1. It’s interesting that Scorcese wants to pump up art so much, but in the name of art for one of his more recent films, Silence (which was a work of art), he rode on the back of other people’s wealth and drove it into the ground. Movies, imo, have a moral duty to not waste their patron’s dollars (both the viewing population, and the ones funding the films)–even MORE of a moral duty than to be good art. Superhero movies exist because A. people like watching them, and B. they give money back to the investors. It’s foolish to always weigh art as more valuable than the business because bad business ruins peoples lives and the art is irrevocably connected to the business. You have to walk the balance. Do the best art you can while running a healthy business that respects people’s investments and lives. Both sides are important. Some movies focus more on the business side. That’s perfectly fine. Some movies focus more on the art, and so long as they’re not doing so with a bloated budget that will force a studio into bankruptcy, that’s perfectly fine too. All the artiste purism is a load of bologna for old guys with pumped up bravados and inflated senses of self-importance. There’s certainly merit in the superhero movies. Lots of people work really hard on them. That’s legitimate and should be praised. It’s good to criticize where things fall short, of course, but sometimes people’s attitudes about it just get sideways. Hope that makes sense.

  2. Travis Perry says:

    I think one of the things that may bother Scorsese is he seems to have an elitist view of art–and superhero movies are SO popular. To such an extent that Scorsese represents a tiny, tiny minority would would even dare to criticize superhero tales.

    His voice is such a small one in the overwhelming chorus of love for superhero stories that we needn’t worry about his remarks very much. He isn’t going to make much of a difference.

    If he is able to increase the total number of movies not based on superheroes by even five percent, I’d be surprised. And if he does manage to influence a tiny increase in non-superhero stories, so what? There are some great speculative fiction stories out there without any superheroes at all. Great films like Gattica, the original Alien, and many others.

    As for myself, I’ve enjoyed superhero stories at times and think they can be great. They can be also be awful (RE; Suicide Squad and sadly, many others) and I tend to think maybe there doesn’t need to be as many of them as there actually are…

What do you think?