Over the past months, there’s been no shortage of discussion on the artistic and cultural merit of superhero movies and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) in particular. Having watched fans (and MCU actors and execs) aggressively defend these enormously successful films’ good names against the negative opinions of completely unqualified “directors” like Martin Scorsese, knowing that any public figure who just says they don’t like these kind of movies is up for at least a short stay in the lower circles of outcry hell, the end of 2019 seems like as good a time as any to reflect back on how exactly we ended up in this situation.
An essay by Alex Pappademas, published as part of Medium’s ongoing collection of articles reflecting on the past decade, does a great job of summarizing how comic book movies gained cultural ascendancy and why, just maybe, the attitude of the genre’s biggest fans should worry us. Tracking “superhero culture’s evolution from nerd culture to monoculture,” Pappademas explains how unlikely it used to seem that the “interconnectedness” of Marvel comics could translate to the screen with such incredible results and end up fostering fans who, in their furious reaction to Scorsese’s criticisms, created “a seismic shift in the way pop-genre entertainment’s partisans talk about it.”
Pappademas writes that, while “there have always been people who will tell you that arty things are stupid, that liking them is pretentious, and that preferring arty things to mass-market entertainment is a symptom of elitism,” what’s unique to the present day is that, as shown by MCU defenders’ claim that their favorite movies are truly emotionally and intellectually engaging, “the people making these arguments against the supposed privileging of a certain type of arty thing are doing it without rejecting the notion that movies should aspire to fulfill an audience’s need for profundity.”
“The reason all this should worry you, even if you have zero investment in superhero movies or their relative position vis-a-vis film culture as a whole,” Pappademas writes, “is that the response to Scorsese is a populist groundswell in service of the status quo, of corporations, and of power.” The effects of this, he explains, is that we’ve somehow arrived at a time where the most financially successful films of the era are defended not by paid professionals, but by “a volunteer army of PR freelancers for the biggest media companies in the world.”
Check out the rest of the article for more (and, in the final paragraph, one of the best recommendations for watching The Irishman we’ve seen to date).
Send Great Job, Internet tips to [email protected]
241 Comments
Nerds (geeks, akshully) have ALWAYS been like this. It’s just that now they have a global platform.
We need some more Jocks to smash’em. Smash’em good!
There are no more jocks, not in power anyone. Nerds control finance, media, Silicon Valley, even sports. There’s no more jock-nerd power dynamic and there hasn’t been for a very long time.
And see where that’s gotten us. Get’em, Moose!
Everything that gets made gets made for you.
Duh, o-kay boss!
Not true. The jocks are in private equity, financing the nerds.
Those are bros. Jocks are the guys working at car dealerships or running a personal training business.
Man, it’s really hard to tell them all apart these days.
Jocks also become orthopedic surgeons. Which is why we nurses have to write “yes” on the correct body part/limb, and “no” on the wrong one in indelible marker.I wish I were kidding about this. I’m not. It’s real thing.
Anecdotal, obvs., but in my limited experience you are 100% correct. I’ve had both of my shoulders done almost 20 years apart. When I had the first one done, I thought “Wow, what an arrogant asshole this doctor is.”. Then 17 years later, other shoulder, same doctor- “Wow, this guy is still an arrogant asshole.”.
Surgeons can be very arrogant although I think things are getting better with the younger ones. the point of my story, though, isn’t about arrogance. It’s about IQ level.
Yes- I guess I wasn’t explicit enough, but the arrogrance was very much of the “I’m the star QB” variety.
I like the ones who engage in wacky antics and practical jokes to cope with the horrors of war.
Alot of jocks are teachers and coaches. Some went into sports journalism that turned into advertising, some are PTs or ATs. Some are in the military. I feel like they actually turn into normal, well-adjusted guys.
They both overlap and fall in the general “douchbag/bro” species:
Frat boys/Jocks still most certainly do rule the roost in the corporate world as the VP/P/Managing Directors/C-Executives etc of your finance, marketing, media, etc, companies. Hell, we just made a beer swilling, rapey one a Supreme Court Justice. Even the nerds are trying their hardest to be douchey jocks like Elon, Travis Kalanick, Adam Neumann, etc, etc.
The nerds won, and then we found out that the nerds are worse than jocks. At least the jocks didn’t have decades of built up rage and resentment they wanted to unleash the moment they got the tiniest bit of power.
Good lord is that the truth. I went to college next to a large engineering school. I had been told all my life that nerds were sensitive and misunderstood nice boys who would treat girls with respect by virtue of a self-awareness born from underdogdom. Hooooolyyyy SHIT was that not the case. The worst one of the jocks is likely to do to you is call you a slut to his friends, maybe cheat on you with your roommate. A nerd is going to film you having sex without your permission, plaster it all over the internet, burn your credit, hack into your phone and send inappropriate texts to your boss/parents/teachers, stalk you via tech, threaten to kill you or himself, bring a gun to class, etc. Each one of these things happened to 1 or more of my friends when they were dating nerds and the things did not stop once we graduated, they just got progressively scarier as nerds became wealthier. My college roommate discovered her video game designer husband had been her college stalker 12 years after they had gotten married. He kept a whole vlog about it and got off on popping up every few years as her ‘stalker’ only to ‘rescue’ her as her husband. A co-worker found out her IT VP husband has been helping a local human trafficking ring streamline their tech to avoid getting caught by the police. My former boss’s ex boyfriend, a mechanical engineer, was caught with explosives in his car at the security gate to our building. The worst I have is my college boyfriend calling me a bitch when I scored a goal on him playing one on one in hockey. He was the goalie for a division 1 team.Aaron Sorkin once wrote a thing about toxic nerd misogyny that completely resonated with me.
Well Sorkin would know
You know it’s bad when Sorkin is like YIKES
Yeesh. I’m terribly sorry to hear that. When I was younger I assumed that most people matured and become more insightful as they got older. I assumed that adults had some sort of secret knowledge that kids didn’t. Now that I’m older, I’ve discovered that a large percentage of the population never matures past the age of fifteen.
My entire post is basically, tl;dr, Hollywood lies to girls and women about nerds.Frankly, I would rather they stick to gaslighting me about my weight. At least my imperfect body isn’t going to tape razors underneath my car door handle or send naked sleeping videos of me to a bunch of Thai teenagers.
Misogyny is basically engineered into boys at an early age; it just manifests differently for each one. We (myself included) really have to unlearn things in order to become functional, empathetic adults. It doesn’t just happen. It takes some real work.
That plus the kind of aversion to socializing that makes libertarianism an various flavors of far-right fuckery so popular in Silicon Valley.
No they just had entitled sadism and cruelty, least the nerds are capable of losing the resentment but the jocks can’t lose the sadism and competitiveness and they exported it to nerds through bullying.
Yes, no jock has ever used their position to release pent-up rage, as long as you ignore the military, the police, the Klan, militias, and the million other times they did exactly that.
A couple of years ago I attended a video game convention to help out a friend, and after about an hour I felt this profound longing to shove nearly every insufferable nerd in attendance into a locker.
And no, the irony of a guy who posts on an online pop culture site feeling this way is not lost on me. These people were like nerd Opus Dei.
OGRE YOU ASSHOLE
Damn! Kinja’d by SmedleyButter. Sounds like a nerd’s name to boot!
Counter point: disregard all articles on Medium besides Drew Magary. Medium’s just for hot takes anyways, and Drew Magary has the hottest takes.
The way the article is presented here is pretty much a perfect summary description of the state of the world in 2019. A bunch of morons vehemently defending things that either provide them no benefit or actively undermine their very existence.
Skip Bayless would argue that point. Mostly because he seems to like taking a contrary stance, and most certainly with takes so dumb and ludicrously hot it will cause Drew’s face to be frozen like so:
Bayless & Stephen A Smith should learn how to 69 ATM. Or wait, they’ve made a career out of doing that figuratively anyways!
Medium is the absolute worst.
Medium – conversations no one wanted to have the contributor and/or diary entries.
And they want $5/month to read it! I like Drew just fine, but I’m not subscribing to that nonsense just for him. Sorry, Magary.
A), liking the most popular film franchise in human history doesn’t make you a nerd. B), can you really be surprised that a director coming out and saying “hey, those movies you like all suck” is received badly? That’s not a bad thing, or a new one, it’s just that if in the 90s Lumet said T2 sucks there wouldn’t be a place where we can see how every Terminator fan reacts.
“A), liking the most popular film franchise in human history doesn’t make you a nerd”
Not what anyone said, moron.
I mean the headline is literally: “Read this: How nerds became bullying PR stooges for the Marvel monoculture”.
And at this point, what with it being the highest grossing film franchise of all time, it’s not really accurate to describe the Marvel movies as a part of “nerd” culture. They’re just pop culture in general. In fact, the people siding with Scorsese over what constitutes cinema are probably closer to the traditional idea of nerd than Marvel fans.
Bullseye.
But the headline is accurate
Exactly what the title of the AV article implies, needlessly aggressive douche.
If they’re saying people who defend the MCU are nerds for doing so, then yes, it is being said.
You might have a point if he had said anything like it. If a 5-star chef says, “McDonald’s is fine, but it’s not haute cuisine,” and your interpretation of that is, “Hey, he said you’re all a bunch of pigs choking down your swill,” I don’t think the problem is with Scorcese.
Logical fallacies are a fucking scourge in American discourse. You don’t have to agree with Scorsese, but at least get the argument fucking correct. These people misrepresent his point and then waste hours of their lives arguing against something he didn’t even say.
Saying “it’s not cinema, it’s more like a theme park” and “it’s not haute cuisine” aren’t remotely analogous, haute cuisine would be more like an arthouse movie or something.
*Declares someone’s analogy wrong by immediately offering an incorrect analogy*
It’s a vastly better analogy for obvious reasons.
Except you clearly have no fucking clue what haute cuisine is if you think its equivalent is art house cinema.
They’re not 1:1 identical, but in terms of “a specific term for a niche subset of the medium that few people really get into or care about” it works well enough.
Nitpick if you must; my reply would be “so what?” He thinks these superhero movies are like theme parks. So does my brother, which is expressly why he loves them and would never watch Silence or Age of Innocence or 90% of anything else Scorsese has made. My brother likes “a ride”, and that’s what these movies are; they’re rides. And that’s not what Scorsese is interested in. What you continue to fail to point out is the implied disparagement that exists because he has tastes that are different from others.“Hey, you want to go down to a theme park?”“No, I don’t really like those places.”
“What, you think you’re better than me?!??!”
I think saying “they’re not cinema” is some pretty blatant disparagement. If your friend said “Disneyworld isn’t even a theme park” he’d sound like an asshole.
I’d say that the MCU movies are better than fast food and are mostly range from Applebee’s to Longhorn in quality. While I generally don’t like to eat at places like that (I prefer to eat a locally-owned unique restaurants), I do like to go to a chain steakhouse from time to time. Local institution steakhouses are strictly better, but they’re more expensive and involved. Sometimes I just want a cheap steak that I can eat while in a t-shirt and not think too much about it and there’s nothing wrong with that. Even fast food has value!But right now we have legions of people defending Romano’s Macaroni Grill as the pinnacle of Italian dining against a guy who said that chain Italian is fine. It’s fine, but not really true, quality Italian food. It’s really strange and upsetting that we are where we are.
Lovely analysis. And while chain Italian is… fine… I also submit that Jeremy Renner is a breadstick that rolled under the counter and is covered in rancid alfredo sauce, hair, and spiderwebs. But hey, people like what they like!
It comes down to your definition of the word “cinema”. It would be more like if your 5-star chef said “McDonald’s isn’t cuisine”. By putting “haute” in front of it you’re putting a stricter definition on the word. If Scorsese had said “Marvel movies aren’t arthouse cinema” that’s not really a statement that can be debated. Arthouse cinema may be what he meant, but it’s not what he said and “cinema” is a pretty broad term that people can rightly argue because it’s more or less a synonym for “movie”I don’t really have a dog in this fight, but I think both sides are being overly antagonistic and bitey. Marvel, Star Wars, Fast & Furious, James Bond, etc etc etc movies are fun for what they are and I think some of them have more emotional depth than naysayers are willing to accept, I also recognize the problems with the growing monopoly of these movies and how they are beginning to strangle out other avenues of film making. Scorsese is one of the best directors in the history of the medium and he knows what he’s talking about from a certain perspective, but I think fans of Marvel are allowed to be rightly irked when he says they don’t have emotional stakes while also saying he doesn’t and hasn’t watched them.People should listen to him when he’s talking about problems in the industry, but if he’s going to criticize the *content* of the movies he should probably watch the movies.
Way to misrepresent the entire argument.
Why? He’s right, that’s what happening. From Scorcese’s own statements it seems like he hasn’t even seen any of them, and in fact hasn’t watched a film that wasn’t made by a “classic” director in a few decades.
Adults liking superheroes has traditionally been in the realm of nerd shit. This may or may not have changed now that it’s super mainstream, depending how you look at it.
NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRDSSSSSFor all their complaining about being bullied, it seems they were only waiting for the chance to become bullies themselves.
Power corrupts.
Power attracts the corruptible.
Ooh, bad news: we are all corruptible by power. Every last one of us.
Revenge of the Nerds was a warning!
This reminds me of a line I heard in a high art film: “Either you die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain.”
I don’t care for MCU movies per se, but it also drives me nuts that the “other side” of this discussion is a 77 year old man making his fourth or fifth movie about organized crime with the same cast. The conflict is between one type of 70s pop culture and another. It’s certainly annoying that people insist on calling monoculture a subculture. Fantasy stories, superheroes, and video games have been dominant parts of pop culture for 20 years, but people still pretend like it’s the 80s.
Yeah this has been an old man yelling at clouds thing from the beginning.
It’s not like he’s particularly original in yelling ‘Pop culture isn’t art!’ either.
“Yeah this has been an old man yelling at clouds thing from the beginning.”
No, it’s NEVER been that. It was “Old man asked about clouds and his answer sends millennials into a hate-mode, to the surprise of absolutely nobody”.
And then we get millennial insult along with the cloud yelling, another box checked.
It’s nice that Gen X has aged out of being insulted like that: Since I’m solidly middle aged now I’m not ruining the world anymore, it’s those damn kids thinking slightly different things than I did when I was their age!
We Gen-Xers don’t matter. We’re not relevant Whatevs.
It’s not “thinking slightly different things”, it’s being enraged online that an old man dare express his opinion that some movies aren’t his cup of tea. Marvel movie fans don’t have a good track record of coming at these controversies from a calm “just disagreeing” nature…
There was plenty of that kind of thing when I was young too it’s just that, back then, someone saying something online (rightly) didn’t make the national news.
I’m a millenial who like movies where people in capes punch things, shoot lazers from their eyes, and fight clowns.Anyone — from any generation — that can’t tolerate a 77 year old with an opinion that lazer eyes are stupid should be shot into the sun.
Everybody keeps mentioning hate and anger, and I’ve yet to see any, especially here, on that subject.
No, it’s been exactly that. He could have passed on the question. He’s certainly passed on dozens of questions in the past. He wanted to answer the question.
You omit that in your analogy, that said old man has never seen a cloud. That is what has made people seethe.
Labeling everyone you don’t agree with as millennials makes you look like his fellow 77 year old man yelling at the clouds. EVERYONE YOUNGER THAN ME IS A MILLENIAL AND GET OFF MY RETIREMENT HOME LAWN!
The author specifically addresses that point by explaining the difference between a cultural anti-snob from 1985 and these folks today. Today, as said above, the response to Scorsese saying “Pop culture isn’t art” is not to“dismiss Scorsese as an egghead whose tastes were hopelessly effete and out of touch with what real people liked” but instead to say that he is fundamentally incorrect, and that these movies are, in fact, exactly what he says they are not, that these movies are “somehow ‘about’ something other than advancing the Mighty Marvel Metanarrative; and that the failure of that establishment to bend the knee before Thor and Captain America is proof of snobbery or even corruption.”
It’s a very different argument and one that the corporate interests must enjoy immensely.
Ah I got it, I can’t disagree with the core message of Scorcese so I should simply attack his character. That’s debate 101, go straight for the ad hominem, good point.
I guess you could argue that the current debate at least is a real disagreement as to what is “art.” But that idea simply ignores the overall point of the article – that there’s no attempt at reasoned debate. Instead there’s a ganging-up and shouting-down like he made some sort of unforgivably horrific statement that should never be uttered.
>Instead there’s a ganging-up and shouting-down like he made some sort of unforgivably horrific statement that should never be uttered.Oh I think I see it now. The idea being that the internet should have engaged Scorsese in a reasoned debate about the nature of “cinema” rather than railing on him for saying he thinks the MCU isn’t art. I could see that. And yet, I’d argue that it’s hard for “MCU fans” in aggregate to have such a debate, meaningfully, with an avatar for the argument from authority…
Of course he never said pop culture isn’t art.
Except he’s never said that, and he loves genre movies. He just thinks that particular type of movie is trash.
“the “other side” of this discussion is a 77 year old man making his fourth or fifth movie about organized crime with the same cast.”
So you’re as completely full of shit as the rest of the MCU defenders.
I dunno. Seems about right to me.
so Scorcese doesn’t have a history of films involving crime and Robert de Niro?
Is that sentence factually incorrect?
Nerds aren’t really defending Disney; they’re defending a series of movies they like. If that makes them “a volunteer army of PR freelancers for the biggest media companies in the world” then the people stanning for Scorsese and The Irishman are the same thing, just for team Netflix.
Look, I’m also concerned that Disney owns most of American entertainment, but it’s largely a separate issue from whether or not the Marvel movies are any good. Conflating the two doesn’t help anything. It just needlessly alienates a huge portion of the American public by presenting Marvel fandom and opposition to corporate oligarchy as a false binary.
Well you clearly know about false binaries by creating one in your first paragraph.
Nerds aren’t really defending Disney; they’re defending a series of movies they like.But it’s not that simple. If it were simply about one side arguing that superhero movies in general, and marvel movies in particular, ought to be given the same amount of consideration as The Irishman and not simply dismissed out of hand as disposable, I’m all for that.But the problem is that Marvel fandom is rapidly reaching the point where from their perspective it’s not O.K. to say you simply do not care for superhero movies. Or, if you venture that superhero movies are OK, but that there are so many of them that they choke out other types of films, you get hit with an angry, “Look, people like them so quit being such an elitist snob!” (That’s actually probably much nicer than the response you’d get in some quarters.)For example, 50-60 years ago, Westerns were the most popular type of movies around. Dozens came out every year. Some are among the finest films ever made, others are utter rubbish. A great many more were simply forgettable mediocrities. Yet even at the height of their popularity, it was always OK for somebody to just not care very much for them. And there were many, many other types of movies to choose from if you didn’t.In many ways Marvel fandom reminds me of Anthony from the classic Twilight Zone episode It’s a Good Life: It’s not enough that Anthony gets what he wants any time he wants it. YOU have to be happy that Anthony’s getting what he wants, have to like whatever Anthony likes, have to want to watch what Anthony watches, and if you don’t it’s off to the cornfield with you.
But Scorsese didn’t say, “I don’t care for comic book movies.” If he had, he would have elicited a big shrug, as most of us probably didn’t see him as the type. What he said was that comic book movies aren’t artistically valid, and them’s fighting words. He was positing that those who enjoy comic book movies are wrong to do so, because that’s not real cinema. He was doing the bullying.
I’ve seen almost every Marvel movie, and they aren’t real cinema.
Images are shown in rapid succession and convey the illusion of motion. The entry fee has been paid to enter the realm of cinema. What element exists or does not exist that gets them kicked out?
I agree. Movie = cinema. It’s literally a different word for movie. You can’t tell one person “this is art, this is not.” It’s all art. I mean, there’s really bad art, Epic Movie, but it’s still cinema.
By that definition anything ever filmed is cinema, which I’m sure you don’t believe.
Well by the very definition, yeah. So when we’re calling a movie not-cinema, we’re patently wrong. So we’re dealing with another definition of cinema, It’s a definition that baffles me because burnt deep into it seems to be the unspoken qualification, “It can not be fun and/or appealing to watch.”
The Marvel movies have everything. Solid character arcs, deeper meaning than the surface would have you believe, struggle, triumph, relatability. They speak truths. They use cinematography to tell stories and tell them well. And if you really wanna go for Oscar gold, there are moms dying of cancer, class struggles, race relations, female empowerment. But we can’t accept them as “Cinema” because, I guess, people enjoy it en masse?
… I believe the definition is a little more specific than that. A TV show is filmed, but we know it’s not a movie cause it’s a TV show. Porn is not “cinema”, it’s just porn. Me filming my cat doing something funny is not “cinema” or “a movie”. The Marvel movies have nothing but formula, stale plots, ridiculous childish fantasies and boring action scenes overloaded with CGI. What’s so annoying about your posts is not that you like them – that’s obviously fine – but that you can’t conceive that someone might not actually think they’re fun at all. They bore me to fucking tears. And the idea that any movie Scorsese has made, or any movie he’s praised (of which there are hundreds), is not “fun”, is just fucked up and ignorant.
Oh, I’m totally OK with people not enjoying Marvel movies. There’s not a movie on earth that EVERYONE will back. What I’m really trying to poke at here is what the definition of cinema is, and why comic movies don’t qualify somehow. The term “Cinema” has no opinion attached to it. It either is or it isn’t. If Scorsese had simply said, “Comic book movies aren’t good cinema.” then I’d still disagree with him, but he’d be entitled to that opinion. When he says they aren’t Cinema AT ALL, he’s gatekeeping. This is exactly the same as the assertion that certain people aren’t “real” gamers, or (to glance inward) that people who watch the Marvel movie aren’t “real” comic book fans. That provokes more of a response because it’s stated as fact, and the fact isn’t true.
That was just hyperbole. He immediately went on to qualify that statement that clarifying that they’re not “the cinema of…” literally in the next sentence. People getting hung up on that first sentence act like they’ve never talked out loud in their lives. Whatever you say doesn’t always come out exactly as you mean it.
What he said was that comic book movies aren’t artistically valid, and them’s fighting words.
That’s fair enough. One can debate whether a particular work lacks artistic merit. Categorically dismissing a whole genre or medium as lacking it is generally a tough argument to sustain. However, that doesn’t necessarily support the following conclusion:
He was positing that those who enjoy comic book movies are wrong to do so, because that’s not real cinema.
I don’t think that saying a comic book movie is “not real cinema” is equivalent to saying it’s “wrong” to enjoy such movies. I don’t think Scorcese believes that every last piece of entertainment you consume must be “real cinema,” fine art, chock-a-block full of real honest to goodness artistic merit, etc.For example, consider the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland: Sure, there’s certainly a lot of talent and artistry and craftsmanship on display there. But does it fall into the same category as“fine art,” like, say, the works of Rodin? I suspect it doesn’t (though I’m open to arguments otherwise). But even if that’s the case, it doesn’t automatically mean there’s something wrong with enjoying or admiring it.Likewise, while I don’t think people should be scolded for going to ride Indiana Jones instead of appreciating sculpture at their local museum, I don’t feel that all those Rodin casts ought to be supplanted by animatronics depicting pop culture characters, either.
“Bullying.” Jesus Christ.
Eh. Their word, not mine.
>But the problem is that Marvel fandom is rapidly reaching the point where from their perspective it’s not O.K. to say you simply do not care for superhero movies.
In fairness, Scorsese said the MCU is “not cinema” and Coppola characterized the whole thing as “despicable.” These views are a looonnnggg way past, “Super hero movies aren’t my thing,” aren’t they?
I really don’t believe for a second we’d be here if Scorsese had said, “I watched it and it didn’t really do anything for me.”
“But the problem is that Marvel fandom is rapidly reaching the point where from their perspective it’s not O.K. to say you simply do not care for superhero movies”
I don’t really believe this. I’ll accept that there are a small group of people like this, but 1.) the loudest people on the internet are not representative of the general public, or even most people on the internet, and 2.) in any event, that’s not what Scorsese said.
In the broad strokes, I tend to agree with your other points. I’d be insane to defend each individual internet commentor. Everything on here is needless hyperbole. But I think Scorsese set the tone for this debate by announcing not that he didn’t like them, or they were boring or even that he had some philosophical problems with the way they were made, but that they categorically weren’t cinema. He was more erudite than the average youTuber, but that’s pretty explicitly the “preferring your thing to my thing is wrong” attitude that we’re accusing the nerds of. To act like the mean ol’ internet plebs are bullying an internationally renowned director worth $100 million because they aren’t being as polite as they could be when he says baldly provocative things rehashing a very old “high-art/low-art” debate just fundamentally misunderstands how bullying and power dynamics work.
And again, I’m not even really on their side! I like some of the Marvel movies, not others. Scorsese made a couple of salient points about the drawbacks of a huge corporate monolith consuming everything. That’s the real fight here, but painting everyone who is excited about Endgame online as the enemy likely makes the battle unwinnable.
Wasn’t really the point of the article. The point was that, across things like Gamergate and the present MCU “controversy,” proponents of these types of what was formerly derided as “nerd culture” have overreacted to criticism at any level with a crazed level of zeal, as if things like the $50B game industry or MCU are tiny, fragile things that any level of criticism could destroy. In doing so they are performing the same type of PR and image -management that these giant corporations had to pay $$$ for in the past. What they miss is that they are the ascendant mainstream, not a small fringe that needs to be vocally protected. As the author says, “There is no way what Scorsese says about superhero movies imperils their existence and a million ways in which the omnipresence of those films in the marketplace creates barriers preventing the next Scorsese from making her Mean Streets.” In unknowing service of giant corporate interests, these folks are basically attempting to drown out and stifle minority opinion and ideas in the same way that they themselves were drowned out and marginalized for decades.
Well said, I sadly don’t think most people engaging in this discourse understand that level of nuance. The false dichotomy of Scorsese vs. MCU has already taken hold.
If that’s nuance we’re just plain fucked.
You are the worst.
Conflating this MCU-Scorsese controversy with Gamergate is a major false equivalency. Gamergate was as misogynistic as it gets, an organized attack by incels and MRAs against women in gaming in general, and a ruthless campaign against certain women specifically. The MCU-Scorsese controversy is absolutely no that at all.
No one reads the actual linked article, do they?
They’re both examples of nerds acting like trash now that they run pop culture, even if it’s to very different degrees.
As the author says, “There is no way what Scorsese says about superhero movies imperils their existence and a million ways in which the omnipresence of those films in the marketplace creates barriers preventing the next Scorsese from making her Mean Streets.” One ironic angle to this is that when “prestige” directors like Scorcese and Spielberg talk down about Netflix (and other streaming platforms) and how it’s not the same as “real cinema”, they are only making it harder for young, up and coming directors by downplaying probably the best option they have to get their works seen by a lot of people.
This is a fair point. A separate point from the article, but not unfair.
Oh it’s absolutely a separate point, but it’s relevant because they are using the “squeezing out smaller independent artists” argument against the current dominance of the Marvel movies. I wouldn’t have bothered to mention it if the author didn’t take that argument at face value.
What is even more ironic is Marvel is pulling the new generation of Scorceses and teaching them how to make a profitable movie.Smart directors look at Marvel like film school on meth. Jesus, look at what the director of Elf and Made has become. Now he is MONEY!!!
That’s ridiculous.
They’re bemoaning the state of the industry and the loss of a certain filmgoing experience they value when they say that, not criticizing the actual movies being made for Netflix.
I’m intrigued by the notion that people who enjoy a thing should consider whether or not public support for that thing would benefit a corporation before speaking.
How does that work?
Not that they should, just that it worked out that way and has consequences. Doesn’t seem that subtle a difference to me.
So the point being that people who only incidentally benefit a large corporation by expressing an organically-formed, earnest opinion are… wrong to express that opinion? Or that we should give appreciable weight to that incidental benefit in a way that overshadows the motivations of the individual to further some sort of rhetorical analysis?
I guess I really don’t get it. Maybe it’s arguably bad that populism makes it seem OK for people to be offended when experts criticize the things they like?
Exactly! I’ve been a nerd my whole life. Being a nerd used to mean seeking out interesting & unknown things. Now it’s just getting angry if someone prefers Moorcock to GOT
I agree with Scorcese’s opinion. I just don’t think Martin Scorcese is the face of cinematic innovation, and it annoys me that the argument is being framed that way.I actually find parts of this article more debatable than anything Scorcese said. People loudly defending the MCU online are like people who get really into sports. Obnoxious confrontation is part of the experience, and they don’t care if they’re shilling for a corporation that doesn’t care whether they live or die. This version of noisy, aggressive fandom is only baffling if you’re locked into old, old, old stereotypes about media consumption.This antiquated notion of a “nerd” was pretty much dead by the turn of the millennium. Superhero movies have been consistently popular and respected since the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies (even the one people hate had the largest opening weekend in history to that point) and the first few X-Men movies. Fantasy went mainstream with the Lord of the Rings movies, and that was before the full explosion of Harry Potter and Twilight-mania.If we’re talking about the bigger picture, this article misses it, too. Corporate monopolization happens when regulatory bodies fail to prevent it. We notice monopolization more when it’s in things that we enjoy, but the fact that we’re stuck with movies from a massive Disney/Pixar/Lucasfilm/Marvel/Fox conglomerate represents our government’s failure to protect consumers. What we’re seeing right now is the result of steady media consolidation going back to the 80s (at least). It has jack-shit to do with people’s opinions on Twitter (or the New York Times, for that matter).
Yet somehow those movies are incredibly made. Marvel on the other hand is the over-saturation of mediocre culture. It’s reflective of American society overall, mediocre as fuck.
Absolutely. However, I think in this argument Scorcese represents the other side of cultural stagnation – an old man who just spent a lot of money to make a movie about old men, using special effects to let his old-man friends look younger.
To clarify, you’re saying they are both cultural stagnation?
Awwwwww. Someone’s black turtle neck shrunk in the dryer this morning, didn’t it? Or are the patches coming off the elbows on your favorite tweed suit coat? Did they use almond milk in your chai latte and it didn’t meet 100% of your criteria so it’s time to shit on the world?
Scorsese’s argument was a lot more nuanced than “old man yells at cloud”. He was more concerned about the dangers of megacorporations and megafranchises going for the familiar and lucrative instead of taking a chance on innovative filmmakers. The theme park analogy was referring to the way everything in a Marvel movie is tightly controlled and regulated by Disney for maximum profit and audience reach. You are welcome to disagree with that take, but it’s far contextual than the media made it seem.
And before I’m called a “fanboy”, “stan”, or whatever latest internet slang du jour is, I’ve seen a grand total of two of his movies (as compared to seeing 15+ Marvel films).
I gotta ask, if you’ve only seen two Scorsese movies, which two were they? No judgments, but to test my clairvoyance, I am going to guess The Departed and Goodfellas.
Upon further review, I’ve actually seen three: The Departed, Gangs of New York, and Shutter Island (which was so bland I forgot about it completely).
Dammit, one of three. However, hard agree on your assessment of Shutter Island.
If it makes you feel better, you are 33% more clairvoyant than most actual psychics.
You needs ta get on that, son.
I don’t disagree with Scorcese – there are lots of movies that are much more vital and interesting than the MCU. Scorcese made a few of those vital, interesting movies in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. He’s also been a tireless advocate for film preservation, and in recent years he’s helped people see movies that are much more interesting than his own. It’s just that Scorcese incorporates his favorite themes and actors into a CGI-heavy, 3-hour-long, $150,000,000 greatest hits compilation and then talks about the MCU absorbing resources to tell derivative stories without a hint of irony. It’s the lack of irony that I can’t abide.
He makes good points, but I find it disingenuous at worst, clueless at best that he’s calling for more risk in moviemaking while releasing an ungodly expensive spiritual sequel to Goodfellas on Netflix. That’s okay, Scorcese can contain multitudes. I just don’t like the way that he’s personifying the good fight. It reinforces the idea that we need old men to save us from ourselves, when in fact we all need to save ourselves from old men. Anyway, if you’ve never seen the Last Temptation of Christ or the Age of Innocence, those are probably his best movies, but the Age of Innocence is inferior to the book.
I don’t care for MCU movies per se, but it also drives me nuts that the “other side” of this discussion is a 77 year old man making his fourth or fifth movie about organized crime with the same cast.
He made two gangster films within a decade featuring a whopping two actors from the gangster film that he just released. And those were made 25 years ago. So maybe calm that hyperbole down.
You could also probably count The Departed but neither DeNiro nor Pesci are featured in that. Gangs of New York‘s setting makes it so different from the traditional gangster film, that I’m not even going to count that one.
On the whole, films about organized crime make up a very small portion of Scorsese’s filmography. Hitchcock and Kurosawa boxed themselves into niche genre films way more than Scorsese has.
He has basically made films dramatizing the history of white organized crime in the North East.Is that art?
You’re going to talk about Kurosawa that old hack, making ANOTHER samurai movie???
I agree with your general point, and also more specifically that Gangs of New York isn’t a gangster movie even if it has “gangs” in the title, except for the Kurosawa reference. Jidaigeki / samurai movies were not “niche genre films” in Japan at any point during Kurosawa’s lifetime, they were the backbone of the industry. Japanese cinema was literally divided into two types of movies: jidaigeki (ie period films) and gendai (modern) films, and it took a long time before the latter overcame the first. Let’s not forget that feudal Japan ended less than 40 years before Kurosawa was born. It wasn’t some distant past, like the knights of medieval Europe, or some overblown, partly fantasized short-lived period of regional history like the wild west. It was what the country had been for nearly a millenium and just barely ceased to be, and a very large proportion of all Japanese fiction in Kurosawa’s younger years took place in that time period.And of course, Kurosawa made a bunch of movies in more modern settings too, like The Bad Sleep Well or Dodes’kaden or Dreams or Dirty Angel or… actually his filmography is also very diverse.
Mean Streets, Goodfellas, Casino, and the Irishman all star some combo of DeNiro, Keitel, and Pesci. If you stretch a little bit on casting (to include Pacino) and premise, you could potentially lump Cape Fear (a stretch) and Carlito’s Way (less of a stretch) in there. Then there are the movies about organized crime that have different casts, as you point out. That’s a diverse set of movies spanning decades of cinema history made by a master stylist, and there’s something to be said for an artist revisiting the same territory at different stages of their life (though I’m not sure Scorcese has anything different to say about horrible men doing horrible things in 2019 than he did in 1992 or 1976). Stylistically the MCU is a black hole, and it has nothing of note to say about anything (and says it loudly and repeatedly). But Scorcese isn’t the opposite of that. He’s an entrenched part of the Hollywood establishment who gets to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on CGI-heavy movies, many of which revisit the same handful of themes. He’s an old master – he brings something to the table, it’s just not innovation.
Carlito’s Way was De Palma, my dude. And Cape Fear is in no way a gangster movie, as you know yourself.Casting the same actors in many movies is not and has never been considering formulaic or uncreative or what have you until people started looking for ways to say that Scorsese’s filmography is just like those superhero movies he hates, which is a completely silly argument. Filmmaking is a collaborative medium, and all great directors have had people they enjoyed collaborating with repeatedly. That’d be like criticizing a band for keeping the same guitar player and drummer for a few albums.
As someone who loves the MCU and loves almost everything Scorsese has produced, I can say that both camps are exhausting any last shred of goodwill they’ve built.
I have very mixed feelings about Scorcese. Whenever I watch a Scorcese movie, I’m amazed by how well crafted and beautifully directed it is. The performances are always great. But I rarely walk away from his movies with appreciation for anything besides their craft. His best movies are about hateful people being hateful until they die or life neuters them, and they can reflect on how hateful they used to be. His one movie that I love is The Last Temptation of Christ because it comes from a place of genuine faith but equally genuine confusion about what that faith means. Coincidentally or not, it’s also the one where his technique is the least assured (I remember thinking, “Man, Harvey Keitel’s wig looks bad,” and “that must have been an uncomfortable position for Willem Dafoe’s balls”).
TEAM NOBODY 4 EVER
Over 30 years. Marvel has told the same story with the same basic tone for what, 22 movies or more in 10 years?
Movies about the mob were never a cultural monopoly comparable to superhero movies today, that is simply bullshit. There really weren’t that many of them made in the ‘70s. If we’re talking about the US, you’ve got a few classics like the Godfather 1 & 2, Mean Streets, a couple shitty ones like the Valachi Papers, and that’s really about it. At no point was there a structure like the MCU churning out mob movie after mob movie. To even make the argument that this is somehow about ‘70s pop culture VS 2010s pop culture, you’d have to include a very wide range of ‘70s movie – all of New Hollywood, maybe – and then you’d just prove the point that things were, in fact, a lot more varied then.
If you’re lumping Mean Streets and Thor: The Dark World under a single umbrella of “pop culture”, you’re either unwilling or unequipped to engage in the conversation you want to have.
What’s lost here is that its not really that Scorsese is railing against Marvel. Someone asked him a question, and he answered it honestly. He’s not setting out to shit on the thing you like, he’s sharing his opinion. An opinion that is not informed by the same nostalgia and childhood attachments as most Marvel fans.Which then begs the question: why do so many younger people need a 77 year old man to share their opinion about this?
And the third side is a 72 year old man stating that Netflix movies aren’t cinema… which would include the latest of those movies about organized crime with the same cast.
To be fair, Martin Scorcese is kind of a dick.
And save for a small few, his films are almost indistinguishable. Same cast, same character types, lead character narrator of his own story, different setting.
Yeah man, every time I catch Bringing Out the Dead on TV I’m like “damn, is this Hugo or Kundun? I can’t tell!”
I love how people are just trying to stick Marty with all the criticisms of Marvel movies in an attempt to discredit the criticism.Name one MCU sports movie. Name one MCU heretical epic drama. Name one MCU psychedelic epic historical fiction gang movie. Name one MCU movie that follows a lot of the tropes of past MCU movies, but questions everything about those tropes. Name one MCU concert film/documentary.
Well of course the MCU is not going to do those things. It’s a superhero franchise. It’s also the work of many directors, not the filmography of one. That said, the MCU has done a war film, a spy film, a heist movie, a couple of space operas and a psychedelic magic quest.I’m not one of those people saying that Scorsese’s films are all the same (I haven’t seen enough to make that claim), but you’re setting up a bizarre equivalence there.
I guess I can see how you could come to this dumb and wrong opinion if you only think he made Goodfellas and The Wolf of Wall Street. But even if you ignore the large number of documentaries in his 65 director credits (per IMBD) – which you shouldn’t – his films are incredibly distinguishable. Even if you group some them together as playing on the same themes, you got a lot of different themes and a fair number of outliers/one-offs.Casino/Goodfellas/Wolf of Wall Street (maybe add The Irishman/Mean Streets/Departed here to give you some slight benefit of the doubt)Taxi Driver/King of Comedy (maybe Raging Bull)Kundun/Silence/Last Temptation of ChristHugoShutter Island/Cape FearAfter HoursThe Color of MoneyGangs of New York/The AviatorNew York, New York
Man, The Aviator really had an amazing performance from DiCaprio. I very frequently think about the dinner scene with the Hepburns and the way that it plays out, and Hughes’ words “You don’t care about money because you’ve always had it”… pretty relevant to a lot of the conversations that bubble up in today’s culture, too.
I don’t think ‘The Aviator’ is a great film (though it has great performances), but that scene is excellent. You learn so much about Hughes’ personality there. And “You don’t care about money because you’ve always had it” is indeed a very relevant sentiment, now and then.
Save for a small few, Beethoven’s symphonies are almost indistinguishable. Same orchestra, same blend of Classical and Romantic styles, same emphasis on multi movement composition, different motifs.
That Hitchcock was such a hack. Made the same movie 50 times.
someone speaking out against scorsese for making movies with the “same cast, same character types, different setting” while defending the mcu. my god! the irony!
I think the last truly original thing he made was Kundun. Even Shutter Island – which the media buried – was based on a book and starred Leo DeCaprio.
I dunno if it’s bullying but I agree it can be taken a little too far but it’s not like there wasn’t any provocation when someone publicly shits over something you’re passionate about.That’s like someone who shows up to every Yankees game, buys season tickets every year, paints their face, giant foam finger, the works and you go and say “Dude, the Yankees FUCKIN’ SUCK.”
You think that guy is going to take it lying down?
“there wasn’t any provocation when someone publicly shits over something you’re passionate about.
If you think that someone simply talking about something they don’t like is “provocation” then you have severe, severe mental issues.
“That’s like someone who shows up to every Yankees game, buys season tickets every year, paints their face, giant foam finger, the works and you go and say “Dude, the Yankees FUCKIN’ SUCK.””
Jesus, what the actual fuck is wrong with you that you interpret it that way? I hope you aren’t fooling anyone into thinking you’re not a raging psychopath.
Saying on social media that Scorsese can eat a dick isn’t exactly bullying. Honestly, people get so upset about nothing. People who live vicariously through Twitter and Reddit need serious help, on both sides.
People use the term “bullying” wrong way too often.
You need serious help understanding logical fallacies.
Don’t bother responding to that shitheel poster.
If you think that someone simply talking about something they don’t like is “provocation” then you have severe, severe mental issues.THIS. But the mental issues in questions aren’t restricted to Mr. With Cranston. It’s a societal psychosis to which most of us have fallen prey in America – our capitalist system has done such a great job indoctrinating all of us into the idea that our choices, feelings, and preferences are both absolutely essential to who we are as people and the MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD that anything that in any way disputes those assertions is a personal affront that must be disputed and defeated at all costs. It’s the kind of attitude we used to hope that people grew out as they realized that, to paraphrase High Fidelity, what you are like is more important than what you like, but metastasized (with social media as a catalyst) into a culture-spanning cancer.
Yes, this. Exactly so.
People really seem to think, more than ever before, that those talking faces on the TV and internet are all personally addressing them and no one else. It’s really frightening.
Dude, it’s not like that at all!
Stop misrepresenting his argument. If you think that is publicly shitting on something, you’re incredibly thin-skinned and you should probably cut yourself off from society.
Now back to beating this “MCU fandom vs Scorsese” dead horse for clicks after exhausting the Joker film “controversy” yesterday.
I’m glad I skipped all the superhero movies so that I can come to articles like this and post that I havent seen any of them since raimi’s spiderman 2
Great a Medium opinion piece, I’m convinced. This isn’t new see – Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, or even rock/rap/pop artist fandoms etc. People have been doing this forever.
“Great a Medium opinion piece, I’m convinced.”
A weird thing to say when you follow it up with evidence that you didn’t even understand the piece a little teeny tiny bit.
SIDEBAR: I’d love to meet Gargasmell in person so I can ask them what, exactly, the fuck is wrong with them?
Yeah, didn’t we do this toxic fandom bracket/venn diagram already?
Did it stop there because we all just skipped to, “Oh right it’s Rick and Morty?”
I’d say Star Wars fans give R&M ones a run for their money and will always win. Kelly Marie Tran, John Boyega, and Daisy Ridley will agree.
This ain’t a Schrodinger kinda problem. A few things can be simultaneously true:1. Just because it’s a fan property doesn’t mean it’s automatically good.2. It’s entirely possible that something one might see as banal another might see as profound.EXAMPLE: Many of the folks I’ve see lauding Joker as “brilliant” are doing so because that flick was their first exposure to the ideas it presents (however one might feel about the presentation). Sure, those ideas have been better presented elsewhere, long before Joker, but that means fuck-all to someone who first experienced those ideas in Joker.3. preferring arty things to mass-market entertainment is a symptom of elitismNah, preference is fine. Elitism can get fucked. It’s useless.
[W]e’ve somehow arrived at a time where the most financially successful films of the era are defended not by paid professionals…Oh? Is that a thing that used to happen — the most financially successful films of previous eras were “defended” by “paid professionals”? Defended against what/whom, exactly? Or do you just mean that some people like a given movie and some other people don’t? That people sometimes discuss or even argue their differences of opinion? I don’t remember the time when negative opinions about any given film were systematically put down by some merc army of paid defenders, but that hardly sounds like a better idea.
Besides, the “most financially successful films” of earlier eras didn’t need any particular organized “defense”; they were doing just fine what with all the money. And if they needed “defending” in popular discussion, etc., then they also had fans willing to do the job — that’s the very thing made them financially successful.The whole premise of this article is so very, very stupid. Yes, some (or many) people like Marvel films… and also some people find some (or many) “arty” films pretentious or elitist. This is a problem, why? Because some people find Marvel films “emotionally and intellectually engaging,” while others — like Reid McCarter, I’d guess — know better than those “nerds”? That is some elitist bullshit.
Besides, the “most financially successful films” of earlier eras didn’t need any particular organized “defense”; they were doing just fine what with all the money. And neither does Marvel, and yet there is an enormous army of whining man children who rage for days if anyone so much as looks wrong at their precious comic book characters. Which is the whole point.
Right? Like did Disney use to hire PR folks to pen opinion articles or shit, or would they have hired someone to hold a press conference rebutting Scorcese’s comment or something? What the fuck is this guy talking about.
‘Elitism’ and ‘pretension’ are words idiots use to defend their bad taste
From the article:“But what was striking and a little disturbing about Marvel fandom’s
response to Scorsese was the specific hill those fans chose to die on.”As soon as you use the ‘hill to die on’ thing in an article you’ve just told me that you give this kind of thing out sized importance. These are fucking internet discussions: Nobody’s dying on any hill, they’re arguing about nerdy shit.
Nerds make death threats against the “enemies” of nerd culture all the time. I’ve never ever heard of someone making a death threat in defense of the need for adult entertainment.
I’ll fucking murder you if you don’t think we need more adult entertainment. Happy?
It came easily to you because you’re a nerd, though.
“Read this: How nerds became bullying PR stooges for the Marvel monoculture”*gestures to every article on avclub*
Here’s a twist: I like Scorsese movies, and I also don’t give a fuck what he thinks about some of the other movies I like. There’s really no reason I should.Sign in here with a fun gif if you agree.
The comments here pretty much make his point.
This kind of “thinkpiece” is just trucking more dirt in to further muddy the waters. True, a lot of us leapt to defend our choices, and people like Scorsese def have a right to their opinion (except Francis Ford Coppola, because he propped up that pedophile Victor Salva for years, so fuck him). But the truth is that comic movies are barely the threat that they’re being presented as, and conversely, any period of “Cinema” has been rife with trash and treasures in genre pieces AND arty movies.
I personally take umbrage that Scorsese has made those particular arguments to devalue Marvel movies as experiences other than art, when Scorsese has made his fortune and reputation largely on a structurally uniform series flattering depictions of crime, organized crime, criminals, and how awesome that shit is to him. It’s deeply disingenuous, and hypocritical from the perspective that he is obviously playing out his own childhood fixation on his image of Italian American (and Irish American to a lesser degree) organized criminals as local heroes.
Didn’t Scorsese defend Polanski?
Probably? If I wanted to go after him for that, I’d be swamped, because tons of influential directors and actors defended Polansky. People we know who should know better.
FFC very actively propped Victor Salva up, before and after his conviction. I wouldn’t recommend reading too much about Salva, unless you want your soul to be corroded.
I mean just because lots of other people supported this particular pedophile doesn’t make supporting a pedophile any better
How many times does that stupid “Scorsese’s done nothing but gangster movies” argument need to get stomped out before you ignorant / disingenuous idiots keep trotting it out? The vast majority of his filmography doesn’t consist of gangster movies. He really hasn’t made many, they were never a “series”, and he didn’t make his reputation on them. His first real gangster movie came out over a decade after Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. Stop spouting shit that is objectively not true.Your generic and superficial “things have always been the same because there’s always been good and bad movies” argument is just as bad, and does nothing to address the issue of superhero movies taking all the space, etc. etc.Literally none of what you wrote show that you either took a damn minute to think before typing, or actually verified any of your assertions. That’s why I hate you MCU fans in this whole “debate”. All lazy cliches and no actual thinking.
This is where my inherent contempt for people who insist on distinguishing between “high” and “low” art runs into my inherent contempt for people who insist that any form of expertise is elitist and untrustworthy. Is Scorsese wrong for dismissing an entire film genre out of hand? Absolutely. Are MCU fans wrong for pitching an absolute fit when a famous director refused to like their movies as much as they do? You betcha. MCU fans don’t like being told that the things they enjoy have no artistic merit and that they, by extension, are childish and lazy and wrong for having an emotional and intellectual attachment to these movies. That’s an understandable motive! At the same time, critics of the MCU movies don’t like being told that they’re snobbish prigs for being concerned that more original, creatively daring cinema is being crowded out by sequels and genre fare. That’s also an understandable motive!
That makes a lot of sense. You’re clearly in the wrong place.
I would also say that a lot of people justifiably worried about mid-budget cinema being crowded out blame superheros, sequelitis, etc. (and it’s fine to dislike the Marvel movies or the endless reboots of 80s properties!) when their ire ought to be directed at studio consolidation and the dual impact that streaming services and high ticket prices have had on movie attendance. Because fewer people can/do go to the movies than they used to and because there are fewer big movie studios than there used to be, the remaining movie studios are risk averse and only invest in low risk/high reward genres like horror and high risk/high reward genres like superhero films and pre-existing franchises, meaning that there are very few chances for an auteur to be given $80 million for a passion project. So while the decline of mid-budget “artistic” (for lack of a better term) cinema is caused by the same phenomena as the rise of superhero movies, the two trends do not have a causal relationship with each other.
I think ultimately streaming is the biggest culprit. the home DVD market was wiped out, and streaming doesn’t give movies the same revenue stream to turn a flop into a quiet success a few years after launch, the way a movie like Fight Club could eventually earn a profit. Studios are probably earning more money from streaming, but individual mid-size movies are not, and so, they just don’t get made much anymore.
Bless you for making one of the few posts on this discussion that I feel like I can unreservedly support.
Good take. The thing I find most annoying is the feigned surprise some display in reaction to the understandable motives, and the odd intellectual dishonesty at play when either side on this issue is critiqued for the attitude causing those reactions.If you don’t accuse the other side of having no value, they might be more receptive to your perspective.
shown by MCU defenders’ claim that their favorite movies are truly emotionally and intellectually engaging
Claim? So – again – the basic argument is that they are not and everyone who thinks so, everyone who likes them, is wrong.The Scorsese faction by claiming Marvel movie are not cinema., It propagates and elitist, patronizing view of movies, a world in which a few artistes deiced what is worthy and what is not and in which entertainment.You cannot blame people defending movies they like for a seismic shift when you begin an argument with – “The movies you like aren’t worth to be called cinema!” That argument has been tried and tested invalid on the works of Mary Shelly, Jules Vernes and Stephen King. Not everything has to be great art and just because something doesn’t live up to your high and mighty standards doesn’t mean it has no right to be.
Hear, hear. Emotional engagement is an entirely subjective thing. There are people who will feel nothing looking at Van Gogh’s sunflowers, but be moved to tears by a simple watercolour of a sunset done by nobody famous – and that’s their honest experience. There’s no way you can say it’s wrong. As for intellectual engagement, anything you can think about can engage your intellect.There are criticisms to be leveled at my beloved MCU: the films are formulaic, they are definitely part of a corporate strategy to make money, they do take up a lot of oxygen. But to deny people’s capacity to engage with them on emotional and intellectual levels, and to deny them a place in their own medium, is snobbery. It is gatekeeping. And we should be better than that.
I’ve definitely seen a shift in the Marvel culture similar to the worshiping that goes on at Apple and Tesla. “This is the best and anyone who doesn’t think so is stupid.”
In this case it’s more like “This has merit, and anyone who doesn’t think so is stupid.”
As much as the “nerds” being upset by Scorcese’s comments was overblown, so is all this sky-is-falling handwringing about “what it means” that [*checks notes*] big budget blockbusters are popular is even more so. There’s more than a whiff of elitism to the “people really like this stuff???” reactions to people saying that they thought Black Panther was more than just a superhero movie to them.Who cares? Big corporations are gonna do bad shit regardless of whether or not someone on Twitter says Endgame made them cry. The world is on fire and people are retreating to escapist blockbuster fantasies where people with amazing powers “save the world.” It’s not THAT hard to understand. A lot of this is pundits and filmmakers who don’t like superheroes (which is understandable! It’s a weird and arguably stupid genre!) trying to make their popularity seem vaguely sinister somehow. I grew up reading Marvel comics, and I like the movies. It’s fun to see this stuff on the big screen! The movies are pretty well made and fun! I don’t fawn over them like some do, but I enjoy them. But their popularity is not some grim sign of the End Times for Culture, and framing people who enjoy them as mouthbreathing dumb sheep just reinforces the cultural elitism that started this stupid argument to begin with. People being mad that other people don’t like (or dislike) the thing that they like (or dislike) is basically 90% of internet discussion.
I try to watch movies I like. I try to not watch movies I don’t like. I don’t care who doesn’t like the movies I like. I don’t care who likes the movies I don’t like.
That article is a load of horseshit.I mean sure, it’s probably true if some Marvel fanboys got pretty damn assholish in defending their thing. But if you want to criticize their behaviour, criticize their behaviour. You don’t fight a bully by egging his house, which will have to be cleaned up by his mother who’s having a hard enough time raising a son who’s a bully.At the risk of torturing another analogy, Alex Pappademas is like the nerd in highschool who’s intensely jealous of the football jock, even though the jock has never so much as said an unkind word to him, and while the jock scores touchdowns and bangs the head cheerleader, he snarks at everybody within earshot about the barbarism of American football and what a slut the cheerleader is and how sad the jock must be that he can’t live the life of the mind.
Scores is an old school nerd who grew up sickly, and watched movies instead of playing outside.
This article actually pitches Martin Fucking Scorcese as David in the David vs. Goliath movie picture business. Yup, that poor li’l Scorcese, can’t catch a break or get his movies made. Really fighting the good fight on behalf of the neglected little guy there.
Oh hey great an entire AV Club Comments section showing up to prove the point of the article!
I wonder what the overlap is between the people who think Joker is an amazing movie and the people who think Scorsese should be fired into the sun for ragging on Marvel films.
It’s ironic that this discussion thread is doing the exact thing this article discusses.
So much silliness in this thesis. The internet has always been, and probably always will be, mainly just braying jackasses yelling their opinions at each other and bullying each other, especially over pop culture. The issue here is that nerd culture is now normie culture because of a growing infantilization of pop culture with each passing generation and an obsession with nostalgia, while the nerds are the people pushing small art house films,original content and embracing of adult themes in entertainment. This shift occurred decades ago, but the internet has exacerbated it. There’s really always been people complaining about what’s popular as opposed to what’s “good”It’s also kind of silly for most pop culture websites to even bother trying to tsk tsk corporate entities who have monopolized entertainment and the fans that eat it up when the rest of the time you’re running 10 Marvel/Star Wars stories a day because it’s what generates the money. These sites are just Marvel lapdogs sucking at the teat of corporations too.
I agree with the general idea, but this is hardly a phenomenon unique to Marvel fans. In fact, prior to the Scorsese kerfuffle, I’d say this type of behavior was much more typical of DC fans, who took the fact that their movies were generally worse received than MCU flicks as a personal affront and/or a sign of a vast conspiracy of people who were, for some reason, attempting to kiss up to Disney at all costs. As someone who has, on occasion, reviewed films professionally, I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve been called a “Marvel shill” because I really didn’t like Justice League or Aquaman. I want to shake these people until they realize that which multi-billion dollar global conglomerate makes more money on their mass-market entertainment product is not something in which any of us ought to have that deep a level of personal investment.Then again, ultimately, this is all a symptom of said multi-billion dollar global conglomerates’ super-villianous ability to cultivate, weaponize, and capitalize on nerd passion in a way that doesn’t even tip the audience off to the way in which it’s being manipulated. So, you know, great job, there.
There’s enough room in the world of cinema for both types, along with myriad others, to co-exist. Not everyone wants to go watch a 2-3 hour biopic about crime set 50 years ago. Now everyone wants to go see a non-stop action film featuring idealized characters clad in spandex wielding otherworldly abilities and weapons.
Same with many of genres of film, romance, comedy, horror, etc. The fact is that with technology filmmaking has advanced to the point that even the most amateur writer/director working out of their basement can create a film and get it screened. This is a win for the medium regardless of what you consider to be “legitimate film” or not.
Scorsese is going to get his nominations and possibly more trophies from Hollywood’s most exclusive club of self-back patters. Feige probably not, other than for technical effects. If you want to have a beef about what legitimate film qualifies as don’t target the multi-million dollar blockbusters that grab the headlines of the arts page but try looking up anything Pauly Shore was featured in on IMDB.
The whole Marvel/Scorsese thing is more easily understood when you realise that approximately 95% of all online film criticism, professional or amateur, is a battle between people who watch nothing but Marvel and Star Wars, whose tastes stopped evolving at 15 and who are vaguely aware of that, and people who watch nothing but Tarantino and Scorsese, whose tastes ALSO stopped evolving at 15, but who are under the delusion that they are intellectual sophisticates.
…and then there’s the worst kind of pretentious douchebag, the one who makes sure to shit on each side of every debate to show his superiority to everyone involved.
Your false equivalency is noted.
The whole Marvel/Scorsese thing is more easily understood when you realise that approximately 95% of all online film criticism, professional or amateur, is a battle between people who watch nothing but Marvel and Star Wars, whose tastes stopped evolving at 15 and who are vaguely aware of that, and people who watch nothing but Tarantino and Scorsese, whose tastes ALSO stopped evolving at 15, but who are under the delusion that they are intellectual sophisticates.
I have no problem with the criticism of the dominance of these films and most are mostly by the numbers, but to state or imply these every superhero films is devoid of “human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being” or “revelation, mystery, or genuine emotional danger” is also wrong. The fact that it is a superhero film does not preclude these elements. Having said that, most are by the numbers action hero flicks.
For the 10,000th time, no one cares that Scorsese doesn’t like Marvel movies. If he had said, “I tried, but I don’t like them – they don’t speak to me at all,” it would have been a story for about seven minutes and we would have moved on to whatever racist nonsense Trump had just tweeted.People responded angrily to Scorsese’s statement that “Marvel movies aren’t cinema,” which is functionally indistinguishable from “Marvel movies aren’t movies.” You should always look askance when someone – even someone as brilliant and accomplished as Martin Scorsese – attempts to take a perfectly reasonable statement of personal preference and gave it a patina of artistic truth. It’s invariably an attempt to draw artistic boundaries in such a way as to conveniently exclude the thing the person hates. So “I don’t like Marvel movies” becomes “Marvel movies aren’t movies.” “I don’t like videogames” becomes “Videogames can’t be art.” “I don’t like Stephen King” becomes “Stephen King isn’t literature.” It’s a shuck run by someone with an MFA.It’s difficult, I know, for certain critics to understand that – and why – fans are actually emotionally invested in Marvel movies and Marvel characters, which is why we’re now in the oh-so-fun “backlash to the backlash” stage of any internet controversy. And the core proposition of that stage is that superhero movies are bad, people who like superhero movies are bad and smacking around people who like superhero movies is, thus, good.And look, is this particularly harmful? Not really – Marvel movies are obviously super-successful and Disney is richer than most nations. But Marvel fans don’t respond angrily to these sorts of stories because they’re super-protective of Disney – they respond angrily because the stories involve characters and movies that they love, which is the foundation of any sort of artistic appreciation. “The movies you like are successful, therefore you should sit quietly while people insult you” isn’t a compelling argument.Also: let’s be clear that Scorsese hasn’t suffered from this whole kerfuffle. I’m still looking forward to seeing The Irishman. No one’s trying to get Netflix to cancel the movie. No one’s demanding that Amazon stop selling Goodfellas on Blu-Ray. A bunch of people are loudly saying that Scorsese is wrong about something. It’s not the end of the world.
Bottom line:
People don’t like hearing negative remarks about things they enjoy. I mean, sure, indulge in social theories about populism or whatever- there are certainly valid things to say in that space- but a lot of normal people who really enjoy the MCU and aren’t up on Scorsese were just kinda butt-hurt about what they perceived as some effete jerk saying their favorite action movie was dumb.
Based on the reception of The Irishman, I hardly think you could call Scorcese ‘effete’. He’s still producing good work.
Remember when the AV Club didn’t have articles, highlighting slightly different variations of the same thing 80,000 fucking times?
Nerd culture (superheroes, etc.) is now the dominant thing in film, but the people really into it still have a chip on their shoulder, acting as if they’re still a persecuted minority with a niche interest, rather than the big boys on the block that they are.And if you’re trying to paint Scorsese as a hack who only makes Goodfellas over and over, you’re showing your desperation by reaching for a criticism that isn’t even remotely true. The man has made a diverse range of mostly good-to-great fiction and documentary films since the 70s (and somehow STILL making good and even great films), produced numerous independent films for other filmmakers, and has championed film restoration with The Film Foundation. Whether or not you share his opinion of Marvel films themselves (putting aside the implications of their dominance for the industry overall, about which he is correct), Scorsese is still one of the most vital voices in cinema. It’s like you secretly crave the stamp of approval from someone like him, but when you don’t get it you try to paint him as irrelevant or wrongheaded, but you pretend not to care what he thinks.
every mcu fanboy decrying scorsese as a hack who makes the same film over and over fundamentally has no sense of irony.
Maybe when the jocks decided Marvel was cool, they became bullies about it.
wow I’m shocked that the uhhh “adults” who comment on this blog don’t like this piece!!
One of the main differences then and now is the media, increasingly obsessed with fast revenue and short attention spans, shaping the coverage to get more controversy and conflict. How many times have we seen articles and videos here, there, and everywhere regurgitating the Last Jedi fan wars? I can’t remember how many times I saw articles here dredging up the Game of Thrones petition. Then there is the general toxicity and fortress-building mentality of social media. There was lots of talk about the “nerds” who lashed out at Scorsese, yet some of the Scorsese fans who would, in this mindset, be calm and rational hurled derision and abuse at a fan just for suggesting ways to watch The Irishman in blocks of time rather than one long sitting. There’s also the incredibly ugly and ever-growing stan culture. I was on Twitter a little earlier and saw people going at certain Star Wars actors for being happy JJ Abrams returned for the new Star Wars movie or, in John Boyega’s case, for complaining about the writing for his character in Last Jedi. The sheer amount of vitriol toward Boyega for saying fairly mild criticisms and the suggestions that he had somehow betrayed Rian Johnson were mindboggling. I saw tweets saying “stan Rian Johnson, Kelly Marie Tran and Adam Driver.” So essentially you should only care about the director and two cast members who are deemed loyal enough…and, what, to hell with everyone else? How does it work? Sometimes I think we know too much now about movies and pop culture, to the point where we become overinvolved and need to make it some kind of battle for us, when really other than whether we choose to see the movie (or whatever variation), it has little to do with us. I’m not saying we should go back to the old Hollywood days (although “stan George Cukor, Vivien Leigh and Olivia De Havilland for clear skin” doesn’t sound like the worst way to spend your time…), but where has perspective gone? I know I’m as guilty of this as anybody, but it just feels like people spend more and more time now looking for outrage and attention and conflict above all else.
Poptimism goes to the movies.
It’s all an outrage industrial complex that really only effects the incredibly small amount of people that are extremely online.I’d say something like 80%, maybe more, of Americans (and FAR more globally) don’t give a shit, or even know about, Martin Scorcese’s opinion on the dumb baby book movies they’ll all go buy a ticket to anyway cause they have bright colors and pretty people kissing.
I really want to read this, and I’ll probably agree with it, but I’ve read so many Medium articles that it’s paywalled. Anyone got a link?I remember, pre-MCU, Marvel fans used to be called Marvel Zombies. It used to be a joke!
I keep remembering an article in GQ 8 years ago called “The Day the Movies Died” by Mark Harris. It pretty much sums up what Pappademas says now: Movies are being run by the marketers, and not the directors. Worth a read.
https://www.gq.com/story/the-day-the-movies-died-mark-harris
“Having watched fans (and MCU actors and execs) aggressively defend these enormously successful films’ good names against the negative opinions of completely unqualified “directors” like Martin Scorsese”.Okay, this is still one of the things that bothers me the most. Scorsese expressed his opinion, which is a fine thing. I vehemently disagree with the part of his opinion that is that Marvel films aren’t cinema, but that’s just his opinion versus mine. The problem I have is the idea that Scorsese’s point of view carries more weight because he’s a director. That’s not how opinions on art and artistic value work.If Scorsese rates one post-production company’s work over another, then I’ll listen to him; he’s hired post-production companies, and I have not. He’ll have a more informed viewpoint than me. But when it comes to engaging with art and appreciating what it does, I believe we all come to this as equals, and the fact that he has directed films doesn’t give him any more authority over what is stimulating and emotionally hefty than me. When he makes a claim that a certain of genre isn’t “cinema”, I feel within my rights to challenge that, no matter how many directing credits he has.
Any bets on if the same marketing strategy used for Popeye’s chicken sandwich vs CFA is being employed to drum up the same intrigue on Scorsese/MCU films?
(and MCU actors and execs) aggressively defend these enormously successful films’ good names against the negative opinions of completely unqualified “directors” like Martin ScorseseWell Reid, you’ve set your bait. Enjoy your clicks.
Well Reid, I’ll tell you like I’ve told countless other tools who’ve proclaimed comic books are a stupid waste of time while I was growing up; go screw yourself prick.