Raging Bummer
Scorsese has a new film, so of course we are going to talk about comic book movies
Earlier this week GQ published an interview with Martin Scorsese and everything that followed really bummed me out.
Before I go into the reasons why I first want to encourage you to give it a read. It’s a really great interview with one of the living legends of cinema. I go back and forth on who is the great American filmmaker, Spielberg or Scorsese. My personal sensibilities align more with Spielberg, so I give him a slight edge but they are both masters of the craft. More importantly, both of them truly love cinema and it’s evident in their films.
Okay, so why was I bummed? Well, in short because everything about it captures what is so frustrating about the state of play right now.
While the author acknowledges that even asking Scorsese about comic movies will re-ignite the stupid debate about comic book movies, he stills asks him about comic book movies. The result was predictable, it re-ignited the stupid debate about comic book movies.
Listen, I’m a lifelong comic book fan and I’ve defend the medium as a legitimate form of literature well before I defended it as a legitimate form of cinema. I’m not going to go into all of that here because Scorsese didn’t even say that at all.
Here is what he said:
But he does see trouble in the glut of franchise and comic book entertainment that currently makes up much of what you can see in a theater. “The danger there is what it’s doing to our culture,” Scorsese said. “Because there are going to be generations now that think movies are only those—that’s what movies are.”
I think people already think that.
“They already think that. Which means that we have to then fight back stronger. And it’s got to come from the grassroots level. It’s gotta come from the filmmakers themselves. And you’ll have, you know, the Safdie brothers, and you’ll have Chris Nolan, you know what I mean? And hit ’em from all sides. Hit ’em from all sides, and don’t give up. Let’s see what you got. Go out there and do it. Go reinvent. Don’t complain about it. But it’s true, because we’ve got to save cinema.” Cinema could be anything, Scorsese said; it didn’t just have to be serious. Some Like It Hot—that was cinema, for instance. But: “I do think that the manufactured content isn’t really cinema.”"
He is clearly saying there is danger in every movie being a comic book movie. He’s not wrong either. Again, I love comic book movies and even I don’t want a world in which Hollywood is only producing comic book movies. I need comedies. I need action films. I need Safdie and Nolan films. I need a balanced diet of films.
We all do.
Of course, that isn’t the way the quote above is framed. Here is a tweet that got passed around on Elon Musk’s website.
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This one feels like it was scientifically engineered to produce the most angry response. Not only do you have the comic book debate you have Christopher Nolan mentioned. This lets you juice the comic book debate because Nolan directed The Dark Knight. Now it’s super charged because Scorsese is saying comic book movies are bad by referencing the director of another comic book movie. Plus, it should be noted, also added some Marvel vs DC kindling to this anger fire for a little something extra.
Listen, I know why they framed it this way. They need the engagement on X so more people will rage click the article so they can get the page views to charge more for ads
Which, and this is a digression, but that also bummed me out. The best way to get people to engage with what you are doing is to make them angry. It works which is why people do it.
Specifically what bums me out is that this article was about this legendary American filmmaker both mediating on and wrestling with mortality and legacy while confronting the reality that he is short on time. It’s a deeply great read and it got dumbed down as a comic book debate.
It’s really a shame because at the moment we are in the twilight of an age in cinema. I was born in 1982 so I grew up watching the films of Spielberg and Lucas and graduating to the films of Coppola and Scorsese. They have either made or will be making their final film. They defined cinema not only for me, but for everybody.
Who is coming after them? What kind of films are the next generation of filmmakers going to grow up on? Are they going to see them in the theater or watch them on their phone?
Instead of pondering those questions the conversation was a debate about comic book movies. I suppose that is fitting given that comic book movies have dominated cinema. Still, what a bummer.