- Martin Scorsese doubled down on his comments about Marvel movies from earlier this month, when he said they were “not cinema.”
- Scorsese compared movie theaters to “amusement parks” over the weekend and said they need to “step up and show films that are narrative films.”
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Martin Scorsese, the acclaimed director of “Goodfellas” and the upcoming Netflix movie “The Irishman,” isn’t backing down from his Marvel criticism. The filmmaker doubled down on his comments from earlier this month at the BFI London Film Festival over the weekend.
“Theaters have become amusement parks,” Scorsese said during BAFTA’s annual David Lean lecture on Saturday. “That is all fine and good but don’t invade everything else in that sense,” he said. “That is fine and good for those who enjoy that type of film and, by the way, knowing what goes into them now, I admire what they do. It’s not my kind of thing, it simply is not. It’s creating another kind of audience that thinks cinema is that.”
READ MORE: Martin Scorsese, who trashed Marvel movies as ‘not cinema,’ reportedly considered directing ‘Joker’
He repeated the sentiment on Sunday.
"It's not cinema, it's something else," Scorsese said during a press conference. "We shouldn't be invaded by it. We need cinemas to step up and show films that are narrative films."
Scorsese expressed similar concerns to Empire Magazine earlier this month, when he compared Marvel movies to theme parks and said they were not cinema.
"I don't see them," Scorsese told Empire. "I tried, you know? But that's not cinema. 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."
"The Irishman" will hit select theaters on November 1 in New York and Los Angeles before expanding, and will be available to stream on Netflix on November 27.
