Don’t worry, we’re not here to relitigate Martin Scorsese’s comments about Marvel films and how they’re threatening the entire existence of the film industry. Instead, in a new interview with The Guardian, Scorsese opens up about the dire situation facing the theater owners and audiences, and the threat that certain films play in that. And yes, he mentions superhero films, but if you actually read his comments, it appears that he’d be worried about any genre if it had the same effect that Marvel films have.
Scorsese begins his discussion talking about how he knows the way the studio system works nowadays and made the deal with Netflix (knowing that “The Irishman” might not play long in cinemas) just because he feels that he’s at the end of his career. Basically, it’s better to just make a movie and hope it gets played on the big screen than to fight a losing battle with studios.
READ MORE: Disney CEO Bob Iger Wants To Meet With Martin Scorsese About Those Marvel Comments
“Obviously, we have been discussing this a lot, that theatres have been commandeered by superhero films – you know, just people flying around and banging and crashing, which is fine if you want to see it,” Scorsese said. “It’s just that there’s no room for another kind of picture. I don’t know how many more I can make – maybe this is it. The last one. So the idea was to at least get it made and maybe show it for one day at the NFT, maybe one day at the Cinémathèque in Paris. I’m not kidding.”
He brings up the fact that superhero films are more threatening to smaller, more personal films (he mentioned “Lady Bird” and “The Souvenir”) because they take up all of the screens. And that’s the troubling part for Scorsese.
“Just because a film is commercial doesn’t mean it can’t be art,” he explained. “What has consumed the theatres is product. A product is to be consumed and thrown away. Look at a commercial film like ‘Singin’ in the Rain.’ You can watch it again and again. So the question is: how are we going to protect the art form?”
Scorsese says it’s not just the indies that are suffering. The filmmaker posits the scenario that some of his most star-studded films probably wouldn’t be able to secure funding in this day and age.
“Now, you don’t have to like the picture, but you couldn’t get ‘The Aviator’ made today,” he said. “You could not get ‘Shutter Island’ made today, even with me and Leo [DiCaprio]. ‘The Departed’ got made despite itself – the star power helped. We realized when we were taking this project around that the doors are closing. So what’s going on? I looked over at the theatres right down the block – 10 screens showing the same picture.”
While a lot has been made about Scorsese’s discussion of superhero films and whether or not they qualify as “cinema,” the more he talks about it, the less it has to do with the content and more the repercussions on the distribution business. Even superhero film fans can agree that having more options at the cinema is always a good thing. Well, hopefully, we can all agree on this.
“The Irishman” is available on Netflix now. If “theme park rides” are more your speed, then you can watch “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” in almost all of the screens, today.