Scorsese slams Marvel movies AGAIN, says watch Oppenheimer instead

In a new magazine profile, legendary director Martin Scorsese criticized rating obsessed cinema and slammed franchise films.

Speaking with GQ ahead of the release of his latest film Killers of the Flower and Moon, the 80-year-old award winning director discussed his life, career and how comic book movies have changed the industry.

‘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,’ said Scorsese.

‘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?’

This is not the first time Scorsese has attacked Marvel, in 2019 he said the comic book movies are not cinema but are more like theme parks.

‘I do think that the manufactured content isn’t really cinema,’ said Scorsese. ‘It’s almost like AI making a film. 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? Aside from a kind of consummation of something and then eliminating it from your mind, your whole body, you know? So what is it giving you?’

Scorsese said the film industry is not the same as it was near seven decades ago when he started his career.

He said studios are not, ‘interested any longer in supporting individual voices that express their personal feelings or their personal thoughts and personal ideas and feelings on a big budget. And what’s happened now is that they’ve pigeonholed it to what they call indies.’

He is an advocate for film preservation, and this summer attended a meeting with other famed directors and Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav following recent layoffs at Turner Classic Movies.

Last October, Scorsese slammed the film industry’s ‘repulsive’ obsession with ratings for ‘demeaning’ cinema.

He said since the 1980s, the industry has become more interested in ratings and how much money movies bring in.

In his GQ interview, he said was repulsed when executives tried to get him to let one of The Departed two leads live so they could turn it into a franchise.

‘What they wanted was a franchise. It wasn’t about a moral issue of a person living or dying. And then the studio guys walked out and they were very sad, because they just didn’t want that movie. They wanted the franchise. Which means: I can’t work here anymore.’

He said movie theaters are not dying, but they need to do more to entice people to go watch films.

‘I think there will always be theatrical, because people want to experience this thing together,’ Scorsese said.

‘But at the same time, the theatres have to step up to make them places where people will want to go and enjoy themselves or want to go and see something that moves them.’

This summer Scorsese’s Goodfellas was voted the best gangster movie of all time according to Ranker.