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 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. 😟