As we enter the 19th month of the pleasant “Is Marvel cinema or not?” conversation—some may call a “debate”— tensions are not high at all, and this is easily one of the most congenial dialogues in some time about whether or not superhero movies that play in the cinema, are indeed cinema, or perhaps some other new breed of product we’ve not yet established.
READ MORE: Samuel L. Jackson Responds to Martin Scorsese’s Superhero Comments
The argument started with none other than Martin Scorsese, who compared Marvel Studios franchise movies to an invasive species that was ruining film culture. Scorsese said Marvel movies were “not cinema,” and the debate has raged on. Everyone from fanboy Kevin Smith, “Guardians Of The Galaxy” filmmaker James Gunn, Samuel L. Jackson (who plays Marvel’s Nick Fury) to director Taika Waititi (“Thor: Ragnarok”)—who has pointed out that Marvel films play in cinemas—have weighed in with defenses of these studio spectacles.
READ MORE: James Gunn Expresses Disappointment Over Martin Scorsese’s Superhero Comments
Now, another legend has entered the fray, legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola (“Apocalypse Now”), and he definitely has Marty’s back. In fact, he thinks Scorsese was being polite and going soft on Marvel as Coppola has called the film series “despicable.”
“When Martin Scorsese says that the Marvel pictures are not cinema, he’s right because we expect to learn something from cinema, we expect to gain something, some enlightenment, some knowledge, some inspiration,” Coppola said in Lyon, France this weekend (via Yahoo), where he was being awarded the Prix Lumiere for his contribution to cinema.
“I don’t know that anyone gets anything out of seeing the same movie over and over again,” he said, before going for the jugular. “Martin was kind when he said it’s not cinema. He didn’t say it’s despicable, which I just say it is.”
Of course, the heart of this contention is not whether Marvel movies are cinema— which they are because they’re movies that play in movie theaters—but whether they are good, meaningful stories worthy of the kind of cinema Scorsese has devoted his life to. Now, if you held a gun to my head and said, “you get art movies or Marvel movies for the rest of your life, pick one,” I’d undoubtedly choose the former, but this debate has gotten rather silly.
People said cinema was ending—or had similar “invasive species” concerns in the late 1970s when “Star Wars,” “Jaws” and “The Exorcist” ushered in the era of the modern-day blockbuster movie and audiences have been worried about the health of cinema, and the takeover of franchises, sequels and the likes for decades. While monoculture and streaming technology has changed the landscape and “threatened” so-called real cinema for the last decade, let’s face it, it’s always going to be here, and you cannot dictate what’s popular or not with audiences. Trends come and go, cultural taste ebbs and flows, and hell, those Marvel movies are pretty damn good for what they are. Personally, I love all kinds of films, and variety is the spice of life—high and low cinema had defined The Playlist since its inception because just broccoli or just potato chips as a diet is boring AF, but hey, it’s Francis Ford Coppola and he’s just as entitled to his opinion as you are. Would it be a shame if “Megalopolis,” Coppola’s passion project doesn’t get made because someone would rather invest in a franchise film instead? Absolutely, but that remains to be proven as the case (and it seems like funding and a big cast is on the way). Anyhow, shrug, I’m not really sure why this story persists, but I suppose it wouldn’t be online discourse without some high-pitched melodrama to get all in a fuss about. ????♀️
