Martin Scorsese, director of
Raging Bull and
Goodfellas, when asked what he thinks of Marvel movies, responded that they aren't cinema. Several days later, Francis Ford Coppola, director of
The Godfather and
Apocalypse Now, went even further, adding that the Marvel product is actually even despicable.
They're right.
The reason for that is the same reason that artificially colored and flavored kiddie breakfast cereal, although it sells quite well, is in no way to be considered cuisine. They're right for the same reason that we (to date) don't place Daredevil issue number 47 alongside
To Kill a Mockingbird as an example of great literature.
What we've got here is a case of the emperor wearing no clothes.
The qualitative aspect associated with the word "cinema" is central to the "not cinema" assertion. Quality exceeds quantity. Nor does the box-office ever have anything to do with quality. One Marvel movie director, James Gunn, in defense of what he does, has stated that when Scorsese and Coppola were starting out, "many of our grandfathers" rejected what these new guys were doing. But he offers zero specificity, and the generalized comparison he imagines is inaccurate, anyway.
In terms of culture, what we've been getting for a long time is plain old ripped off. We would all do well to remember that the Motion Picture Association of America has never been headed by the artist with the best film talent. In fact, it's a political appointment. So perhaps it's no coincidence that the spigot through which film must pass, particularly all this century so far, has produced consistently infantilizing fare. Not in keeping with the spirit of the original comics, either. Spider-Man was always Stan Lee's favorite. But the movies reduce him at the expense of elevating the fabulously rich Tony Stark whose only power is having money that he inherited. It is also worth noting that in the Marvel movie universe, there is no such thing as Due Process of law.
Has there ever been a good superhero movie? Sure, you bet. The first Superman movie with Christopher Reeve, the first Batman with Michael Keaton. Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man, Christian Bale as the Dark Knight. Are any of these movies as important in film as
Citizen Kane? No, they're not. That's because filmmaking geniuses like Orson Welles, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese, while not an absolute rarity, do not comprise the norm.
Scorsese equated Marvel movies with theme parks. Fair assessment. After all, the number one name in theme parks owns Marvel movies. Are Marvel movies about "human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being"? No, and Scorsese justly calls it. Marvel movies are highly episodic vehicles for special effects, with uniform appearance and suspect content comparable to a fast food cheeseburger. Fast food cheeseburgers make a lot of money, but that doesn't make them filet mignon.
Those who get all gooey over Marvel movies, in looking for heroics, should look no further than Coppola himself. Cinema-sense tingling, he detected trouble in the Twitterverse--which, by the way, is a cheeseburger all its own--and, donning his nanotech Despica-suit, flew into action, blasting away in defense of Scorsese.
"Watch out for the infantilizing ray!" Scorsese called out, swiftly casting a power-shield spell.
But Coppola was already swinging his mighty movie camera, the one that only he can pick up and which always returns to his waiting hand.
Then Stanley Kubrick swung down on his magic lasso while Alfred Hitchcock used his amazing film reel power to cartwheel into the fray like a one-man radial arm saw, and the forces of the Twitterverse retreated.
"We've done it," said David Lean, only now materializing. "We defeated the Schlockites."
"Yes," Elia-Man concurred in his spectacular Kazan-mobile. "But...for how long?"
Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
