It’s been almost two years since Martin Scorsese blasted superhero cinema, opening up a huge can of worms that led to an intense social media discourse, with countless stars and filmmakers to have worked in the genre over the years weighing in with their opinions and often criticisms of the cinema legend.
Scorsese’s staunchest supporter was fellow veteran Francis Ford Coppola, lending an air of ‘old man yells at cloud’ to the entire endeavor, but it’s the conversation that just won’t go away. Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad‘s James Gunn was trending after comments he made in a recent podcast interview, where he said the Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and The Departed director “kept coming out against Marvel so that he could get press for his movie”, namely Netflix’s mega budget prestige drama The Irishman.
Since going viral, Gunn has taken to social media and clarified that he wasn’t blasting Scorsese in the slightest, and even praised the 78 year-old for his contributions to the industry over the decades, as you can see below.
Both sides of the argument have plenty of merit, because nobody’s going to deny that many of the comic book adaptations to hit the big screen on a regular basis are mediocre if not downright terrible, but the critical acclaim received by countless titles including Best Picture nominees Black Panther and Joker, Avengers: Endgame and Gunn’s own The Suicide Squad more than prove that they’re not just hollow enterprises designed to make money at the expense of creative and artistic merit. Scorsese made his statement in October 2019, so perhaps we should all just move on at this point and forget about it.
