Robert De Niro Slams Marvel’s De-Aging Effects For Being Cartoony

It seems that you can’t turn around these days without a Hollywood legend bashing Marvel Studios. After Martin Scorsese repeatedly criticized the studio’s output for not really being cinema at all, his frequent collaborator and acting icon Robert De Niro has also weighed in with his thoughts on the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

De Niro’s comments came as part of a discussion on the extensive de-aging effects used on his and Scorsese’s upcoming The Irishman, which expensively and not entirely convincingly depicts the Raging Bull star, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci as much younger men. Marvel Studios have been at the forefront of using this kind of CGI in their more recent output, and have managed to make it a damn sight better than the likes of Tron: Legacy’s terrifying depiction of a young Jeff Bridges, but De Niro doesn’t seem convinced.

“The technological stuff can only go so far. It’s not going to change other things. If it does, to such a point it becomes something that is not what a person is, what a human is. It can be another type of entertainment, like comic strip things, Marvel. The comic book character-type things, cartoony stuff.”

While The Irishman is scoring largely positive reviews and is shaping up to be a major awards contender, one of the biggest criticisms of the movie has been how inconsistent the de-aging technology is throughout the three-hour runtime. Marvel’s use of the latest CGI trend hasn’t been a total success, either, but Samuel L. Jackson’s young Nick Fury in Captain Marvel is arguably the best use of de-aging that’s been seen yet. Obviously, as the years go on the technology will ultimately be perfected, but even the recent Gemini Man has shown that it can still frequently slip back into uncanny valley territory.

In any case, maybe someone at Marvel Studios has inadvertently upset a section of Hollywood’s elite after De Niro, Scorsese, and for some reason Jennifer Aniston, have all been vocally critical of the industry’s biggest cash cow. At this point, we’re curious to see who speaks up next.