A Reel Opinion: Leave Marvel Alone

In 2019, famed director Martin Scorsese, while out doing press rounds for his new film THE IRISHMAN, was asked how he felt about the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU); the long-running series of superhero films based on Marvel comics. While his feelings on the armored and caped hero films are debatable, the news sparked a new pandemic in the business; not the type that closes theatres, but the type that has every lazy writer out there looking for some extra clicks. 

 

Since it’s launch in 2008, the MCU has made billions at the box office, won Oscars, and elevated even the most obscure comic characters into household names and into cultural icons. With the exception of maybe STAR WARS, nothing generates clicks on a headline like one that has the word Marvel in it. Ever since Scorsese’s comments, lazy writers and bloggers have gone out of their way to ask the most respected film directors about their MCU feelings; film auteurs such as Quentin Tarantino, Francis Ford Coppola, David Lynch…and most recently, Denis Villeneuve while he was doing press rounds for his upcoming film, DUNE. 

 

While the opinions of these filmmakers are certainly respected, they are gentlemen who have never had involvement in the superhero business and probably never will. They’ve made careers out of doing their own thing and that will never change. Asking them their opinions on the current king of the modern blockbuster certainly generates buzz and earns some clicks on social media, but after two solid years of hearing about it, it has become old, repetitive, and stale.

 

To be fair, headlines that grab clicks turns into revenue for press outlets…a near necessity for survival in the digital media world. Most of cinema talk right now revolves around superhero films and the concept of shared universes, ranging from Marvel’s success stories to the outright failures by other studios. People do want to read about those caped and armored heroes, but the purpose of a journalist is to write about the news, not generate news by provoking an answer that is a lock to generate buzz. 

 

So writers, stop being lazy…and leave Marvel alone.