A Reel Opinion: Shut up, Marty

Famed director Martin Scorsese once again went off the top rope in his tired old bout against blockbuster filmmaking. The 80-year-old filmmaker, whose new film KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON opens next month, was part of a new profile feature at GQ, in which he spoke about franchise films. He said: 

“The danger there is what it’s doing to our culture, because there are going to be generations now that think movies are only those – that’s what movies are.

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.”

His quotes fall in line with the shots he fired at the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) a few years back, calling them “not cinema”.

First of all, who wants to tell him that (Christopher) Nolan, once spent nearly a decade making Batman movies? And besides that, Scorsese seems to be overlooking the history of Hollywood. The movies have always…repeat, always latched onto a genre and kept at it until it was no longer profitable. How many WWII and Westerns were made in the first 60 years of cinema? How many kung-fu flicks in the 1970’s? And how many rom-coms in the 1980’s? Did our culture suffer because of all that? Certainly not. What is happening now with superhero flicks and other franchises such as STAR WARS is exactly how Hollywood has stayed in business for over 100 years. As Dennis Quaid once quipped in THE RIGHT STUFF: “No bucks, no Buck Rogers”. 

To be fair, Scorsese seems to be mad at the state of Hollywood more than the guys with capes and masks. The movie business has always been a balance of art and profit, but in recent years there has certainly been a shift towards profit. It has become harder for high-art films to be made as studios favor the films that have the potential to hit that billion dollar box office mark, or at the very least make their production costs back. As Bill Murray once quipped in THE LIFE AQUATIC: “he hogs up all the grant money.” 

What Scorsese is overlooking is that franchises are what is saving cinema right now. It was only a year ago theatres were on their death bed before the legacy sequel TOP GUN: MAVERICK gave them a supercharged shot of adrenaline. Superheroes may be getting all the money now, but it is certainly possible that one day they will exhaust audiences just like the Western did…and Hollywood will be on to the next big thing. 

Movies have always been an open universe. There should be room for dramas like Scorsese’s KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, Christopher Nolan’s OPPENHEIMER, and the next film in the MCU (THE MARVELS, coming in November). But when the day comes that we say the movies should only be one thing and one thing only…that’s when cinema is going to need saving. So, Marty, please shut up. 

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Scorsese’s KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (which cost $200 million to make), opens October 20^th.