Let’s back up a little. Unless you’ve been living under a rock with no Wi-Fi connection, you’ve likely gotten wind of the Martin Scorsese vs. Marvel discourse. It all began in 2019 when Marty told Empire Magazine that he tried to get into the MCU (then the most popular franchise on the planet), “But that’s not cinema.” The ensuing online discourse rapidly took a turn for the worse, with one side painting Marty as a big ol’ meanie who hates fun and the other side suggesting that anyone who likes the MCU should be branded a philistine and a shill for corporations. (In case you’re curious, I personally took one look at what was happening and swiftly “Noped” out, Daniel Kaluuya-style.)
Not long after, in an essay written for The New York Times, Scorsese eloquently laid out his larger case against the MCU:
“Many of the elements that define cinema as I know it are there in Marvel pictures. What’s not there is revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk. The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes.”
It’s a perfectly reasonable statement and, in a more sensible reality in the multiverse (ours, not Marvel’s), that would’ve been the end of it. In our reality, of course, it wasn’t, and so here we are having the same tedious debate once again. (Time is a flat circle, yadda, yadda, yadda…)
The MCU is a major defining cultural event of the last 15 years … and yet, there’s not a single Martin Scorsese film that isn’t worth more than the franchise. Read More