Iāve been trying to ignore the comments on this post for days, but weāre going on 10k notes, now, and Iāve had a bit too much MCU Stans Being Willfully Ignorant And Purposely Misinterpreting Quotes this morning, so letās take a crack at this.
First of all, itās not an attack on genre films, generally. Itās not even an attack on a genre of film, specifically. He didnāt speak about āsuperhero moviesā as a whole, like Ridley Scott or James Cameron have in the recent past (although, letās face it, the genre is synonymous with Marvel at the moment, anyway). He expressly targeted Marvel films; the MCU in particular. Gee, I wonder why.
He also didnāt say that they wereĀ ābadā, he called them theme parks. You read that superficially and assumed that he meant,Ā āThings that are funā but what he actually meant was,Ā āThings that are built with the soul purpose of funneling people into seats to be optimally profitable.āĀ
Itās very amusing to me that you folks will log on Tumblr to hem and haw about late stage capitalism, but then leap at the chance to defend your favorite Mickey Mouse production from the scary old man whoās been trying his best to make good films for 50yrs. What good, respectable consumers!
Lastly, he refers to cinema asĀ āhuman beings trying to convey emotional, and psychological experiences to other human beings,ā and you guys all either went, 1) āCinema just means itās a movie played in a theater, hurr hurr hurr,ā 2) āThor almost cried one time when he planet blow up,ā or 3) āThatās pretentious! Everything is art! My cheerios are art!ā and again this is missing the point.Ā
When you watch a Marvel film, a writer didnāt decide that he had something interesting to say about Frog Man and pen a script, and then a director didnāt get to take said script and produce a work through their own artistic lens. A boardroom full of people in suits sat around and decided which licensed properties they already owned the rights to would be most profitable, and how it would fit into the conveyor belt of content theyād already pre-designed, and then they controlled every single aspect of that production, down to tone and color grading. And if you donāt believe that, ask Edgar Wright.
Martin Scorsese gave you guys an incredibly milquetoast, obvious criticism of movies you slurp down, and it made you all fume, but what you should be mad about is that youāre forced to consume fast food art when you could, just as easily, be getting filet mignon with the same genre and character roster.
Everyone likes to bring up Black Panther, but can you imagine a world where the incredibly talented Ryan Coogler hadnāt been handcuffed by a corporation. Can you imagine the movie that could have been?Ā
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