpretation or an allegory or whatever butā¦ no, man, itās right there. Explicitly.
Hey, donāt look now, but besides being pretty explicit about there being a God and an afterlife itās also super not on board with for-profit health care and animal testing. You may have missed how itās like 75% of the running time of the movie. You could argue about it being a religious film, but political? Itās the story of a group of people whose friendās organs are hadlocked by a corporation, they go fight the corporation and end up freeing all their animal test subjects.
Every time this āitās not politicalā stuff comes up in online conversation I swear itās like an optical effect of some sort. It makes you question how subjective perception is and wonder how other peopleās minds are parsing the world in different ways.
God and Heaven exist in the Marvel universe in the same way that Thor and Zeus exist. Youāre reading way too much in to it.
They do, but no, Iām not.
Thereās a difference between using Christian mythos as mythos and making a spiritual point. You pick what to pull and why, and things have meaning.
Ironically, in this context if they had made this more of an explicit heaven itād have been less of a conscious choice (see also, Thor: Love & Thunder). The framing of the afterlife, who states the existence of a divine plan, paired with the role that scene plays in the movie are all important context cues.
Again, people worked really hard to not trivialize that scene as a fantasy setup and instead charge it with meaning and a point. Itād be a shame to purposefully ignore it, whether you agree with the implied philosophical take or not.
By that logic the Thor movies are pushing a Nordic mythological agenda. Should I be concerned?
No, thatās the opposite of that logic. Asā¦ I explicitly say above.
See, people think meaning is a puzzle. āWhat is actually happening in such and such movie?ā, but thatās not it.
Meaning is communication, itās put together from a lot of shared cues. Itās not Picross, itās more like a coloring book. Like I said above, Thor movies, if anything, make an explicit point of explaining how humans confused a race of aliens for gods. They were so worried about that distinction that at some point in Avengers they make Cap say āThere is only one God and Iām pretty sure he doesnāt dress like thatā.
Which is also a very Christian statement but not an honest statement of belief because of the way itās presented, when itās presented, who says it and the history of Marvel being very afraid to call Thor a āgodā in media. Context cues!
In the Thor movies they explain that Hel and Valhalla are real as well. I donāt see it as any different.