Martin Scorsese is urging filmmakers to save cinema, by doubling down on his call to fight comic book movie culture.
The storied filmmaker is revisiting the topic of comic book movies in a new profile for GQ. Despite facing intense blowback from filmmakers, actors and the public for the 2019 comments he made slamming the Marvel Cinematic Universe films — he called them theme parks rather than actual cinema — Scorsese isn’t shying away from the topic.
“The danger there is what it’s doing to our culture,” he told GQ. “Because there are going to be generations now that think … that’s what movies are.”
GQ’s Zach Baron posited that what Scorsese was saying might already be true, and the “Killers of the Flower Moon” filmmaker agreed.
“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,” Scorsese continued to the outlet. “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. … Go reinvent. Don’t complain about it. But it’s true, because we’ve got to save cinema.”
Scorsese referred to movies inspired by comic books as “manufactured content” rather than cinema.
“It’s almost like AI making a film,” he said. “And that doesn’t mean that you don’t have incredible directors and special effects people doing beautiful artwork. But what does it mean? What do these films, what will it give you?”
His forthcoming film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” had been on Scorsese’s wish list for several years; it’s based on David Grann’s 2017 nonfiction book of the same name. He called the story “a sober look at who we are as a culture.”
The film tells the true story of the murders of Osage Nation members by white settlers in the 1920s. DiCaprio originally was attached to play FBI investigator Tom White, who was sent to the Osage Nation within Oklahoma to probe the killings. The script, however, underwent a significant rewrite.
“After a certain point,” the filmmaker told Time, “I realized I was making a movie about all the white guys.”
The dramatic focus shifted from White’s investigation to the Osage and the circumstances that led to them being systematically killed with no consequences.
The character of White now is played by Jesse Plemons in a supporting role. DiCaprio stars as the husband of a Native American woman, Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), an oil-rich Osage woman, and member of a conspiracy to kill her loved ones in an effort to steal her family fortune.
Scorsese worked closely with Osage Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear and his office from the beginning of production, consulting producer Chad Renfro told Time. On the first day of shooting, the Oscar-winning filmmaker had an elder of the nation come to set to say a prayer for the cast and crew.
And thinking everyone should think the same and enjoy the same thing is a big step into fascistic thinking. You might tell yourself that forcing a modicum of thought and intellectual participation on people is for a good cause. But you arent, in these comments at least, a good judge of what intellectual participation is.
Which is what you do when you do something wrong and then demand everyone has to conform to your way of thinking when called out on it. Because you portray yourself as an ignorant common man standing up to the out-of-touch academic in the ivory tower who tells you facts you don’t want to hear. Because you think that’s an acceptable way to live. Because you refuse to see how doing that hurts everyone else.
You might think of thinking and intellectual investment as egregious violations of your human rights, but that’s not how the real world works. You are an adult with responsibilities who is helping to run a democracy, and as such, you do in fact have to think and consume content that helps you think. It’s called growing up and you and the rest of the United States badly need to do it before Trump and his little cult exploits your refusal to stop being a child to commit genocide.
This shit happening with movies is having far-reaching effects throughout all of society and you see it as well as we do; you just don’t want to take responsibility for it.
You are a child.
Well, excuse me for not wanting to be called a fascist just for liking action movies.
So now you’re calling me an American?! Jeez.
Excuse us for wanting movies that aren’t worthless fucking garbage that are all CG and no substance.
Excuse us for calling you out for being the root of the problem supporting the enshittification of movies because you refuse to stop being a selfish, indolent, immature dipshit who thinks the world revolves around you.
Excuse us for telling you the truth.
What truth? That everybody should enjoy what you enjoy?
I’m literally defending everybodies right to have our own taste.
For this I’ve been called a fascist, trump-voter, ignorant common man, anti-intellectualist, selfish, indolent (TIL a new word!), immature, and an american! Name-calling isnt very mature. I threw your own word back at you (except the Trump voter, I couldnt in good conscience punch so low). Because acting all “out-of-touch academic in the ivory tower” (your words, not mine) thats a so damn typical fascist move, that has been caricatured in multiple movies, that I cant help point it out.
Let me explain this to you like the 4 year old that you are:
That is anti-intellectualism.
They’re telling you lies about how scientists and academics think and act to convince you not to listen to them when they tell you they’re wrong.
They’re telling you you’re wrong on everything from the climate crisis to how the political system works to what movies and media are for because they study the world for decades and therefore know more about how they work than you do.
You could have learned everything they did and more if you actually grew up, humbled yourself and listened to them, but instead you chose to be a selfish, indolent, immature dipshit.
You chose to let your feelings get hurt by people who told you you are wrong and instead of re-examining your thought processes and behavior, you chose to blame everybody else, especially the academics who
And the movie industry saw that, and exploited you by forcing writers to put arguments between characters in their scripts that let characters who think like you win the arguments. To let you get back at those meanie academics who only told you the truth and make them feel the emotional pain you feel. To let you win.
And they raked in billions of your dollars, and all of you saw those types of characters win movie after movie, and began to believe what they had to say was true.
So you didn’t listen to academics who warned you that Donald Trump was a fascist.
You didn’t listen to academics who told you burning fossil fuels was going to destroy the planet.
You didn’t listen to academics when they told you society is getting ready to collapse.
And guess what the fuck happened? Donald Trump made off with our fucking nuclear secrets, the climate has reached 1.5C warming and has started to trigger climate feedback loops, and we’re about to have a fucking civil war.
So thanks, you selfish, immature, indolent, spoiled little brat.
You destroyed our country because you can’t see that the way you view the world and approach problems is the problem, and you likely will never face responsibility for it until you are forced to, if that.
Until you change, my judgement of you will not, and as long as you whine about it instead of thinking about what Martin Scorsese is telling you, it will be justified.
Heavens, it’s lucky we have people as smart as you to put the rest of us in our place. That guy has told you repeatedly, for instance, that he’s not American and views “Trump voter” as an insult. And yet you persist in accusing him of being an American Trump voter, while jerking it to the sound of your own voice - surely the act of someone a cut above the common herd, who’s not a self-important asswipe at all.
It’s lucky we have dumbasses like you who enable rabble-rousers by justifying their anger, hurt and emotional pain when they’re told the truth. Damn lucky, otherwise how would Republicans ever hope to get elected?
As if fascism hasn’t become a worldwide phenomenon because of the American people buying into garbage propaganda that tells them what they want to hear, knowing that American movies have heavy global influence and not even considering that it would spread worldwide because they can’t be assed to watch where they spend their money.
You know there are people from Canada, the EU and the UK that openly support Trump himself and push for similar policies to be passed in their countries, right?
You do know this?
Let me put it in words of one syllable for you, since you’re desperately reaching for any goalpost you can find to shift: I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, but it isn’t anyone who’s replied to you on this thread.
You assume seriously lot of me just because I enjoy action movies.
I’m as left as I think I can get. I believe in science, I believe in the climate crisis, and vaccines, and all that shit. I dont believe that we should all have guns. I’m against war, but for it if its the only way to survive. I havent blamed anyone for anything yet, except the fascists for being elitists. I definitly dont believe in Trump, how many times do I have to repeat that? Also again: I’m not American, and I dont know which country you live in that I could have destroyed. My own country is okay-ish, our politicians arent all good, but my country isnt close to destroyed by anything. Though I do admit that I do less than I should for a better tomorrow for everyone.
So you should sit down and cool down, take a look at where this thread started, re-examining your thought processes and behavior, and take another educated guess at who the one acting immature is.
And you’re STILL not listening.
You’re still just trying to win something and offering nothing of any meaningful substance justifying content like that, and you’re doing it because you know you are wrong.
It’s irrelevant what country you’re from; Trump and his fascism have become a global phenomenon, and the only ones that really are to blame are people like you openly being anti-intellectual, thinking it’s okay and defending it. It’s not okay to not think for yourself. It’s not okay to support media that tells you doing that is okay. It’s not okay to support media that tells you intellectuals are self-important snobs you should ignore. It’s not okay to support media that is geared by focus groups with the explicit purpose of shutting off your brain and telling you what you want to hear. None of that shit is okay, ever, in a democracy. I presume you live in a democracy, anyway. If you don’t, that goes a long way toward explaining a lot of why you think the way you do.
Here in democracies, the people are the ones who are running the show, and in order to run the show, the entire populace has to be educated.
Media that, explicitly and implicitly through applied psychology, discourages people from being educated directly harms all democratic societies and they’re usually made with that purpose. We have a word for it, we call it propaganda and it’s designed to exploit suckers like you so demagogues like Trump can get themselves money and power. And they use that propaganda to convince you to vote for and support bad policies that destroy countries and destroy lives. Exhibit A: Brexit.
And your ass fell for it hook, line and sinker.
But once again, you’re never the problem. You’re just some peasant so how could your actions possibly have such far-reaching effects? How could you all giving corporate monoliths billions of your dollars collectively not negatively impact the rest of us who actually are trying to run a functional democracy?
You couldn’t possibly be the problem, no, it’s just someone else who had the nerve to get all angry and uppity about it.
When we get rid of the fucking fascists, we’re taking away your right to vote.
Listen to yourself. Is this really the words of a democrat?
Might also be you are a trolling Ianguage model. In which case I’m the stupid one for having taken the bait, i guess. 😟
Are you ok?
Fuck no. Everything I said is 100% true and I apologize for none of it. Movie studios have focus groups and marketing research firms that help them write their scripts and they gear their movies to appeal to the sensibilities of self-identified peasants like him to bilk money off of them, and it’s sick. I’m tired of their crap, I’m tired of them never being held accountable for anything they do and I’m tired of other people defending them while they let the rich destroy the country our ancestors fought and died to have. You shouldn’t be okay with them either.