Legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese may as well have kicked the hornet’s nest when he revealed his lowly opinions of Marvel Studios productions to Empire Magazine.
In a nutshell, Scorsese dismissed the MCU’s output as “theme park” movies – movies that are a far cry from the emotional nuance of cinema. His words, not ours.
Sure enough, it didn’t take long for the Internet to rebuke Scorsese’s comments, while some of Marvel’s cast and crew – namely Karen Gillan and James Gunn – also voiced their support of all things Marvel. You can go ahead and add Kevin Smith’s name to that growing list, too, given the writer-producer-director sat down with Yahoo! recently to promote this month’s Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.
Asked straight-up about his own thoughts on the Scorsese criticism, Smith replied as so:
Martin Scorsese has made such wonderful movies. He’s been doing the job since I was a kid. I’m not going to sit and be like, ‘I know better than him.’ That’s his feelings. I would say this, and I’m not countering Mr. Scorsese: Martin Scorsese made perhaps the biggest superhero movie ever made. The Last Temptation of Christ is a superhero movie,” Smith said. “And I’m not diminishing Jesus by any stretch of the imagination. But who is Jesus if not a superhero?
Smith’s response was much more diplomatic than, say, Samuel L. Jackson’s, as the former continued by highlighting one simple fact: Martin Scorsese likely doesn’t have the same level of emotional attachment to Marvel Comics and the subsequent films, so it’s really not all that surprising to learn that he views them as inferior.
From the outside looking in, the MCU is all blockbuster spectacle and superheroes in tights (or suits of armor), particularly now that the franchise has grown so big in size and stature.
Kevin Smith added:
Martin Scorsese probably doesn’t have the emotional attachment to those movies that I do. When he sees those movies, he’s like, ‘That’s a theme park.’ When I see those movies, that is the closest I get to being with my dad at a movie theater again. I respect his opinion, but I don’t think he has the same emotional attachment that a lot of us have. It’s the men and the women that we relate to in the movie, not the ‘super’ part.
Kevin Smith and Co. are currently working on the Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, while plans are now (finally) in place for Clerks 3. Scorsese, on the other hand, has been busy helming The Irishman, Netflix’s digitized crime epic due for release later this month.
