Kevin Smith has responded to iconic director Martin Scorsese’s comments about Marvel films not being cinema.
There were some people that took umbrage with legendary director Martin Scorsese’s comments stating that Marvel movies weren’t “cinema”. While they are certainly very different movies from the dramatic works that Scorsese directs, he has received a fair amount of push back.
Beloved director Kevin Smith has now commented on the dispute in an interview with THR, stating that he thinks Marvel movies “are cinema” and thinks the director is just looking at things from the wrong angle:
“Martin Scorsese is a genius. But to be fair, my entire film career — even prior to my film career — he’s been pretty much saying the same thing about action movies. For my money, I think Martin Scorsese made the biggest superhero movie ever, which was The Last Temptation of Christ. Don’t get much bigger of a superhero than Jesus. He beats Superman and Robert Downey Jr. every time, so maybe Martin is bending on that territory.
“My feeling is, Martin Scorsese never sat in a movie theater with his dad and watched the movies of Steven Spielberg in the early ’80s or George Lucas in the late ’70s. He didn’t feel that sense of magic and wonder. I can still step into one of those comic book movies, divorce myself of that fact that I do this for a living, release, and my dead dad is back for a minute, for two hours, and it’s personal for a lot of the audience. You know, and we’re not arguing whether or not it counts as cinema. I guarantee you there’s something he enjoyed with his parents, like a musical — I bet you some cats would say, ‘A musical is not really cinema,’ but Martin Scorsese grew up on musicals, and I bet they mean a lot to him. These [Marvel] movies come from a core. They come from a happy childhood. And they’re reflections of a happy childhood. He’s not wrong, but at the same time, neither are we for loving those movies. And they are cinema.”
SEE ALSO: Robert De Niro calls Marvel’s de-aging effects “cartoony”
There is certainly a place for many different types of movies but as for Scorsese’s comments, it all depends on your definition of ‘cinema’. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below and on Twitter @flickeringmyth…
