THE IRISHMAN, A Martin Scorsese Picture with de Niro, Pacino, Pesci, Keitel

whoa

A friend of mine just referred to them as The Italian Beatles. pic.twitter.com/mhv8ezjNnb

— Sean Burns (@SeanMBurns) September 27, 2019

Gian, Paolo, Giorgio, and Reengo

Who is Pete Best

surely John Cazale

FREDOOOOO

people losing their minds over Scorsese saying Marvel movies are "not cinema"

if anyone has the right to say what is and what isn't cinema it's Scorsese

you could chuck all of his own films out and he'd still be one of the most important film preservationists in history

Scorsese otm for the most part

I still crack up sometimes about Scorsese's essay for the millennium issue of Rolling Stones where he talks about industry people telling him "he should check out The Waterboy!".

they're more like a marketing exercise

xp

Scorsese said what needed to be said. Constantly. By as many people as possible. This from a fan of disaster movies.

well, Marty is also a fan of DeMille, including the spectacles like Samson and Delilah and Ten Commandments

those still had recognizable human dynamics embedded in them

i mostly like the Marvel movies as entertainment but he's pretty otm, also there's the minor film tragedy of so many good actors being booked for all these movies and having less time for other work. pretty sure 90% of Robert Downey Jr's screen time the past decade-plus has been scenes of him talking trash to Captain America while surrounded by glowing consoles, or in extreme close-up while his Iron Man suit short-circuits for the fiftieth time.

I do think there's a difference between the MCU and pre-2008 comic book movies. The Raimi Spider-Man trilogy is great for what it is. the MCU movies I've seen are just inert, totally lifeless

spider-man 2 is still my model for what a comic book movie should be

yeah the first two really are the gold standard. ditto for first two X-Men movies

where are these comments of Scorsese's btw

Don’t ask Martin Scorsese his thoughts on the record-breaking “Avengers: Endgame” because he hasn’t seen it, nor will he ever see it. The legendary filmmaker recently dismissed the Marvel Cinematic Universe during an interview with Empire magazine, saying that Marvel movies do not possess the traits that make cinema truly special.

“I don’t see them. I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema,” Scorsese told Empire. “Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”

Scorsese is fresh off universal praise for his new drama “The Irishman,” which debuted on opening night of the 2019 New York Film Festival. The gangster epic, starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci, debuted to instant Oscar buzz and is considered a top contender to land nominations for its actors, plus Best Picture and Best Director bids, among others. Disney and Marvel Studios is also launching an Oscar campaign for “Avengers: Endgame,” which grossed over $2.7 billion worldwide this year to become the highest-grossing movie in history (unadjusted for inflation).

Scorsese’s thoughts on Marvel movies recall a similar opinion shared by Ethan Hawke in August 2018. The “First Reformed” actor told Film Stage that moviegoers were treating superhero movies as if they were great works of art, which is not the case.

“Now we have the problem that they tell us ‘Logan’ is a great movie,” Hawke said. “Well, it’s a great superhero movie. It still involves people in tights with metal coming out of their hands. It’s not Bresson. It’s not Bergman. But they talk about it like it is. I went to see ‘Logan’ ‘cause everyone was like, ‘This is a great movie’ and I was like, ‘Really? No, this is a fine superhero movie.’ There’s a difference, but big business doesn’t think there’s a difference. Big business wants you to think that this is a great film because they wanna make money off of it.”

twitter I think

i do think some of the Marvel movies that step a bit outside of the primary "Cinematic Universe" storyline exhibit more energy or creativity or flashes of humanity (Ragnarok, Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther, the Ant Mans), but there's only been a couple of them I would ever want to see again, even though i have liked most of them. but it's just the streaming TV model brought to film imo.

I think the MCU's "quality control" policy just smooths everything out and makes it so punishingly bland, obviously this is better/safer business than rolling the dice (like Hollywood did for a century), but if you can't hit the lows of idk, 2005 Fantastic Four or 2003 Hulk (not that bad imo), then you can't make a Spider-Man 2 or X2.

there's a really good book by Ben Fritz called The Big Picture about all this stuff

Even arguing about this narcissism of Marvel differences means "they" have won.

yup, goalposts successfully moved

the Spider-Man and X-Men trilogies were not made by Marvel

scorsese is 100 percent otm, if anything he wasn't mean enough

the Spider-Man and X-Men trilogies were not made by Marvel

― flappy bird, Friday, October 4, 2019

does it matter?

I like the 2004 Spider-Man and the first two X-Men, and lord knows the thousands of genre films I've watched in my life boast inventive performances, unusual inversions of expectations, thrilling action sequences, and so on; but if you're still a working critic in 2019 the pressure to review these things from publicists depresses me, as is the Box Office Mojo ethos of constantly discussing grosses (even my students taking my elective film class chat about grosses like Madison did John Locke). I got six emails wondering why the hell I wasn't interested in attending the preview for Joker. I told the publicist, whom I know well, "Traffic is more fun."

imagine dedicating your life to movies, spending all your time either making them yourself or trying to preserve and promote them, and suddenly it's 2019 and the only movies anyone wants to talk about or spend money on involve cgi raccoons or "edgy" takes on the clown who fights batman

I'm skanky enough to think, "What's the difference between devoting a couple years to 'developing' a Howard Hughes biopic and developing a Joker film?" I gotta say.

the Spider-Man and X-Men trilogies were not made by Marvel

― flappy bird, Friday, October 4, 2019

does it matter?

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, October 4, 2019 2:03 PM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Marvel Studios has a completely different operating philosophy with a built-in fanbase that will see whatever they release no matter what. the MCU is a decades spanning project with every film relating to and effecting the others. no middlemen, no risks, no bombs like Daredevil. that sort of quality control just fuckin' smooths it all out into a paste. Sony taking on Marvel's IP and rolling the dice with is an entirely different situation.

I'm not doing it justice but all of this is covered in The Big Picture & everyone sad/mad/madsad about Marvel occupying cinemas 24/7 should read Ben Fritz' excellent book.

What 'risks' are you looking for? Spiderman 2 and X2 are solid films but they're no less superhero movies than the MCU. X2 took on social themes but what risks or deviation from the superhero formula did S2 take?

The reason Daredevil stunk isn't because it "swung for the fences"

Also lol at the zero sum idea that MCU fans don't see art films. Sure, maybe most of that fanbase didn't, but it isn't as if these people were seeing them prior to the MCU coming around. Might not have been moviegoers at all.

ok, that's it, back to Scorsese or I'm siccing Black Panther on all of you

I'm not doing Fritz's book justice but really what changed the dynamic and what gets bankrolled & what doesn't was Hollywood opening up distribution to Russia and China at the beginning of the decade. Marvel isn't to blame for what plays worldwide.

Also lol at the zero sum idea that MCU fans don't see art films. Sure, maybe most of that fanbase didn't, but it isn't as if these people were seeing them prior to the MCU coming around. Might not have been moviegoers at all.

― When I am afraid, I put my toast in you (Neanderthal), Friday, October 4, 2019 2:41 PM (thirty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

What movies play in movie theaters is literally a zero sum game

that's also not the point that me or Marty were making. I never said anything about art house cinema, Jaws is an awesome movie. Spielberg's War of the Worlds too. the lack of humanity he's talking about imo has a lot to do with the abundance and reliance on CGI. there were more sets and practical effects in 2002, and obviously in 1975 with Jaws. the MCU and recent DC movies I've seen are frustratingly flat visually, stuck in a bizarre space that isn't so much uncanny valley as screensaver. this is true too of something like the "(x) Has Fallen" series. I think it's important to expand the critique beyond comic book movies because their fans and those studios really are not to blame and they're not doing anything wrong.

I also haven't seen enough of the MCU to say whether or not it's "cinema." Marvel is serving a happy fanbase and cleaning up. That doesn't seem like a death or a loss to me.

Disney is the only real enemy of the cinema. There is no life in something like The Jungle Book remake, or The Lion King. watching those movies is the only time I feel like I'm hooked up to life support.

Scorsese's not wrong, but when he was making Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and The King of Comedy, I don't remember him spending a lot of time criticizing what else was in theatres (there was garbage then, too). He was too busy making Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and Then King of Comedy. Cronenberg went through that too, around the time of Madame Butterfly and Naked Lunch.

Someone asked him about comic book movies in an interview, he didn't exactly go out of his way

I also haven't seen enough of the MCU to say whether or not it's "cinema." Marvel is serving a happy fanbase and cleaning up. That doesn't seem like a death or a loss to me.

I tend to look at it as the final, inevitable triumph of market efficiency. It's a formula for minimal risk and maximum potential profit. Hence why people defending MCU movies with a kind of shrug and "they're fine" is exactly the point of the likes of Scorsese. The point of those movies is to be "fine," to create as smooth and efficient a means as possible to deliver entertainment to as wide a group of people as possible. This is nothing new of course but the extension of branding accomplished via a "universe" of interconnected movies is--it's like looking at toothpaste in the store...there's nothing beyond superficial differences because to risk communicating something "human" as scorsese puts it is to risk, inevitably, turning some people off.

Secondly, the whole "they're fine" thing is pernicious because it confirms my suspicion that movies predicated on pure frictionless enjoyment actually are not really *enjoyed* by anyone...they're not even meant to be enjoyed, merely anticipated...and the whole wildly defensive posture the "fans" take are worthy of some more sophisticated psychoanalysis than I can muster right now.

I think plenty of comic book fans genuinely love the MCU. your description is 100% OTM of the Disney remakes.

the vast majority of people that see MCU movies are not comic book fans, judging by the actual sales of comic books

I think plenty of comic book fans genuinely love the MCU.

unfortunately I am doing that infuriating thing where I'm telling them that their understanding of their own experience is wrong!

whoever their fanbase consists of, I see a lot less mishegoss over Avengers and Spider-Man than the completely insane Star Wars community.

It does seem likely to me--for a variety of reasons, if none more persuasive than sheer novelty--that this bubble will burst.

the vast majority of people that see MCU movies are not comic book fans, judging by the actual sales of comic books

― Οὖτις, Friday, October 4, 2019 12:52 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

nobody is a fan of comic books because the comic book product is woefully undesirable and unavailable outside of specialty retailers

stooooooooooooop

fwiw I am excited to see the Irishman

Me too