If a gourmet chef ate a Skittle and didn’t like it, are Skittles no longer considered food? Of course not, the chef just doesn’t like Skittles. Just because they’re a great chef doesn’t mean that they alone get to decide what is and isn’t food. Film is the same way: one great filmmaker can dislike a certain kind of film, but they don’t get to decide its status as art.
In an interview with Empire magazine in October, renowned film director Martin Scorsese announced that superhero movies, specifically from Marvel Studios, are “not cinema.” Last year, James Cameron expressed his critique of the genre by saying that “there are other stories to tell.” This distaste for the superhero genre is not a new take for well-known directors. Ridley Scott, David Cronenberg and Clint Eastwood, to name a few, have all echoed the sentiment that movies in the superhero genre are immature and, as Cronenberg put it in an interview with MTV in 2012, “for kids.”
Art is subjective which means that anyone can have an opinion about it and basically be right because it’s their opinion. However, many people on the internet have argued that because of his status as a veteran film director, Scorsese is right and there’s nothing more to it. On the other side, are the people who say that he’s just jealous of how much money Marvel movies rack in and that he simply doesn’t get the appeal. The real answer lies somewhere between the two.
Just about any opinion on art is valid because of the inherently subjective nature that art possesses. Some people don’t have a taste for the French new wave films of the 1950s and ’60s and that’s just fine. Some people don’t like action-packed summer blockbusters and that is equally fine.
Scorsese seems to fit into the first category, preferring films that are viewed by critics as having lots of artistic value. He noted in a 2012 interview with Sight and Sound that films such as “Citizen Kane” (1941), “Vertigo” (1958) and “The Searchers” (1956) are among his favorites. It’s no wonder that someone whose favorite films are classics doesn’t like a movie where Iron Man and Spider-Man go to space to fight aliens.
Scorsese just doesn’t like superhero movies, they have little appeal to him and that’s okay. He gets to form his own opinions on what he likes regardless of what the internet says. Marvel actor Samuel L. Jackson responded to Scorsese’s comments in an interview with Variety saying that, “Everybody’s got an opinion, so I mean it’s okay. Ain’t going to stop nobody from making movies.” The problem is not that Scorsese dislikes Marvel movies but that he disputes their artistic worth.
“I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema,” Scorsese told Empire, “It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”
Scorsese himself admitted that he doesn’t/can’t watch Marvel movies so his argument that they don’t count as cinema is flimsy at best. It’s easy to criticize something that you don’t know anything about because you can just make blanket statements and people will agree with you.
All genres have bad movies in them, but it isn’t fair to say that a genre as a whole is bad. Horror movies get a bad reputation, but some excellent films have emerged from the horror genre. Great films like “The Shining” (1980), “It Follows” (2014) and “Halloween” (1978) defy the bad expectations that films like “The Wicker Man” (2006) set. In a similar vein, “Iron Man” (2008), “Logan” (2017) and “The Dark Knight” (2008) are just a few great superhero movies in a genre of critically acclaimed films.
Films produced by Marvel Studios are going for mass appeal. A movie doesn’t make $2.797 billion, like “Avengers: Endgame” (2019) did if it’s not trying to appeal to as many people as possible. The PG-13 rating that every Marvel Studios movie receives means that just about anyone can go see them and get some level of enjoyment out of the experience.
Mass appeal doesn’t seem to excite Scorsese which is why the movies he directs and produces are usually rated R with some exceptions. Appealing to everyone is clearly not the goal for Scorsese and that’s completely fine. He wants to make movies that appeal to him which, in his opinion, are about conveying “emotional, psychological experiences.”
Art will always have a group of elite people looking down on others for liking what is popular. It’s important to remember that people should just be able to like what they like and not like what they don’t. Scorsese knows a great deal about filmmaking, his accolades include an Oscar for Best Director and a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture just to name a few, but that isn’t to say that he gets to decide what is and what is not cinema. Scorsese once said that “your job (as a filmmaker) is to get your audience to care about your obsessions” and it’s clear that his fans can agree with Marvel fans that they’re all obsessed with movies.
