When Martin Scorsese was asked his opinion on the prevalence of Marvel movies, he responded in the negative by stating that they ‘aren’t cinema’. Now, I’m not particularly sure if he was outright looking to cause a war or if he was just being flippant in his appraisal of the Marvel studio system.
Now, ‘cinema’, quite arguably, is an archaic term. I have no right to speak on Scorsese’s behalf, but what I believe he meant in his appraisal was that for those who strive to be filmmakers in their professional lives — what Marvel is offering doesn’t present good examples of how to achieve this.
Some historical context for this debate — Scorsese, along with Steven Spielberg, Brian DePalma, Francis Ford Coppola, and Dennis Hopper (to name but a few) were pioneer filmmakers.
They were part of a new wave of Hollywood filmmakers of the late 60s, early 70s, all the way through to the early 80s. Their actions were fawned over and immortalized in the Tarantino’s, the Kevin Smith’s, the Edward Burns’s.
They were studio killers.
These filmmakers broke down the studio model by breaking all the rules. The studio model consisted of actors on contract, directors on contract. Anybody who had of any creative persuasion that was able to make a buck in the filmmaking industry was on contract. You belonged to the studio.
Your arse was on standby.
As such, it’s been a hard industry to break into because there are gatekeepers and they don’t want outsiders intruding in their money-making machine.
So when Scorsese, Coppola and other pioneering filmmakers came along, they took cameras, lights, and audio out of the studio's controlled environments and fictitious atmospheres and they brought them onto the streets.
They used friends and popular music, dirty dialog, unwritten scenes filmed off the cuff.
It was a breath of fresh air that invigorated audiences. Studios took notice and invested accordingly.
They destroyed cinema as it was.
The Marvel model that exists today is very rigid. It’s Militaristic. There is a plan in place not just for one film, but for 20 or 30 films down the track. There’s a chart that outlines where every story is going to end up and when you have models like that, you’re reducing people’s abilities to make creative decisions when they’re in the production phase of their art.
And when those decisions are being made and rules are dictated to them from above, that’s a return to the studio system.
If you look at an entity like Disney, who owns Lucasfilm, Marvel and the like — They’re dictating the rules. They’re putting people on retainer. It’s a return to ‘the studio owns everything’ model. So when Scorsese comes out and says “it’s not cinema” — cinema to him is people getting down and dirty, grabbing cameras, hitting the streets and telling tales.
He’s saying that to inform aspiring filmmakers that if we live in a world where Marvel dominates at the box office, we are exposed to fewer and fewer examples of people crafting things that are attainable to the layman, to the kids with dreams.
Because if it’s $400,000,000 dollars to make one of these movies, then Joe Blow from Dapto Public School believes, probably quite rightly that it’s an unattainable dream. What studio is going to trust the keys of their kingdom on a $400 million dollar project to an artistically creative director?
Nobody.
They’re going to choose people who follow orders and do so in an economically satisfying manner. That’s a great shame.
Whereas a tale like Mean Streets, told for 20 bucks on the streets of the Bronx or a Spike Lee joint — when a kid sees that then they realise the craft is an attainable dream. This person went out and hand made this film just because they could and everybody saw it.
“That’s something I could do myself. I don’t need permission.”
Scorsese believes that it’s not inspiring the next generation of storytellers, and I tend to agree with him.
When every decision is preordained, there is no risk. There’s no ‘anything could happen’ attitude. Take, for example, Joker that was released and has exploded the box office.
It’s the most profitable R rated film in history.
Yes, it’s a comic book property, but people could sense that what they were about to see was something dangerous, something risk-taking, something that hadn’t been mapped out twenty films ago to fit into a narrative that would transpire Twenty films from now.
It’s a cinematic experience.
And people appreciated that with their money.
And studios should take note of that.
