# Martin Scorsese: I Said Marvel Movies Aren’t Cinema. Let Me Explain. (NYT)



## JohnG (Nov 4, 2019)

*Martin Scorsese: I Said Marvel Movies Aren’t Cinema. Let Me Explain.*
By Martin Scorsese
Nov. 4, 2019, 7:00 p.m. ET

When I was in England in early October, I gave an interview to Empire magazine. I was asked a question about Marvel movies. I answered it. I said that I’ve tried to watch a few of them and that they’re not for me, that they seem to me to be closer to theme parks than they are to movies as I’ve known and loved them throughout my life, and that in the end, I don’t think they’re cinema.

Some people seem to have seized on the last part of my answer as insulting, or as evidence of hatred for Marvel on my part. If anyone is intent on characterizing my words in that light, there’s nothing I can do to stand in the way.

Many franchise films are made by people of considerable talent and artistry. You can see it on the screen. The fact that the films themselves don’t interest me is a matter of personal taste and temperament. I know that if I were younger, if I’d come of age at a later time, I might have been excited by these pictures and maybe even wanted to make one myself. But I grew up when I did and I developed a sense of movies — of what they were and what they could be — that was as far from the Marvel universe as we on Earth are from Alpha Centauri.

For me, for the filmmakers I came to love and respect, for my friends who started making movies around the same time that I did, cinema was about revelation — aesthetic, emotional and spiritual revelation. It was about characters — the complexity of people and their contradictory and sometimes paradoxical natures, the way they can hurt one another and love one another and suddenly come face to face with themselves. 
It was about confronting the unexpected on the screen and in the life it dramatized and interpreted, and enlarging the sense of what was possible in the art form.

And that was the key for us: it was an _art form_. There was some debate about that at the time, so we stood up for cinema as an equal to literature or music or dance. And we came to understand that the art could be found in many different places and in just as many forms — in “The Steel Helmet”by Sam Fuller and “Persona” by Ingmar Bergman, in “It’s Always Fair Weather” by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly and “Scorpio Rising” by Kenneth Anger, in “Vivre Sa Vie” by Jean-Luc Godard and “The Killers” by Don Siegel.

Or in the films of Alfred Hitchcock — I suppose you could say that Hitchcock was his own franchise. Or that he was _our _franchise. Every new Hitchcock picture was an event. To be in a packed house in one of the old theaters watching “Rear Window” was an extraordinary experience: It was an event created by the chemistry between the audience and the picture itself, and it was electrifying.

And in a way, certain Hitchcock films were also like theme parks. I’m thinking of “Strangers on a Train,” in which the climax takes place on a merry-go-round at a real amusement park, and “Psycho,” which I saw at a midnight show on its opening day, an experience I will never forget. People went to be surprised and thrilled, and they weren’t disappointed. 

Sixty or 70 years later, we’re still watching those pictures and marveling at them. But is it the thrills and the shocks that we keep going back to? I don’t think so. The set pieces in “North by Northwest” are stunning, but they would be nothing more than a succession of dynamic and elegant compositions and cuts without the painful emotions at the center of the story or the absolute _lostness_ of Cary Grant’s character. 
The climax of “Strangers on a Train” is a feat, but it’s the interplay between the two principal characters and Robert Walker’s profoundly unsettling performance that resonate now.

Some say that Hitchcock’s pictures had a sameness to them, and perhaps that’s true — Hitchcock himself wondered about it. But the sameness of today’s franchise pictures is something else again. Many of the elements that define cinema as I know it are there in Marvel pictures. What’s not there is revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk. The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes. 

They are sequels in name but they are remakes in spirit, and everything in them is officially sanctioned because it can’t really be any other way. That’s the nature of modern film franchises: market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, revetted and remodified until they’re ready for consumption.

Another way of putting it would be that they are everything that the films of Paul Thomas Anderson or Claire Denis or Spike Lee or Ari Aster or Kathryn Bigelow or Wes Anderson are _not_. When I watch a movie by any of those filmmakers, I know I’m going to see something absolutely new and be taken to unexpected and maybe even unnameable areas of experience. My sense of what is possible in telling stories with moving images and sounds is going to be expanded.

So, you might ask, what’s my problem? Why not just let superhero films and other franchise films be? The reason is simple. In many places around this country and around the world, franchise films are now your primary choice if you want to see something on the big screen. It’s a perilous time in film exhibition, and there are fewer independent theaters than ever. The equation has flipped and streaming has become the primary delivery system. Still, I don’t know a single filmmaker who doesn’t want to design films for the big screen, to be projected before audiences in theaters. 

That includes me, and I’m speaking as someone who just completed a picture for Netflix. It, and it alone, allowed us to make “The Irishman” the way we needed to, and for that I’ll always be thankful. We have a theatrical window, which is great. Would I like the picture to play on more big screens for longer periods of time? Of course I would. But no matter whom you make your movie with, the fact is that the screens in most multiplexes are crowded with franchise pictures. 

And if you’re going to tell me that it’s simply a matter of supply and demand and giving the people what they want, I’m going to disagree. It’s a chicken-and-egg issue. If people are given only one kind of thing and endlessly sold only one kind of thing, of course they’re going to want more of that one kind of thing. 

But, you might argue, can’t they just go home and watch anything else they want on Netflix or iTunes or Hulu? Sure — anywhere but on the big screen, where the filmmaker intended her or his picture to be seen.

In the past 20 years, as we all know, the movie business has changed on all fronts. But the most ominous change has happened stealthily and under cover of night: the gradual but steady elimination of risk. Many films today are perfect products manufactured for immediate consumption. Many of them are well made by teams of talented individuals. All the same, they lack something essential to cinema: the unifying vision of an individual artist. Because, of course, the individual artist is the riskiest factor of all.
I’m certainly not implying that movies should be a subsidized art form, or that they ever were. When the Hollywood studio system was still alive and well, the tension between the artists and the people who ran the business was constant and intense, but it was a _productive_ tension that gave us some of the greatest films ever made — in the words of Bob Dylan, the best of them were “heroic and visionary.” 
Today, that tension is gone, and there are some in the business with absolute indifference to the very question of art and an attitude toward the history of cinema that is both dismissive _and_ proprietary — a lethal combination. The situation, sadly, is that we now have two separate fields: There’s worldwide audiovisual entertainment, and there’s cinema. They still overlap from time to time, but that’s becoming increasingly rare. And I fear that the financial dominance of one is being used to marginalize and even belittle the existence of the other. 
For anyone who dreams of making movies or who is just starting out, the situation at this moment is brutal and inhospitable to art. And the act of simply writing those words fills me with terrible sadness.

Martin Scorsese is an Academy Award-winning director, writer and producer. His new film is “The Irishman.” 
_The Times is committed to publishing __a diversity of letters__ to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some __tips__. And here’s our email: __[email protected]__.
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## DerSiebteRabe (Nov 4, 2019)

JohnG said:


> But, you might argue, can’t they just go home and watch anything else they want on Netflix or iTunes or Hulu? Sure — anywhere but on the big screen, where the filmmaker intended her or his picture to be seen.



The flaw with his argument is the assumption that the film-maker inherently wants what they make to be seen on the big screen.

I mean, no doubt that's true for a lot, but especially with the success of television series like Game of Thrones, there's an obvious appeal growing for longer stories that can be told without rigid time constraints of traditional TV and film. I don't have any exact numbers, but I'd bet that there's a considerable portion of filmmakers today more interested in having a successful web series or film. It's also a lot more steady work if you have a successful show.

I think most film-makers outside of Hollywood are just hoping someone will _watch_ what they make at all. Be that on a tablet or the big screen.

It's like I mean, I'd prefer people listen to my music on the most badass sound systems known to man, but if someone listens to it with $5 earbuds with their phone on the train, I count it as a win.


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## Loïc D (Nov 5, 2019)

Off-topic :
While I was reading - and the text is good indeed - I couldn’t help trying to replace “movie” by “football (soccer)”.


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## oboemaroni (Nov 5, 2019)

DerSiebteRabe said:


> The flaw with his argument is the assumption that the film-maker inherently wants what they make to be seen on the big screen.
> 
> I mean, no doubt that's true for a lot, but especially with the success of television series like Game of Thrones, there's an obvious appeal growing for longer stories that can be told without rigid time constraints of traditional TV and film. I don't have any exact numbers, but I'd bet that there's a considerable portion of filmmakers today more interested in having a successful web series or film. It's also a lot more steady work if you have a successful show.
> 
> ...



Not to be snide and I'm sure you have a point, but I'm fairly certain Martin Scorsese has a good handle on what filmmakers want!


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## synkrotron (Nov 5, 2019)

oboemaroni said:


> Not to be snide and I'm sure you have a point, but I'm fairly certain Martin Scorsese has a good handle on what filmmakers want!



Really?


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## oboemaroni (Nov 5, 2019)

synkrotron said:


> Really?



He's a world-renowned Oscar-/Palm D'or-winning director and Film Foundation founder whose whole life is film, film-making and film-makers, so I'd say he's pretty well qualified to speak on the wants and needs of those in his industry. The argument for long-form storytelling is a valid one IMO and obviously lots of people are now working towards that model, but if Martin Scorsese says many/most film-makers are still motivated to produce for cinema I'd take his word for it.


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## Olfirf (Nov 5, 2019)

LowweeK said:


> Off-topic :
> While I was reading - and the text is good indeed - I couldn’t help trying to replace “movie” by “football (soccer)”.


Actually, in today’s world you can replace the word by almost anything that can be sold. Even sample libraries ... (I am not saying which)
We kind of live in an ultimate cancer state of neo liberalism and obscene marketing. From my view, it is about time, that those fundamental principles of economics and living on this planet get a revision. Without that change of system, we will continue to see a even more shallow version of what art, movies and culture are generally about.


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## KallumS (Nov 5, 2019)

I'm not really a Marvel fan but what Scorsese said makes it sound like he hasn't seen a Marvel film. The Marvel universe is heavily character driven and has spent 10+ years providing context and backstory for each of their characters. There were real risks and the heroes actually lost at one point.

I see this argument time and time again applied to different creative industries by the older generation. Every time the complaint is the same, older people don't like how manufactured films/ games/ music is becoming. They prefer the older style where the technology wasn't there to make something 'perfect', when things had a certain roughness and rawness about it.

They also say that things exist now only for instant gratification. Instead of sitting through a 4 hour film filled with 80% location shots, people would now rather see an action packed 2 hour film. People change, times change, that's just how it is. Technology has given us more to focus on, we have less time. We seek efficiency and hate for our time to be wasted. Our minds have been molded by smartphones and the internet, which is not necessarily a good or bad thing - it simply means that we're evolving differently to audiences of the 60s/ 70s/ 80s. We want different things.

Let's not forget that the film industry is bigger now than it's ever been, there's more money to go around and more money to be made. The bar for quality is much higher than in the past which people generally perceive as requiring increasingly more epic and grander productions. Better CGI & FX, more stars, etcetera.


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## synkrotron (Nov 5, 2019)

KallumS said:


> People change, times change, that's just how it is.



I was going to say the same but couldn't bring myself to properly enter this discussion.


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## Kevin Fortin (Nov 5, 2019)

Thanks for posting that, John. It reminds me I've been meaning to read _Martin Scorsese: Interviews_.


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## Loïc D (Nov 5, 2019)

> The Marvel universe is heavily character driven and has spent 10+ years providing context and backstory for each of their characters



Yet there’s more psychology in Wall-E than the sum of all Marvel character.
Ok the screenwriters are trying to use the “fate” of characters to provide a background but on and on it always ends up with “let’s wipe those ugly aliens out”

Eschyle in armor suits.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate those movies - well not all actually - but there are mass pop culture subproduct in the suit of superproductions.

If I want something mature I’ll watch Scorcese or all the directors he mentioned.

Also, there’s a sheer pleasure at watching a 4 hour movie full of quiet landscape shots, with little music.
That’s why I love so much asian movies (the mature ones, not the crackhead action comedies). 

Eventually you get more reward from those movies than from 2-3 Marvel.


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## synkrotron (Nov 5, 2019)

I could spend the next ten minutes writing out what I like to see in a movie but I can't see the point because at the end of the day it is all down to personal opinions.


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## JohnG (Nov 5, 2019)

LowweeK said:


> Yet there’s more psychology in Wall-E than the sum of all Marvel character.
> ...
> 
> Eventually you get more reward from those movies than from 2-3 Marvel.



Totally agree about Wall-e. My daughter cried uncontrollably at the end of that -- I don't think any of the Marvel movies are likely to provoke that kind of feeling, for exactly the reason MS gives:


there's nothing at stake; there's no real jeopardy

Given the talent that gets invested in Marvel pictures, I would love to see them inject something meaningful.


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## synkrotron (Nov 5, 2019)

Blade Runner made me cry...

As did ET.

As did Hook.

I think I nearly blubbed when Groot copped for it too, come to thing of it.


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## synkrotron (Nov 5, 2019)

Apologies.

I just realised that this post is in the Working in the Industry sub-forum. I generally view posts from the Latest Posts section.

I don't work in the industry therefore I shouldn't really be expressing any kind of an opinion here.


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## JohnG (Nov 5, 2019)

synkrotron said:


> Blade Runner made me cry...
> 
> As did ET.
> 
> ...



Of the four you mentioned, only one is Marvel.

I'm not saying they're worthless, just that I'd always rather check out something that takes a few chances. Plus I found some of the costumes embarrassing. Dr. Strange? good grief! Even in the theatre it was a tiresome bore.


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## Jimmy Hellfire (Nov 5, 2019)

Someone like him needed to say it. Everything about these superhero "franchises", they way they're done and how much we're being bombarded with it is unbearable and deeply disappointing.


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## brenneisen (Nov 5, 2019)

JohnG said:


> Even in the theatre it was a tiresome bore.



come on, the lysergic visual stuff was super cool


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## oboemaroni (Nov 5, 2019)

In fairness MS isn't arguing that Marvel films shouldn't exist or that we should all be watching chin-stroking arthouse flicks all the time, he's saying that there should be room for both, which at the moment there isn't, arguably because most of the resources are being poured into superhero blockbusters. It's the age-old conflict between art and commercialism. 

FWIW I do appreciate some really trashy Hollywood stuff, but for me nothing digs down to the core of what it means to be alive like films by say Ingmar Bergman or David Lynch. Those are works of art which break out way beyond the boundaries of genre or convention (which ultimately are what make a film 'safe' - you know to some degree that there are rules that will be followed within that kind of film) to give you a unique experience that can shock and provoke in a profound way. Yes, they are often challenging to watch, and sometimes confusing or even boring if you're not used to them, but without challenge there's no reward I think.

It does come down to taste of course but as someone who has an appreciation for both kinds of film I think it's a shame more people aren't given the chance to engage with filmmakers really pushing cinema as an artform, and instead are funnelled towards commercial cultural products that while thrilling and stimulating really don't push very hard (if at all) against the limits of what has already been done.


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## synkrotron (Nov 5, 2019)

Those marvel films... They make me laugh. I enjoy them, though I can understand why the more mature people here wouldn't.


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## chocobitz825 (Nov 5, 2019)

So here’s my problem with this. The things he describes for the character-driven film are things the marvel movies did over 10 years of connected movies. All the key elements he lists played out in an episodic fashion. To what degree of quality is subjective but no one ditched the core of film-making and story telling for the marvel movies particularly since Captain America: the winter soldier. That was the major turning point for that franchise that shifted from the gimmick of superhero movies into a series of connected stories.

The biggest issue with the context is saying that the problem is franchise films. The films are made and released to such frequency because studios think they’ll make money, yet so far successful franchise films are few. The marvel movies and fast and furious are probably the only two consistent money-making franchises. 

Let’s consider that in the last ten years. The Godzilla franchise, Fox-based marvel movies like X-Men and fantastic four, DC universe, the mummy/monster universe, the hobbit franchise, Alita: battle angel, and a number of other films meant to spark a trilogy or franchise, or cinematic universe have mostly underperformed. Hell, even Star Wars and Star Trek are hit and miss right now. People are not screaming for franchises to be made. Studios are trying to ram them down our throats and consumers are making it clear that they don’t want a franchise just because.

If anything streaming media is proof of how much people want quality content, but might not want to see it in theaters, or can’t because studios don’t put them out and promote them. 

At best we have marvel, fast and the furious *shudders*, and Disney/Pixar movies as the only most consistent examples of franchises. Maybe our bigger problem is, Universal, Sony and other studios are trying too hard to catch a trend that doesn’t actually exist.

*edit* let’s also not forget that Oscar bait films can do just as much damage as franchise films in lowering the bar. They come out with those cheap ideas with as much frequency as franchise films. Just a bunch of faux art aiming for low hanging fruit.


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## thesteelydane (Nov 5, 2019)

KallumS said:


> and the heroes actually lost at one point.


That’s not the kind of risk he’s talking about though.


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## José Herring (Nov 5, 2019)

He makes valid points but then he also generalizes as well which makes it hard to follow exactly what he means and makes it so that he isn't fully tracking.

I understand that the art house films the true "indie" films are no longer being viewed and there is no real avenue any more on the big screen.

But..... The Joker is as "indie" of a film that I've ever seen. The lead character of course is a comic book character but the entire look, feel, score, script, method acting, ect.-- it was an arthouse type film.

So within the Marvel and DC superhero world there is a ton of diversity and not everything is "market" tested. Some of it is for sure, but they do take risk. Antman was another one that was fairly risky for a genre film more comedy than serious. Deadpool was as Quitentarantinoesque as they come didn't take itself seriously and poked fun at itself. These films had a tremendous potential to backfire. Wonderwoman was also a risk but the movie was so stupid that it hardly worth mentioning.

I think what he is alluding to is that the "drama" of these films is missing. The risk that the audience might not like it but that the filmmaker needs to say it his way. The visceral impact of these franchise films is only based on the violence. But, it's also odd that Scorsese who has made some of the most violent films for visceral impact would then bash another for doing some of the same things that he help to pioneer--the use of violence for emotional effect.

In the end the audience is going to see what it wants to see. He neglected the fact that it took audiences nearly 25 years to fully accept comic book heroes on the big screen. Many of the initial attempts to bring Marvel to the big screen failed and Marvel was nearly broke for trying for 2 decades to make these franchises successful. They earned their way in. Too bad that they dominate. I'd like to see other stuff for sure make it commercially.

These comic book films are the current day America Urban folk tales. They grew up as comics in urban folklore. It really is up to the filmmaker to make the most of it. But, like the commedia del Arte of Europe's past and the subsequent Disneyfication of those characters in 20th century America, Marvel and DC are the new wave of popular art. The artist will take risk and some will just cash in, in the end truth be told I could sit through Spiderman far sooner than I could set through Gangs of New York. I'm sure Gangs is a great film, I would marvel at the cinematic achievement. I just have no interest in the subject.

But, Netflix is a good resource for indie filmmakers. TV shows as well. Game of Thrones is as epic as they come. Big score as well. These are providing opportunities that were not there even a decade ago.

Things change. Times change. People Change. Taxi Driver was a great movie. It wouldn't make it today. It barely made it back then. If Taxi Driver were released as new today, I'd wait for it to be on Netflix. The cinema is a spectacle. It's big. My 50 inch TV can take in all of Taxi Driver. It can't take in all of Infinity War. It needs more space.

In the end, people will get bored and another new thing will rise. Then new filmmakers will take up a new type of filmmaking that will speak to their audience just as Tarantino spoke to GenX's, Scorcese spoke to Boomers and Spielberg and Lucas spoke to kids of my generation. In the end, it's only a movie for God's sake, "why so serious?".


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## JohnG (Nov 5, 2019)

josejherring said:


> the use of violence for emotional effect.



Maybe that's the problem? -- I don't find the violence in comic book films has any emotional effect at all.

In fact, I think they are carefully sculpted to _avoid_ real emotions of any kind. They are, as MS wrote, more like a theme park ride. They may get your pulse moving with a lot of "blam-zoom," but as far as any emotion beyond adrenaline, or insight into the human condition or observations about what it is or could be like to inhabit one of the characters? Bland, bland bland; "None of that! Waay too serious!"

In fact, conspicuous among their many sins is the "one for all" undifferentiatedness of so many characters. If a character is a "bad guy" he has it stamped all over him, from his accent to his black clothes to his bad-guy laugh. But the good guys are, often, even more homogenised; sure, they have different shiny outfits and different "powers" but that's most of it. They don't really change from beginning to end, or even movie to movie. One of them may get moodier or something, but there's nothing fundamental.

Oh well. Not everything rolls like a Thomas Hardy novel.

At least there's the BBC and some other stuff where they are still trying.


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## José Herring (Nov 5, 2019)

JohnG said:


> At least there's the BBC and some other stuff where they are still trying.



Thank God for government controlled TV. I find at least they are trying.

I hear you on the violence front. I always find it odd that in this society if you show nudity on TV it's a sin but if you watch a guy getting violently stabbed or 100 people getting machined gunned that's acceptable art. It's changed a little bit but that's how we grew up.

I'd love for there to be more on the human condition in our pop art but it just isn't happening unfortunately. So if we are to take what we have and push the limits of what people will accept and go see, I think there will be some salvation for the more arts side in the future.

The Joker was an attempt at that. The only problem was that I had no sympathy at all for the character. He was a bad guy. No amount of "he had a rough childhood" or "he's a loser that gets picked on" made me feel anything but total disdain for the character. I actually liked the Nolan Joker better because he at least had a motive for wanting to create anarchy and reasons for doing so. This new Joker was just trying to get back at the world because the world didn't give him a fair shake.

But.... there was some hope in this. It was a risk. It could have backfired, but instead it became one of the most successful films in the franchise.

So in the future I see that these franchise movie makers will understand that if you have a subject which is acceptable to the public you can take risk and the audience will go along with you. Our only hope right now is to push more of the "artsy" stuff into that which is commercially accepted.

I'm sure the Irishman is a great film full of all the artistic emotional impact that any film could hope for, but because the public has no real interest it will be a bit lost. Taking a franchise film and making those more artistic could be a way back to movies that aren't as mind numbing as they've gotten.


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## Consona (Nov 5, 2019)

I think Scorsese saying MCU is like a theme park is probably the most accurate description of that franchise. It's like 20+ films, yet not even one left me in awe after seeing it.

IMO they should have made half the movies with double the quality, then that would have been something noteworthy, to me.
Instead we've got movie after movie over-hyped and over-rated to staggering degrees. I remember seeing those headlines that Thor Ragnarok is "a modern masterpiece" and "phenomenal" and Black Panther has 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and whatnot, and I remember I was considering leaving several times during the screening  because of how stupendously bored I was and stayed just because I was waiting when will this amazingness of it arrive?..

This actually happened to me even in the phase 1 of MCU, when all the people said Avengers is the best comicbook film ever, and I was sooo hyped, What? Better than fricking The Dark Knight???!!! Whoaaa!!!
Then I was there, at the cinema, first 10 minutes, 20, 30, an hour, f***ing bored as f***, couldn't believe I'm a part of the same species that nearly unanimously claimed this is the best comicbook s**t ever. It was so bland and boring and meh. I like fantasy and sci-fi and comic book films but MCU just feels so sterile and half-baked to me. There are some great moments but the problem is, The Dark Knight alone has more great and way ingeniously written moments that the whole 20+ films of MCU combined. That's why I don't understand why it's so over-praised. The Scorsese's "theme park of movies" is a perfect fit.


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## synkrotron (Nov 5, 2019)

Some great reviews here.


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## José Herring (Nov 5, 2019)

Consona said:


> I think Scorsese saying MCU is like a theme park is probably the most accurate description of that franchise. It's like 20+ films, yet not even one left me in awe after seeing it.
> 
> IMO they should have made half the movies with double the quality, then that would have been something noteworthy, to me.
> Instead we've got movie after movie over-hyped and over-rated to staggering degrees. I remember seeing those headlines that Thor Ragnarok is "a modern masterpiece" and "phenomenal" and Black Panther has 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and whatnot, and I remember I was considering leaving several times during the screening  because of how stupendously bored I was and stayed just because I was waiting when will this amazingness of it arrive?..
> ...




Oh C'mon, when Thor lost his eye trying to battle his evil banished sister, tear jerker.

In Black Panther Killmonger's death scene, "just bury me in the ocean with my ancestors that jumped from the ships, because they knew that death was better than bondage." True 'dat brodda!

When Captain America and Ironman get into a fight because Cap decided to defend Bucky after Bucky killed Tony's parents..... cinematic masterpiece....Oscar worthy performances.


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## chocobitz825 (Nov 5, 2019)

The reviews of these movies are pointless to the topic. Some of us like them, some of us don’t. Every film has its lovers and haters. 

MS implies some point that franchise films are taking away from “real art”. He talks about risk but I get the feeling that he’s trying to avoid risk. Blaming the films instead of the studios seems like a way to criticize his perception of a trend, without burning any bridges with the studios that are pushing that trend. He implies that worldwide blockbusters are pushing smaller films out. That’s not the film’s fault. That’s not the crew's fault who made the film, or the writers or the actors. You could blame the studios and increased financial influence from China and other world markets. ThE movies being market-tested for mass appeal is the business right now based on global revenue. No different from our music industry or the food industry. 

He soft steps the role studios have had in the past in films acting as though there’s always been this respect from the industry for art and letting it be. Calling it “tense” ignores the obvious similarities of then and now. Studios wanted to monetize art, and they picked away at it for the sake of making it profitable. Same then as it is now. It’s just now they found a different style of art to use. I hate it when people preach about art. That is not what we do. We are in marketing. We’re business masquerading as art. If you’re really doing art, for the sake of art, you don’t need to concern yourself with the money, fame or accolades.You create your vision and let it be.

At the very least he wants people to experience it on a big screen. He’s gotta compromise. The times mean that he achieves that on fewer screens, or he accepts that a person’s big screen tv is as close as it gets. Just because he made the art doesn’t mean he gets to dictate how it’s consumed. It’s like music creators that complain about people not listening to hi-end stereo systems. Tough shit. Choose quality with limited access or quantity allowing people to access via the most common medium.

The last point really is, culture has changed. People don’t want to just watch a movie. They want to experience a moment together. Whether that be in the theater or on social media later. Any film has that viral potential but it’s left to marketing and the content to really get it there. Maybe The Irishman will prove that point. By being completely accessible on that medium, people will consume it, and react, and share and talk with each other about how it made them feel. The experience is not about what’s happening in the theater anymore. It’s about what people take away from the actual movie and how they choose to share that with each other long after the credits end. For real filmmakers, that’s an incredible chance to make worldwide impactful cinema. If they see the new culture of cinema for its positives.


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## GtrString (Nov 5, 2019)

Nothing wrong with Scorsese’s points. I have read Marvel comics since the 1970s, and they have always been character driven, and most often the stories are really weak, on the brink of cringe worthy and embarrassing. Still, the movies are entertaining and as everyone knows immensely popular.

So, while Scorsese is right, I cant really see the point of that kind of public confession. You can’t really argue with popularity, but you can watch it pass by, and be a spectator to the trends, document, analyze and understand.

Im not sure if Scorsese think that the Marvel movies vaccuum the Hollywood budgets and the current actor talent, leaving little left for other projects. The consideration could be that the surplus from these films doesnt get reinvested in other more unique projects, and that the actors dont get to develop their skills in more challenging films.

But I feel his comments are quite US/ Hollywood centric, as there are many other films made around the world that doesnt suffer from that kind of Marvel’itis, and perhaps even can benefit from the huge interest in going to movie theaters that Marvel movies animate right now.

I think Scorsese‘s comments may be more a symptom of a generational power struggle, of who gets to decide the media content and who gets to control the budgets. We need the young guns, they may create much more important movies later. Now is their “fun” time..


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## Greg (Nov 5, 2019)

Every time this pops up again in social media, I swear i can hear a faint collective sigh of every mother in the world preparing themselves to explain to their children why it's okay for someone to like what you don't like.


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## synkrotron (Nov 5, 2019)

Seeing Thor with a beer gut was a joy to behold...


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## charlieclouser (Nov 5, 2019)

KallumS said:


> The Marvel universe is heavily character driven and has spent 10+ years providing context and backstory for each of their characters. There were real risks and the heroes actually lost at one point.



Watch Casino, Goodfellas, or even Mean Streets and you can see that Scorsese didn't need to spend 10+ years providing context and backstory for his characters. Context, backstory, character arc, eventual downfall, redemption, and conclusion - all in one three-hour brick.

And not just for one or two characters, but a whole freakin' army of 'em. Sam, Ginger, Nicky, Lester, Andy Stone, Remo Gaggi, Phillip Green, Artie Piscano AND his mom! By the time Casino winds up with "...and that's that" you feel like you're related to them all, like you've known them all your life. You might think Nicky's an awful person but you still feel something when he's watching the crew kill Dominic.

After ten-plus movies I still know less about Bruce Banner or Natasha Romanoff than I do about Artie Piscano, his brother, or his mom. 

To me, those comic book franchises are more like television series - or maybe those old Flash Gordon serials with the cliffhanger every week.

I've watched Casino and Goodfellas dozens of times, and I'm looking forward to watching them dozens more times. Avengers:Endgame? Once was enough.

So I'm with Marty.

That said, I did like Joker - mostly because it was very Taxi Driver esque.


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## Thomas Kallweit (Nov 5, 2019)

Does anyone know and can recommend some great author driven movies from the current?
I would be glad to know. Really. I think they still exist, but probably have a hard time to be seen. 

Enjoyed some of the marvel movies, but I also was blocked after having watched lots of them with all this generic dramaturgy going on as it was described here above. And yep, old Marvel Comics Fan here as well.

I agree that making follow ups / sequels seems to be the most safe thing for the industry (not working for it!) right now and I can understand the troubles MS has with it. Times are changing, ok - I just can see what has come better with more standardized dramaturgy - playing save because of the economics.


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## kgdrum (Nov 5, 2019)

Scorsese is for me on point the Marvel type movies are examples of superficial commercial entertainment that happens to make $$ but imo it’s hard to make the case they’re examples of great films(I haven’t seen The Joker).
For me equating Marvel movies as great film is like referring to the Kardashian’s as cultural icons that have a societal impact.
Successful money driven entertainment does not = great film.


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## NoamL (Nov 5, 2019)

I saw *Endgame* on the 2nd night.

The audience at times was _louder than the film_ with people cheering, clapping, even yelling "No!" at the screen... It was tremendous fun but also exhausting. I think the analogy of a theme park is spot on. You probably wouldn't ride a roller coaster by yourself, what's the point? Similarly I'd never buy Endgame on streaming and have a movie night by myself.

Did you ever notice these movies have 3 or 4 seconds of dead air after every funny punchline and every dramatic character entrance? Raucous audience reactions are assumed and integrated into the film. If you didn't see _*Endgame*_ with an audience, you truly missed seeing it the way it was designed to be seen.

The films are shallow for sure. I agree there is not much to think about or interact with once you leave the theater. The films are not character driven at all. And it's not just silly plotholes in individual films, like how Thanos's plan makes no sense, but rather the central conceit of the entire MCU is that it's one story told across multiple movies, and that's just not true at all IF you start thinking about it critically. The main characters change their motivations as needed for each individual film, especially the ones who appear in lots of films like Iron Man. There's less character consistency across the series than there is across one season of a TV show.

I think Jenny Nicholson made the best point about these Marvel movies when she described her experience of watching the _*Infinity War*_ premiere. There was a kid in the next row who kept crying as each character was zapped by Thanos (spoilers!). And the dissonance between the ever-increasing body count and the fact that _many of these characters were already announced to have spinoff sequels_ just got to her to the point where she was laughing and cheering for the movie to kill off more characters: "Yes, die, Spider-Man!" None of the carnage is real so who cares? These movies try so hard to evoke pathos but it ends up undermining itself. There's a scene in *Endgame *of Iron Man's funeral (spoilers!) where all of the characters line up for a group photo - meaning _all_ the characters in the MCU - and it's so self-laudatory it becomes a joke. The scene isn't happening because _the characters_ are sad Iron Man is dead, the scene is happening because the movie is congratulating itself for being the capstone to a giant pop culture franchise that all started with RDJ playing Iron Man.

I can't deny that these movies did achieve something unique. For whatever flaws they have, they are so ever-present in pop culture for 10 years that people really were invested in the ending. But that's more about the mere-exposure effect, and the charisma of most of the main actors, than it is about the script or characters. I agree with Scorsese that nothing is really risked in these films in terms of what he calls "emotional danger."

The shallowness of these films is admitted even by their biggest fans, since all of the speculation & emotional intensity in their reaction to these films is about "what will happen" and whether the movie will be "spoiled." The emphasis on spoilers is a tacit admission that the act of seeing the movie for the only/first time *is* the entire experience.

Not only the fans, but the studios *themselves* are driving a conversation that centers around "spoilers" and "endings" and what each character's fate will be ("Will Kylo Ren be redeemed or will he fall to the Dark Side forever?") because they know it drives people to see these movies as events, and to attend the earliest available screenings.

Just don't blame the MCU alone for this. Look at Star Wars, those movies are made to be "events" now as well. Same with many other franchises. All of them are planned with giant marketing campaigns and the expectation of highly frontloaded cinema takes.

There is an acceleration of contradictions:

These blockbuster movies keep getting more and more of the production budget of major studios, which means marketing budgets also are becoming more and more insane, which is bizarre when you think about how it's increasingly hard to find anything _*but*_ these movies at local theaters.


There is an accelerating emphasis on "spoilers" which makes no sense as these movies are taking place within a narrower and narrower frame of story types and outcomes. As an example there were some leaked images from the next (I refuse to play along with the marketing and say "final") Star Wars film and this caused an uproar. But why? You'd have to be some kind of idiot to not anticipate the basic story beats of the next film. The trailer is even filled with major spoilers itself!


These franchise movies are praised more and more for being "realistic" and "immersive" with their CGI, at exactly the same time that audiences are treating movies more cynically and at-arms-length than ever before. Just think about all the pop culture wannabe-critics who made youtube videos about "how to fix" The Last Jedi. Everyone wants to be the wizard behind the curtain, _creating_ the entertainment and nobody wants to experience movies as "just an audience" anymore. Yet at the same time audiences are clearly demanding movies to be high production value blockbuster-spectaculars. What is the point of spectacle movies if nobody _believes in_ movies anymore?

Oh well. At least Alan Silvestri's scores are amazing.


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## charlieclouser (Nov 5, 2019)

NoamL said:


> I agree with Scorsese that nothing is really risked in these films in terms of what he calls "emotional danger."



Yeah, it doesn't matter who Thanos snaps - we'll see them onscreen within a year or two in a prequel, origin story, or alternate timeline movie. So it doesn't matter - there's nothing at stake, which reduces the "value" of the characters to near-absolute-zero.

Nicky Santoro, on the other hand, ain't coming out of that hole in the cornfield. No prequel, no origin story, no alternate timeline - no way, no how. Done and done, and thank you for watching.


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## NoamL (Nov 5, 2019)

Thomas Kallweit said:


> Does anyone know and can recommend some great author driven movies from the current?
> I would be glad to know. Really. I think they still exist, but probably have a hard time to be seen.



Coherence (2013)
Upstream Color (2013)
Ex Machina (2014)
Annihilation (2018)
Upgrade (2018)
Parasite (2019)

Yes I'm into scifi/genre films 

I haven't seen Joker but from the trailer it gives me STRONG vibes of the marketing bullshit Marvel was pulling off a few years ago. "Winter Soldier is actually a spy movie!" (no it's not, it's an action movie with the same formula as all your other movies). "Dr. Strange is a mindfuck!" (nothing in Dr. Strange is trippier than the average CGI film, hell, it's less trippy than _The Matrix_ much less _Inception_). "We went out on a limb with Ant Man and made a _comedy_ comic book movie!" (that's not a risk, all your movies going back to the first _Iron Man_ contain strong comedic elements).

What I got from the trailer is that _Joker_ wants to be seen as risky and groundbreaking. But as people have already pointed out in this thread, _Taxi Driver_ got there thirty years earlier...


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## JT (Nov 5, 2019)

I share a lot of the same feelings about films that MS articulated. I seen a few Marvel type movies, and most of them bore me. But the world has changed and I'm not sure today's audience has the attention span to follow and enjoy the types of films MS prefers.

I saw the Joker recently and thought it was great. It seemed to me to be an "old fashioned" film in that it was all about character development.


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## charlieclouser (Nov 5, 2019)

NoamL said:


> Just think about all the pop culture wannabe-critics who made youtube videos about "how to fix" The Last Jedi. Everyone wants to be the wizard behind the curtain, _creating_ the entertainment and nobody wants to experience movies as "just an audience" anymore. Yet at the same time audiences are clearly demanding movies to be high production value blockbuster-spectaculars. What is the point of spectacle movies if nobody _believes in_ movies anymore?



There seems to be a belief that audiences need that "video game style" pacing and mayhem to be satisfied - as if they need a hailstorm of pixels aimed at their face to make them pay attention.... or that they need to somehow be "involved in" or "control the flow" of the story they're being told. That Black Mirror episode "Bandersnatch" was a valiant effort to prove that concept, which to my mind failed utterly.

Why did it fail for me? Because as soon as I was forced to make decisions about which way the story would go next, I utterly lost interest.

Why did I lose interest? Because I sensed that, out of all the possible permutations of the story, no single story line was worth telling.

Why is there a perception that viewers want more involvement, more control? Because the stories themselves, and the skill with which they are being told to us, are severely lacking. "Well, I guess we could beef this up with some awesome action, some eye-popping CGI, or what about letting the viewer do a 'choose your own ending' type thing, like those books we had in first grade?"

A story that is worthy of telling, or a story teller who is worth his salt, doesn't need such gimmickry to satisfy - it's just that there are precious few auteurs out there these days, and it shows.

Garbage in, garbage out.

That said, if there was CGI in Joker, I didn't notice it - and I still liked the movie (and score).


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## NoamL (Nov 5, 2019)

Charlie maybe the important distinction is between story and _plot_ - where plot is just a list of things that happen.

The fact that Joker told two contradictory stories of how he got his scars is irrelevant to the plot of TDK but people are still talking about it 11 years later. Storytelling is all the things that are still there to think about even after the experience of absorbing the plot is over. 

Same reason people are still talking about _No Country For Old Men_.


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## gsilbers (Nov 5, 2019)

i think there is enough space for marvel and his stuff.


my point of view might be a little unique (and boring) cuz i used to work in distribution and had to watch TONS of movies and tv shows, i was in one of the 10 studios that delivered to netflix back when it first started.
That was the time when FOX, Disney, sony and universal where dusting off old boxes of deliverables that came from old salt mines in kansas (yes, thats where they get stored) and all from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s to redo all these masters and send them to netflix, then amazon and so on in every language. Plus doing all the post for new shows like bones and sons of anarchy and american horror storry plus a lot of the new movies which reuqire a ton of work and tons of FBI background mpaa checks.
Everyone has this nolstagic vision of movies and the bygone era of risk and "real movies" and so on. And i was one of them. European movies, indie films etc. until i started working getting all those old movie masters back to life... i dont think many poeple know just HOW MUCH movies and tv shows are out there. And i dont think people understand just how much crap there is out there. just go to imdb and search movies by year and check last year. itll be more than 3000. crappy ones? yes. maybe some ok. sure. many documentaries. yes. etc. but a ton of sdtuff. not to mention having to watch horror stuff. getting the new american horror storry plus netflix ordering tons of old horror stuff like the hills have eyes, wrong turn2, some EU horror movies i dont recall the names and also vintage horror. having to watch the same movie several times in a day, a week a month. I thought i would develop a tolerance towards horror and drama but its the oposite. it just becomes extremly predictable, dull and very slow pace, so much so that i just dont want to watch anything anymore. i mean those mafia movies and "movies with plot" which is what scoresese does, to me is just as complex as transformers plot wise. we try to enhance this notion of what is good with movies but its movies that WE identify with while the OTHERS is bad. keep in mind that i also needed t watch a huge amount of 50s and 60s movies and tv shows and those had sooooomuch dialog. And we admire more plot and drama and tons of dialogu explaining stuff but at the end movies are broken down in similar fashion and follow a recipe. and there is even those meme where it shows movie recipies.
So the world has changed. technology has disrupted so many industries this decade. music is obvious but what also happened is globalization. and these plots and comedies dont translate well abroad. Crime dramas used to dominate tv because it was what braodcasters wanted in europe and south america. easy to fit into their programming and sell ads and audiences could follow. while breaking bad was a bomb when it came out and had a uge second life streaming cuz its back to back. so now all tv shows follow his formula. with movies is similar. doing these risk as scorese says does have its merits but again, check imdb, its full of risks. but then you see plenty of box office failures. even for franshcises like temrinator. the point im trying to make is that scorese, just as you reading this, is thinking of movies for americans, with a plot geared towards you, and your sense of self and culture. which has a specific standard which lies on all these notion of your or our collective history here in the usa. cuz we see tons of movies and dwell in small "defining" issues of the plot, or how these could be different and we expect better. now enter marvel and star wars and franchises that work like fast and furious. which to many here who work on movies will scuff at but it sells well abroad. why does it matter? becuase the USA doesnt matter as much as it did before. trump vs china. north europe being amazing. a millionare a month in china. singapore being the richest economy (or something) and so on. So scorese belong in an era where USA dominated economically. now... and i can tell you EXACT numbers becuase thats where i worked. USA is just a part of the box office sales. a minor part now. china is the big spender. plus other countries. and then streaming. which pay more than broadcasters (which is why i cant believe it pays less to composers in royalties.. but different subject). thats why netflix doesnt care about showing movies in theatres. its penauts compared to what they get from subscirbers. and thats why they make their own movies, becuase they dont have to pay the same license on every country. thats why they can do it and it works $$ for them. anyways... its a change in tehcnology plus a change in the way USA is percived (and their deep plots) around the world and how big studios dont care about what scorese or his buddies or his audience thinks. even the head of disney said.. "he can say whatever he wants to say". cuz he doesnt care. he cares china loves marvel and star wars. disney learned the hard way.. they said risk? sure, lets do John carter. it'll be great... then.. huuuuge flop.. .. and from then on.. lets get franshises in order. All these tv shows and movies are now more important abroad. to internatinoal audiences. And even air before the USA market. So thats a piece of the puzzle scorese doesnt see that well that disney will see. at the same time disney is doing what disney does. its a huge corporation trying to adapt to new technologies and consumer demands andbetting on where profits are. always has always will. stockholder and such. nowadays there could be outlets for medium budget movies. theatres also need to adapt. if they lower their overheads to show scorese style movies then i think it would work. but in general is theatre owners who need to change. disney already has like 10 year line up of movies and tv shows related to franchises. other movie studios could sell to movie theatres directly and use other marketing tactics. but they are the ones who ned to move forward. disney is selling to theatres across the world and marketing around the world. well this was way too long. anyways, just saying tehcnology chnages and sociopolitical changes due to globalization just sounded to short


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## chocobitz825 (Nov 5, 2019)

Lol well these forums are never short on pretentious ,self-congratulatory, generational change-fearing banter. Always refreshing to see those conversations reboot again. Especially since this one is about movies instead of film.

fresh reboot! two thumbs up!


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## chocobitz825 (Nov 5, 2019)

gsilbers said:


> i think there is enough space for marvel and his stuff.
> 
> 
> my point of view might be a little unique (and boring) cuz i used to work in distribution and had to watch TONS of movies and tv shows, i was in one of the 10 studios that delivered to netflix back when it first started.
> ...



Long, but too true.


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## JohnG (Nov 5, 2019)

Do you really think Scorsese doesn't know that the US used to be 80% of the box office and now it's 20% (or less)? It's his business -- he knows all that.

I think what is discouraging to him, and also to me, is the _degree_ to which the "franchise" film has crowded out alternatives. 

There are still some pretty good movies being made, but they seem to attract less and less attention. (relatively) recent films I liked include, "The Favourite" and "Philomena," and I quite liked "Arrival" even though maybe that was partly because I really enjoyed poor Johann J's score. On the more ordinary-life side, I liked "Crazy Stupid Love," despite a few plot holes and weird character inconsistencies.

And, as some pointed out, there is some excellent TV out there if you poke around.

It's not all gloom by any means, especially when the average TV has metastasized into the scale of a small house.


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## Uiroo (Nov 5, 2019)

Since Scorcese mentioned Wes Anderson as a positive example:
Infinity War and Grand Budapest Hotel are basically my favorite films, right know. 

While Infinity War satisfies my inner child which still wants to be a superhero and play with lightsabers and all that, Grand Budapest Hotel satisfies my longing for new, fresh, unusual things i've never seen before. 
Wouldn't want to miss one of both. 

And saying it's not cinema. What exactly is cinema, besides a building with seats and a beamer?
Seems like a strange statement, no one can disagree when you choose to use your own definition of cinema that no one truly understands. Kind of pointless, if you ask me.


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## j_kranz (Nov 5, 2019)

It seems lost in the discussion that these are based on comic books... anyone walking into one expecting Steinbeck just isn't going to be fulfilled. Personally I think there's room for each and an audience who will follow. The Wes Andersons and Paul Thomas Andersons still get big screen billing.


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## JohnG (Nov 5, 2019)

Uiroo said:


> Grand Budapest Hotel



that is indeed a fantastic film. and a great score



j_kranz said:


> anyone walking into one expecting Steinbeck just isn't going to be fulfilled



I don't think that's it, Jonathan -- I think it's that they are crowding out the alternative. Everyone knows what to expect at McDonald's and everyone knows what to expect when it's a comic book movie.

Then again, "The Road to Perdition" is another great movie and it's based on a graphic novel.


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## j_kranz (Nov 5, 2019)

JohnG said:


> I don't think that's it, Jonathan -- I think it's that they are crowding out the alternative. Everyone knows what to expect at McDonald's and everyone knows what to expect when it's a comic book movie.



True, but I guess my reaction was more in reference to the discussion on lack of deep character development, etc... that's just not really what you get in comics, and not what most people reach for one for. It's kind of apples and oranges in my view. But yes, I think there should be a place for art and experimentation in film, as much as I like to see it in music as well.

If theres room for optimism, I think the fact that a studio like A24 shows that there's an audience willing to reach on riskier films, personally I see just about anything they do since I know it will be something different and interesting.


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## pmountford (Nov 5, 2019)

Absolutely agree with MS. And there I was thinking it was just me that had zero emotional involvement in Marvel and the likes. Sure they can be a thrilling ride but ultimately meaningless. I can't remember the last time I left the cinema thinking 'that was worth watching on the big screen'...and that includes The Joker. So for me I'm afraid its BBC (and equivalent ITV) dramas all the way - I'm still waiting for Netflix to match how well written these (usually) British dramas are. Or better still, way more emmotional involvement in a book. Jeez, I sound like an old codger....


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## gsilbers (Nov 5, 2019)

JohnG said:


> Do you really think Scorsese doesn't know that the US used to be 80% of the box office and now it's 20% (or less)? It's his business -- he knows all that.
> 
> I think what is discouraging to him, and also to me, is the _degree_ to which the "franchise" film has crowded out alternatives.
> 
> ...




exactly. to him and to you. thats the main point. its like the black lives matter or metoo movement.. suddenly hmm.. there are other people who might thik different than I do and my peers. and those poeples opinion matter as much as my opinion?!? and lets say now its all about them and not you. and it was a ratio of 1:10000 vs your opinion. it wasnt that way before. now a huge amount of poeple want those big movie franchises. they enjoy it, find the amazing plot and wish there was more. so its not that they hoard al the alternatives, its that its the new main thing and everything else is not the thing. like a little kid who was all about listening and dressing up in metal t shirts and later had to move to a big city and everyone listens to hiphop and that kid keeps saying metal is better. he is not wrong, but most people are doing something else. 
and i did think there is space for other alternatives as i mentioend. to me, i think oscar style movies at a lower budget like romcoms, roma, etc. would be great to be on netflix and streaming. i dont get why the fasination of having those on big screens. big screens have to share revenue and involves tons of marketing which is a lot more risk which therefore franchises work best as tey can sell toys etc. i would watch the irishman in netflix now... but go this weekend to see it in theatres?! hell no. 
at the same time, its theatre owners who have to figure out ways to show other stuff without so much risk from them and the studios. have smaller rooms showing a different variety of films. maybe they can do online surveys to get to know what the neibors want to see. or have like in the arclight that has random old movie presentations. or movies that would go to streaming have a short run of 2-4 weeks. 
And also there are VOD services. you can rent on amazon stuff anytime almost any movie. times are just changing so some biz and styles of entertainment will fail while others suceed.


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## gsilbers (Nov 5, 2019)

Uiroo said:


> And saying it's not cinema. What exactly is cinema, besides a building with seats and a beamer?
> Seems like a strange statement, no one can disagree when you choose to use your own definition of cinema that no one truly understands. Kind of pointless, if you ask me.




what exactly is shopping? what exactly is a store?
what exactly is entertainment? what exactly is work?
what exactly is a good plot? what exactly is advertisement?

i remeber taking a college class about artificial intelligence and some of the most basic quastions like these where unbelievable complex. like what is life, what is intelligence.. etc. you would think duh.. obvuous... but no. check out in google how many articles and books there are about these subjects. its amazing.
now with this huge shift in technology where everyone has a computer on their hand, its nothign short of a miracle, all these new questions arise. should i need to go to a store to buy stuff?
or what is a "good" movie. the only true indicator is money and revenue. everything else is subjective and related to fealings and my own personal interpretation of good. movies had to be done a specific way, but with new tech, do they still have to follow certain rules? remeber that long tv opening credits? well netflix said nope.. cut if short.. and vuala. now they are short. netflix did that experiment of having a movie or tv show be presented in different ways to different people. inserting scenes or shifting the order of episodes. some cool stuff nowadays. but yeah, with this new shift to the informatino technology, our philosophical views about culture and life are changing as well. so cinema and whatsa good cinema is also another good question with not so easy answer.


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## chocobitz825 (Nov 5, 2019)

gsilbers said:


> what exactly is shopping? what exactly is a store?
> what exactly is entertainment? what exactly is work?
> what exactly is a good plot? what exactly is advertisement?
> 
> ...



No matter how we feel about any of that. All visual media is dumbing us down. Books are the only true medium for storytelling. 

Anything else is just dumbing people down and killing their ability to use their imaginations and challenge complex concepts.... (/sarcasm)


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## JohnG (Nov 5, 2019)

chocobitz825 said:


> Anything else is just dumbing people down and killing their ability to use their imaginations and challenge complex concepts.... (/sarcasm)



You mean, like chat boards?


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## chocobitz825 (Nov 5, 2019)

JohnG said:


> You mean, like chat boards?



I know, right? Millennials need to learn to start a book club, write a letter or start a townhall meeting. Chat boards are for the lazy and unimaginative.


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## Uiroo (Nov 5, 2019)

gsilbers said:


> so cinema and whatsa good cinema is also another good question with not so easy answer.


"What's good cinema" is a better question than "what is cinema", in my opinion.
Like, IF IT'S PLAYED IN A CINEMA, then it looks like cinema to me.
So when someone says "No, no, cinema is more than that, it's an experience": Yeah maybe for you, but taking a word that is almost self-explanatory and applying your personal opinion about what makes a good film to it, I just don't see the point.
If we talk about cinema, how about we go by "cinema" as "film's in theatres" instead of as everyone's personal take on what cinema is which, in the end, just means what they think good cinema is.

You know what I mean?
Does that even make any sense? :D


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## JohnG (Nov 5, 2019)

But when Martin Scorsese says "cinema" and writes an essay about it, plus being conscious of his body of work, it's not just a "personal opinion," it's _Martin Scorsese's_ opinion.

When James Newton Howard or Jerry Goldsmith has (had) an opinion about music, I take it pretty seriously. Some other folks, less so.


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## jononotbono (Nov 5, 2019)

charlieclouser said:


> That Black Mirror episode "Bandersnatch" was a valiant effort to prove that concept, which to my mind failed utterly.
> 
> Why did it fail for me? Because as soon as I was forced to make decisions about which way the story would go next, I utterly lost interest.
> 
> Why did I lose interest? Because I sensed that, out of all the possible permutations of the story, no single story line was worth telling.



Bandersnatch was a great concept but the story is just literally about a guy making a video game. That's it. And honestly, who can care about that? The concept was far more interesting but it's just basically an Ian Livingstone book, but on a screen and the choices were completely un interesting (with exception to the Pac Man scene when they did Acid - that made me chuckle) in comparison. I'm a huge Black Mirror fan, Charlie Brooker is a legend, and I think it's one of the greatest shows I've ever seen of which I repeatedly watch most episodes but Bandersnatch is one of the few that I can't see myself watching again after spending a day on release going through all the choices.


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## rhizomusicosmos (Nov 5, 2019)

Scorsese is recycling the old auteur vs studio system cinema debate -- and he is very definitely (and justifiably) in the auteur camp.

On one side you have the director-as-artist whose vision/genius motivates the project and on the other side you have the economic juggernaut of the big studios. The MCU franchise is the modern version of the studio film and at the moment that is the side that is in the ascendant.

I actually found it difficult the other day to think of any non-Disney films that were showing in the cinemas. I wonder if Netflix, HBO, Amazon et al. are really the alternative aesthetically or simply the studio system transferred to the small screen.

I'm a fan of auteur cinema: Hitchcock, Tarkovsky, Ozu. Films by these directors have often haunted me afterwards in ways that are difficult to express. Gilles Deleuze saw film as a way of doing philosophy though images and sound, as an alternative to language. Not surprisingly his books on cinema focus on (predominantly male) auteur films. Director = Philosopher. I'm sure Scorsese wants to see himself in that role.


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## robgb (Nov 5, 2019)

There is no flaw in his argument. It's spot on.


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## givemenoughrope (Nov 5, 2019)

josejherring said:


> If Taxi Driver were released as new today, I'd wait for it to be on Netflix. The cinema is a spectacle. It's big. My 50 inch TV can take in all of Taxi Driver. It can't take in all of Infinity War. It needs more space.



Joker was about 1/50 the film that Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy or Network was. As one-note and flawed as it was I loved it and saw it twice. A great f.u. to everything safe. Pretty sad that a film about mental illness had to be trojan horsed into a comic book movie but whatever.

I've probably seen Goodfellas 100-200 times, not all the way through each time but every walked in a room and it was on then that is what I was doing. It came out when I was 11 so I missed it's theatrical debut but saw it on vhs the next year. It wasn't long before I knew every line like most kids my age. A couple years ago I saw a film print at the Egyptian and realized that I hadn't seen fucking shit. It was like I listened to the record in mono for years and then finally saw the band live. I think I've seen Once Upon a Time in the West maybe 75 - 100 times. I was watching it everyday for a while (don't ask). The first time I saw it in a theater I felt like I lifted out of my seat at one point. Films are made for the screen. Stupid stuff like Marvel could be watched on a telephone. The fact that people are even comparing the two is just completely bizarro world to me.


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## José Herring (Nov 5, 2019)

Oh man don't even get me started on Once Upon a Time in the West! I was visiting my Girlfriend (now my wife) at UofM and they had it playing at the state theater. All 4 hrs director's cut with intermission. I was transfixed, on the edge of my chair the whole time. I thought it was the best movie ever!!!! At that time anyway. Oh man, that's CINEMA!

Don't get me wrong about Taxi Driver. I love it. The story arc of the main character is mind bending. That too is CINEMA!!!!

As far as the current spat Superhero flicks. I just haven't seen but a few. Yes they are character driven but after a while I just don't care about any of the characters.


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## Guy Rowland (Nov 5, 2019)

I was quite surprised by the weakness of Scorsese’s argument, especially as I am someone bored witless by the superhero genre. Cinema has always given us a broad range from crowd-pleasing blockbusters to 2 people in a room, with every gradation in between. That article (with the names changed) could have been written in 1985, the backlash against the Blockbuster phenomenon in full swing in the post-Jaws and Star Wars era. Cinema may always have given us risk, but it has also delivered just what the masses want, no strings attached.

I think Scorsese focuses on slightly the wrong thing. The corrosion currently is the need for cinematic universes, a way of funding studios. Marvel is the biggest example of course. It’s not superhero films per se, it’s the balance that is out of whack driven by this new funding formula.

Then on the other side of the coin, I’m not too upset that the streaming services have stepped in, providing some of the greatest viewing experiences of all time. With long form drama of exceptional quality, we’re the lucky beneficiaries. Yes quality control is hugely variable, but for me cinema is no longer the primary medium for quality necessarily. Breaking Bad was an experience the cinema could never have given, and I’m thankful for it. Why moan about change in the industry when so much of that change is for the better?

Superhero films are a genre unto themselves, spun off from the general category of Blockbuster. As I’m sure any genre fan would tell us, there is good and bad, imaginative and derivative, edgy and safe all within that genre. My issue is purely volume, it’s a bizarre category to have so much of - they existed in them 80s in a much more sane proportion imo. In that sense I do agree with Scorsese - keeping giving people only one sort of story, it narrows their imagination of what can be. But let’s not pretend that they are uniquely vacuous or safe.


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## NoamL (Nov 5, 2019)

Uiroo said:


> "What's good cinema" is a better question than "what is cinema", in my opinion.
> Like, IF IT'S PLAYED IN A CINEMA, then it looks like cinema to me.
> So when someone says "No, no, cinema is more than that, it's an experience": Yeah maybe for you, but taking a word that is almost self-explanatory and applying your personal opinion about what makes a good film to it, I just don't see the point.
> If we talk about cinema, how about we go by "cinema" as "film's in theatres" instead of as everyone's personal take on what cinema is which, in the end, just means what they think good cinema is.
> ...



Yes, you're making a lot of sense.

Whatever people want to see in a theater is cinema, that's distinct from "a great artistic film."

The only part of MS's essay that seemed out of touch to me was when he said that all great directors dream of creating movies for the big screen. That's like saying all great authors dream of publishing in hardcover. As an audience I don't care. I'd much rather watch or read your story in the most convenient way. I'll read a book in paperback or even PDF. Lots of movies aren't diminished by being played on a computer screen. It's only tradition that makes "theatrical release" more prestigious than Netflix.

There are some films that have a reason to pitch themselves as "widescreen or nothing," like say Blade Runner 2049, but those kind of movies don't have a leg to stand on accusing the MCU of being spectaculars. It is like tiramisu accusing Twinkies of being a crass, lowest-common-denominator dessert. Well, whatever, that's true but it's also true that you're both sugar.


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## lux (Nov 5, 2019)

Charlie made quite a lot of points here.

On a personal standpoint my only issue with Marvel's (but its not exclusive to that) is that, given the outrageous amount of money invested, the whole artistic process is fragmentated, torn and deraged by an exagerated number of panel audits during the way, so my guess is that directors nowadays just prevent that by keeping things totally on the surface. I would probably do the same.

The concept of submitting movies to untalented customers to see if the movie is coming along well is an oximore itself. If people knew how the perfect movie for them would be, they would prolly shoot one themselves. 

I, Luca, cannot tell in advance about art forms I'm not completely into. That's a role for talented directors to know in advance if something i haven't experimented before will catch me or not, will move me emotionally, scare, or whatever.

Its the same exact process which comes with Spotify, who suggests me stuff that I "must" like. It fails miserably, cause I'm much often liking stuff that havent experimented before. That's what I want from life, being emotionally moved by people with a huge talent which do their own thing.

As much as I don't want people to "design" music based on my supposed preferences, I would not like a movie built with the same creative (or uncreative) process.

Leave directors free of telling a Marvel story according to their talent. That will probably make happy people. And Martin.


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## Akarin (Nov 5, 2019)

I read these discussions and opinions and yet my only question is "how do I write music for both Marvel and Scorcese? They both need some."


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## NoamL (Nov 5, 2019)

Coming at it from the composer POV we should have a hard & honest think about which experience is likely to be a more accurate conduit of our work - the average consumer headphones, or the average random seat in a random AMC.


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## José Herring (Nov 6, 2019)

NoamL said:


> Coming at it from the composer POV we should have a hard & honest think about which experience is likely to be a more accurate conduit of our work - the average consumer headphones, or the average random seat in a random AMC.


You can do the math on that. How many films are released each year vs how many composers there are to score them. Chances are most of us aren't going to get wide releases. But on the other hand many of us could be working on films in other mediums then who knows, one day get lucky that film geis some buzz and we're off scoring Infinity War 20: As Infinity Approaches Infinity


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## chocobitz825 (Nov 6, 2019)

Here’s where I wonder if we’re trying to mask our egos as creators. When people ask how to write better music and what tools they need, the first thing people say is “it’s not the tools! Study, write a good song! A good song doesn’t need the bells and whistles. You don’t need expensive gear for a good song!” Then we turn around and talk about how people who don’t listen to music on high quality systems are losing out on the true experience of the song. If you’re not using real instruments, you’re losing the best parts of the song. If you don’t experience it live, you’re missing the best parts of the song. Etc. etc.

In film this same convenient argument continues. Good films don’t need flashy fx or big budgets and expensive cameras to be made...but if the film maker wants to make the film right they want the right camera, the right budget and guarantee that the audience will watch it on a large screen to fully “get the experience”.

There is nuance of course. A big budget doesn’t make event films good, and a smaller budget doesn’t make indie films bad. I guess I want to know what someone like Scorsese really wants to say about film, cinema and quality if it has so many conditions based around funding, release and competition. What is really important here?

Why is it a lesser experience online than the cinema? Thats a sad conclusion given how much more freedom online mediums give creators...


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## Olfirf (Nov 6, 2019)

Guy Rowland said:


> I was quite surprised by the weakness of Scorsese’s argument, especially as I am someone bored witless by the superhero genre. Cinema has always given us a broad range from crowd-pleasing blockbusters to 2 people in a room, with every gradation in between. That article (with the names changed) could have been written in 1985, the backlash against the Blockbuster phenomenon in full swing in the post-Jaws and Star Wars era. Cinema may always have given us risk, but it has also delivered just what the masses want, no strings attached.
> 
> I think Scorsese focuses on slightly the wrong thing. The corrosion currently is the need for cinematic universes, a way of funding studios. Marvel is the biggest example of course. It’s not superhero films per se, it’s the balance that is out of whack driven by this new funding formula.
> 
> ...


Very good arguments, although I don’t agree fully. You analyse the problem very well by saying it is the need for creating cinematic universes to generate cash cows for the studio. But then you continue to say cinema is not number one any more and breaking bad was very good.
You cannot compare a Star Wars or Indiana Jones movie back in those days with what is happening today. Sure! Those movies were also commercial and pure entertainment, but in that they were also brave, trying new techniques and therefore pushing the limits of cinema.
Those films also were expensive, but they were not by any means compared to what blockbusters cost today.
Therefore, my analysis of today’s media is not that super hero films are the problem, but money is. We live in the end state of a new-liberal age which has grown perversions in pretty much any area were money is involved. Movies of media is only a very small aspect of that. Think about people dying because of greed from the pharmaceutical companies. Think about the US elections where money in politics has led to the current apocalypse. Think about human kind destroying our planet. I could go on ... all major problems we face today are basically a consequence of the very system we created, which is a system that puts permanent growth of everything and a constantly decreasing small percentage of human beings to profit from that increasingly. This growth has to lead to cancer at some point, which is the point we are at, now.
This is in my mind the reason, why every goes downhill. Of course, one would be naive to think that back in the 80ies it was not about money. Of course it was, but that aspect just multiplied a lot since then. I am sure Scorsese was critical about popcorn cinema back in the day, but there probably is a reason, why he has come out to tell you about it today.
Breaking Bad was a well produced series, but with TV now in the hand of basically two big players (Amazon and Netflix) and cinema loosing importance, the next problems are on the horizon (well, some would argue they are already there ...).


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## Guy Rowland (Nov 6, 2019)

Actually Olfirf, you advance the arguments further than Scorsese did. Because I completely agree that Jaws and Star Wars are not the same as Marval Pt 173. I just don't see him making anything close to that point - I guess the closest he comes is with Hitchcock, saying that its not the spectacle that stands up today as it once did, but the characters. And I thought "and I just bet there are many Marvel fans arguing the same thing now, it's the characters in the movies that make them great". Actually, it's ALWAYS the characters that make a film, imo.

The original wave of Blockbusters were a healthily diverse set. Space saga, superhero, WWII archaologist adventure, domestic alien, time travel caper etc. Typically these were made by highly accomplished filmakers, often have original premises, have finely polished scripts and are supremely well-crafted. It is the uninformity of experience that is the hallmark of today's choices, though even here its not quite as bleak as even I am tempted to suggest. As I look at my local 7 screen, only one is a superhero film which is the atypical Joker, so saying its ALL superhero films is definitely overstating the case.

On streaming, actually that double act of Amazon and Netflix is coming to an end. Apple TV+ has just launched, Disney is coming (more superheroes of course), Hulu, HBO, Britbox.


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## synkrotron (Nov 6, 2019)

When I think, "I want to watch that movie," is it never based on who directed or produced it. I tend to home in on who are the actors playing the parts.

Which is deeply flawed, I know, but I doubt I will change my ways at this stage in my life.

Yes, I do appreciate, now, that a good director is required to get the best out of the actors, generally speaking.

Anyway, I thought I'd look up Scorsese in IMDb to see how many of the movies he has had a hand in (producer and/or director) that I have seen and it ain't a lot:-

The Aviator
The Departed
Shutter Island
The Wolf of Wall Street

And, oh dear, they are all Leonardo DiCaprio movies. Is that bad?

Looking at his list of movies he simply doesn't do what I like to see in a movie. So it is unlikely that I will go out of my way to watch any more.

I have to add, this is in no way any kind of stab at Scorsese or his type of movies.

I am in no way any kind of film buff.

I have a love of a couple of genres which I ardently follow and am oftentimes disappointed at the end.


Personally, I prefer to read a book. But even then, I rarely read anything outside of my preferred genres.


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## Consona (Nov 6, 2019)

charlieclouser said:


> Yeah, it doesn't matter who Thanos snaps - we'll see them onscreen within a year or two in a prequel, origin story, or alternate timeline movie. So it doesn't matter - there's nothing at stake, which reduces the "value" of the characters to near-absolute-zero.


Fricking exactly my thoughts when sitting in the cinema next to a girl who's sobbing Spider-man is dead, I was squirming in my seat, trying not to scream "that guy has two sequels planned for him already, ffs!!!" 



josejherring said:


> Oh C'mon, when Thor lost his eye trying to battle his evil banished sister, tear jerker.
> 
> In Black Panther Killmonger's death scene, "just bury me in the ocean with my ancestors that jumped from the ships, because they knew that death was better than bondage." True 'dat brodda!
> 
> When Captain America and Ironman get into a fight because Cap decided to defend Bucky after Bucky killed Tony's parents..... cinematic masterpiece....Oscar worthy performances.


Exactly my point, one great thing in overall mediocre boring movies.


Another thing I hate is, ok, let this at least be a great fun action ride, but Russo brothers are so bad at action scenes, I can't even enjoy that aspect. They made the most expensive films ever, yet can't shoot one action scene that doesn't give me an headache. Their shoddy camera-work, weird editing where cuts don't make any sense, happen abruptly, take weight from punches and kicks, there's no fluidity to the action, in some scenes characters weirdly shift positions. And all those stupid "jokes" that make it feel like there's actually nothing serious going on. Meh.

Remember McTiernan's action scenes of Predator vs the army guys? Or from Die Hard? So brilliantly thought out and executed. The fluency of cuts, camera angles, etc. Look how many youtube videos essays with hundred of thousands of views claim MCU action is masterpiece level, I'm like what? It's a f***ing mess.

But you know, when people think someone as weakly written as Hela is a great movie villain then... debating anything feels so pointless.

Which brings me to another point. All those stupid videos on how MCU is so great. It's like some cultural-wide brainwashed cult. Have these guys ever seen Lord of The Rings? Every single film from that trilogy is way more emotional, poignant, poetic, epic and awesome than all MCU films with their two huge finale movies combined. The Endgame finale is so clueless and badly structured, that when Tony dies I was like, oh thank's god it's finally over.
It's about "cool" moments, rather than cleverly written build-up. There's one great video where a guy compares the Endgame finale with the Battle of the Hornburg from Two Towers, so eye-opening. Of course he has so many dislikes there because he claims Endgame finale was botched up...

Or like Thanos, he's probably the most interesting MCU character, but his plan is so utterly stupid that I can't take him seriously. If he was a clever scientist and had so many years to plot out and execute his plan, he'd figure out it's a total nonsense, I mean total. Another utterly stupid thing was, that Thanos from Endgame was not the Thanos from Infinity War. It was not the Thanos who snapped half of the living things out of existence! He was someone else! That's such a major flaw in the story. How that's supposed to be a satisfying end for Tony, when he kills Thanos that was from another time-line, who's another entity. Sorry guys, you are not Chris Nolan to pull this off. (If you haven't seen Memento or The Prestige, go watch those, top tier filmmaking, those scripts are THE best. How can one person make Memento, Prestige, Dark Knight, Inception and Interstellar is beyond my understanding. Noone has a track record like this guy. Even his first one, The Following, is such an extraordinary film.)



charlieclouser said:


> That said, if there was CGI in Joker, I didn't notice it - and I still liked the movie (and score).


Afaik, there was not even one CGI shot in Joker.

I need to see the film for the second time to make more precise opinion, but at least it was interesting and the last 30 minutes were sooo tense. That's like... that's the cinema Scorsese's talking about. MCU, after 11 years of build-up!, did not squeeze me like those 30 minutes of Joker. The interview/street riot part was done so amazingly. Maaan, that was so good, my eyes wide open, almost couldn't breathe, just waiting what will happen... Wow.


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## charlieclouser (Nov 6, 2019)

synkrotron said:


> Anyway, I thought I'd look up Scorsese in IMDb to see how many of the movies he has had a hand in (producer and/or director) that I have seen and it ain't a lot:-
> 
> The Aviator
> The Departed
> ...



Wait... surely you're joking, right?

If those four movies you listed are the only Scorsese films you've seen, then you've missed ALL of the good ones!

Go immediately to your preferred streaming portal and watch, in order:

Taxi Driver
Goodfellas
Casino
The Irishman

The movies you mentioned having seen are NOT the reasons why Scorsese is beloved and respected. He made Taxi Driver in 1976 when he was 34 years old, and The Irishman last year when he was 76. 

A film like "Joker" would not exist in its current form without Taxi Driver having been a part of the cultural landscape / zeitgeist for the past forty years - it's a thinly-veiled homage to Taxi Driver, so much so that it's almost a "cover version", although it feels a little like Metallica covering a Stooges song; a nice gesture and possibly even tolerable, but still a high-dollar attempt to simulate the no-budget raw power of the original.

Scorsese's talent is beyond debate, and his influence immeasurable. Respect!


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## charlieclouser (Nov 6, 2019)

Consona said:


> The Endgame finale is so clueless and badly structured, that when Tony dies I was like, oh thank's god it's finally over.



Yeah, I gave the MCU the old college try. I was never a comic book or video game kid, like not at all, not one bit, but I did like the first Iron Man. So that lured me in, and I watched them all - in theaters, not on my couch at home while idly scrolling through Reddit on my iPad. Every single one, in the correct order, with reserved seating in mostly empty theaters at the 10pm show on a Wednesday night so there would be no distractions. Large popcorn, large soda, Raisinets, reclining seats, no kids in the theater.... check and double-check.

So, about ten years and a dozen movies in, as the wife and I were walking out to the car after Age Of Ultron, she asked me something like, "So... was Ultron like a robot built in Tony Stark's lab but with Jarvis' AI downloaded into it, or was he like some alien being? Did Tony build him on purpose, or did some alien being infect the Jarvis AI and command the auto-assembly lab to just build him, or was he from Asgard, or what?"

And I struggled to even remember exactly what the hell I had just seen, what the actual story / explanation was behind the hailstorm of pixels that had been battering my face for the last two-plus hours. I realized I didn't actually know how to answer her question....

... and, more to the point, I didn't care.

It had exactly the same sort of effect on me that a hit of crack would, minus the addiction - exhilarating for exactly as long as it lasted, and when it was over I returned to the real world three hours older but completely unmarked, unchanged, and maybe a little disgusted with myself that I'd spent the time sucking the glass dick and listening to nonsense. Just like doing an 8-ball at some party with some randoms that I just met. Best friends for three hours, then never see or care about them again.

Contrast that to a Kubrick / Coppola / Scorsese classic, which have the same sort of effect on me as doing acid or mushrooms - almost a permanent "tinnitus of the mind", a ringing in my brain that reverberates down through the years and divides time into "before" and "after" segments, and makes me wish I could rewind back to the point before I'd seen the film so I could experience the first time all over again.

Exactly the opposite of the effect of the MCU "crack pipe", which made me wish I could rewind back to the point before I'd seen the film so I could just skip it.


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## dgburns (Nov 6, 2019)

Superhero genre is the new Spaghetti Western.

Shudder to think what comes next, after they are faded, because it might be even further away from ‘cinema’ as we know it now.

Big love for MS from me anyway...


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## synkrotron (Nov 6, 2019)

charlieclouser said:


> Wait... surely you're joking, right?



I am afraid not.



charlieclouser said:


> If those four movies you listed are the only Scorsese films you've seen, then you've missed ALL of the good ones!



Well, again, this is just personal taste.

That said, I have, for the first time in 43 years, just watched the official trailer for Taxi Driver. I may have a go at watching that one.

Goodfellas? I generally do not like gangster movies although I did enjoy Departed and Road to Perdition. I watched the trailer for Goodfellas and I've decided to pass on that one.

Casino? Nah, I'll pass on that one too.


The Irishman? Yeah, I might give that one a go.

thanks


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## Kony (Nov 6, 2019)

charlieclouser said:


> Go immediately to your preferred streaming portal and watch, in order:
> 
> Taxi Driver
> Goodfellas
> ...


And Raging Bull


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## Olfirf (Nov 6, 2019)

Guy Rowland said:


> Actually Olfirf, you advance the arguments further than Scorsese did. Because I completely agree that Jaws and Star Wars are not the same as Marval Pt 173. I just don't see him making anything close to that point - I guess the closest he comes is with Hitchcock, saying that its not the spectacle that stands up today as it once did, but the characters. And I thought "and I just bet there are many Marvel fans arguing the same thing now, it's the characters in the movies that make them great". Actually, it's ALWAYS the characters that make a film, imo.
> 
> The original wave of Blockbusters were a healthily diverse set. Space saga, superhero, WWII archaologist adventure, domestic alien, time travel caper etc. Typically these were made by highly accomplished filmakers, often have original premises, have finely polished scripts and are supremely well-crafted. It is the uninformity of experience that is the hallmark of today's choices, though even here its not quite as bleak as even I am tempted to suggest. As I look at my local 7 screen, only one is a superhero film which is the atypical Joker, so saying its ALL superhero films is definitely overstating the case.
> 
> On streaming, actually that double act of Amazon and Netflix is coming to an end. Apple TV+ has just launched, Disney is coming (more superheroes of course), Hulu, HBO, Britbox.


I agree that Scorsese's arguments are not really good ... I assume he is beating about the bush, probably just being careful not to write anything one could receive a major shit storm for in this day and age. I just appreciate an undoubtedly accomplished director to take a stance in this. 
You are also probably right in streaming being more diverse in companies than I may have put it. I am still doubtful that we will see a lot of good coming from these companies taking over the torch from the movie industry ...

I recently heard some label producers speak about the future of music industry. They showed a diagram, demonstrating that CDs had their peak in the 90ies, followed by mp3 downloads slowly taking over. But the new platform could not replace all the missing revenue from the CD age. Plus, even of the smaller revenue would go to musicians and music industry, as the cut made by companies like Apple was way bigger than distribution and production cost before.
And - as we all know - downloading mp3s was dead before it really started and was followed by streaming taking over. Again, the cut streaming platforms made increased.
Then, the more interesting part of that presentation: what can we expect for the future? Well, it might not be a surprise to everyone ... even (payed) streaming is already a decreasing model and the pop stars of tomorrow have actually little hope to gather money from releasing music. The only area, where there actually is money to be made are live performances. So, putting out an album is more likely a promotion that will cost you to advertise an upcoming tour. But there is one bigger branch to make money with music, which is advertisement - mostly of the sort you don't see it actually is, following what influencers and youtubers already do today.
So, what kind of music will be hip tomorrow, is mostly due to which music acts are going to be pushed by an industry that is actually interested in selling other products to you or making money by collecting your data. One might say, this commercialism is already present today. I agree! I am just saying, it is EVER INCREASING.
So, coming back to the future (and present) of film: I think it is quite similar to those predictions for the music industry ...
Ok, if you now think, I am all pessimistic: I understand it may appear that way, but I am not! I do think that good quality will still happen, despite all odds. But at the same time, you can clearly see those tendencies of commercialism taking over more and more, looking at the history of the film industry. That should not be ignored or shrugged away, as it is a real danger IMO.


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## MartinH. (Nov 6, 2019)

Marvel movies for me have descended from "I'm watching and enjoying pretty much all of them" to "Let's check reviews first and see if this one is worth watching", because Thor Ragnarok was soooo bad, I couldn't take it, I had to turn it off after a couple of minutes and insist we watch something else.



"Arrival" blew my mind because it had been so long that I had seen a movie with what felt like a good old traditional story arc.



josejherring said:


> My 50 inch TV can take in all of Taxi Driver. It can't take in all of Infinity War. It needs more space.



Maybe try sitting closer to it and turning the lights off?

I never understood the appeal of "cinema" because the other people in the room always annoyed me and watching at home from the comfort of my bed is prefereble to me.


I also think 3D in cinemas is an annyoing gimmick that makes immersion worse for me and harms the movies in and of themselves because it degrades some scenes to "motion rides" like in a themepark. I absolutely hated The Hobbit movies, in part because of all the 3D shit and high-framerate soap-opera effect. 




charlieclouser said:


> Taxi Driver



To be honest, I don't think that movie still works as well today if you haven't seen it at its time and it made an impression then that you can now recall the next time you see it. I did watch it a couple of years ago (first and only time I saw it) and it just didn't make the impression on me that it seemed to have made on everyone who recommended it to me. E.g. "Old Boy" (the original not the US remake) left a much much deeper impression on me, even though it's probably objectively the worse film. I just saw it first, and during a time where I was less jaded than today.


Stuff that blew me away at the time I saw them were movies like Fight Club, Cube, Event Horizon, Dark City, because I saw those without expectations and at a different time. I'm not sure any of them would still have remotely the same impact if I was seeing them now for the first time. Pandorum was pretty cool when I saw it, but it kind of is "another one of those movies". It just doesn't have the same impact after having seen "a couple like Event Horizon" (or like "Alien" or whatever).


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## Reid Rosefelt (Nov 6, 2019)

Martin Scorsese is in business with Ted Sarandos of Netflix, who, IMO more than anybody ever, has directly encouraged the destruction of the history of the cinema. I find it sad, that Scorsese, who has devoted so much of his life to preserving cinema history, doesn't see the irony.

Instead he takes a shot at Marvel movies, which have nothing to do with anything. There have always been movies like that. You could have crowdpleasers like THE TOWERING INFERNO and AIRPORT, and it had no impact at all on the films of Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, Stanley Kubrick, Sidney Lumet, Ingmar Bergman, or Scorsese himself. (Let's not forget that Scorsese, like so many, began his career working for the king of Art Cinema, Roger Corman, who set quotas about the required amount of T&A and violence in his films.)

As I have spent my entire adult life promoting the kind of "cinema" Scorsese loves, let me explain what I mean.

When I was in college, there were about 80 films by John Ford (for example) that were available for rental in 16mm for my college film society in Madison, Wisconsin. The two dozen big ones were available in 35mm. There were 20 film clubs in Madison, showing films of every type, every night of the week. Tons of silent films, and movies by obscure Hollywood and international filmmakers. Films by non-narrative directors like Stan Brakhage and Michael Snow.

When I moved to New York, there were numerous revival houses, like the Bleecker Street Cinema. Every night I was able to see a double feature of quality European or classic Hollywood films.

VHS came along. The revival houses in New York all closed. The number of film societies in this country diminished to a tiny few. Most of the companies who supplied the 16mm films, with no market, had to close.

VHS transferred maybe 30 of the John Ford films. A ton of the films regularly available for viewing disappearing during the switch from film societies and revival houses to VHS.

VHS was replaced by the DVD. An even smaller percentage of the VHS tapes were made into DVDs. But still, you could go into a video store, walk around and be exposed to all kinds of cinema on VHS and DVD. You might pick up an Adam Sandler film, but, looking around, you might be in the mood for CASABLANCA or Fellini's LA STRADA.

Netflix came around and closed all the video stores, because they had every title in any video store and thousands more. They, in fact, bought every film that was released on DVD for decent money. Which was wonderful for distributors and filmmakers. It was a boom time.

But then Netflix stopped buying all of the films. They kept cutting down the amount until it was very, very little. After killing the video stores, they started purchasing a tiny trickle of new, non-Hollywood films. If you were an American filmmaker, you lost the market of selling to stores, and the DVD market slowed down too, because people stopped looking for a particular film, as they had in the video store, and started looking only if there was something "good enough" for their Netflix queue.

It was a catastrophe. A very dark era created by Netflix's strategies. Many companies went under.

Still, those were the good old days in the destruction of film history compared to the real bloodbath of streaming. Now there are practically no old Hollywood films or international art cinema on Netflix at all.

Throughout my career as a film publicist, when I had a specific film, whether it was an Iranian film or STRANGER THAN PARADISE, DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN, or CROUCHING TIGER, I fought like hell to get as many people as possible to watch it. It doesn't mean beans to Netflix whether a single person watches THE IRISHMAN or not. The only thing that matters is if enough people keep paying the monthly fee. I will always pay that fee, and the fact that they made THE IRISHMAN does not change my mind one way or another. If somebody signs up for the first free month of Netflix just to watch THE IRISHMAN, and then cancels, that doesn't help them.

They have to hook people with a constant stream of quality shows that their computers tell them people will like, like ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK, STRANGER THINGS, BLACK MIRROR, KIMMY SCHMIDT, THE CROWN, GLOW, UNBELIEVABLE, etc. It can't ever stop. It isn't about giving people the greatest choice, but making it impossible to resist the product that their algorithms tell them to produce. They like THE END OF THE F*CKING WORLD? How about another apocalyptic teen movie, like DAYBREAK? Keep the conversation forever on the new product, in the media and social media.

Their computers tell them that their viewers would like to see THE IRISHMAN. And they would like to have an Oscar for the bragging rights. But Scorsese's film will only play a few weeks in theatres and then it is on the TV and iPad.

A lot of streaming services are being launched at the cost of tens of billions of dollars based on the large amount of content that they own. Aside from Disney, I believe they will all fail miserably. The future of cinema, is data, not content. Because the new generation raised on streaming will be overwhelmed by the selection of quality new stuff coming out every week on streaming channels (which their friends are talking about) let alone searching through the huge stockpile of the past.

If you don't think that many movie theatres aren't going to close as the process of computers deciding what gets made unfolds, you haven't been paying attention.

We are in a long process of the winnowing out of the number of movies available for us to see. Today film history only lives in torrent files and locked away in archives and libraries.

Marvel movies and Star Wars movies keep theatres in business. They are our number one hope. And as the theatres exist, then there will be places for artistic films to play. Personally I believe there will be theatres for blockbusters and Alamo type theatres for artistic. Everything else on streaming.

Scorsese is a very nice, talented man, but he should shut the fuck up about Marvel. Essentially he is insulting everybody that likes them. I can like a Marvel film, but also like PARASITE, MIDSOMAR, THE NIGHTINGALE, etc. It's not mutually exclusive. It doesn't make me a dunce or somebody who doesn't appreciate quality. Even if it's from a director who assumes that three and a half hours is the right length. 

I'm not criticizing Scorsese for working with Netflix, because streaming services are where the money is, and all the great filmmakers are going to land with one of the streaming services eventually. Until Netflix decides it's in its interest to pull the rug out from under them.

I love my subscription to Netflix. My wife and I rarely go to the movies. Too much good stuff at home and it costs a fortune to go out in New York City.


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## JohnG (Nov 6, 2019)

NoamL said:


> That's like saying all great authors dream of publishing in hardcover. As an audience I don't care. I'd much rather watch or read your story in the most convenient way. I'll read a book in paperback or even PDF.



Noam -- I usually agree with you all the way, but this is a rubbish analogy. Reading a book in paperback vs. hardback is nearly indistinguishable, whereas seeing a movie in a good-quality theatre is completely different than, say, on an iPhone. 

For a film, the sound, the immersion, the scale -- that requires a certain physical space, amplifiers and other technology to deliver the filmmakers' (and the composer's!) concept.

You could play the music we write with a piano or string quartet and it would not be the same (as well you know!) as a glorious orchestra. I think that's a closer analogue.


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## JohnG (Nov 6, 2019)

TigerTheFrog said:


> We are in a long process of the winnowing out of the number of movies available for us to see. Today film history only lives in torrent files and locked away in archives and libraries.



A very thoughtful post with lots of context. 

Also, in case people don't know, there's this subscription service which provides content not typically found elsewhere: www.criterionchannel.com It shows a lot of the movies that made me (for one) fall in love with the movies in the first place.

*But What If?*

I do wonder whether, paradoxically, streaming could conceivably re-expand to encompass more art films some day? 

In this hypothetical world, people have "seen everything" in the bang! / wham! category and start looking around for something else. Put another way, one can binge through all the Marvel movies (to pick one example) in a relatively compressed time frame. Then what? Just wait for more, or explore a bit?


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## Reid Rosefelt (Nov 6, 2019)

JohnG said:


> A very thoughtful post with lots of context.
> 
> Also, in case people don't know, there's this subscription service which provides content not typically found elsewhere: www.criterionchannel.com It shows a lot of the movies that made me (for one) fall in love with the movies in the first place.
> 
> ...


There already is a lot of the greatest classic and international movies available online if you know how to look for it. Sites like Fandor, for example.

But for example, when AT&T bought Time/Warner, one of the first things they did was close down Filmstruck, which had a niche following offered exactly that kind of film. So the Criterion collection and a lot of other great stuff were instantly homeless. (Criterion has since set up their own channel)

AT&T just didn't think there was enough money in Filmstruck. And now these phone company idiots control HBO and all the Warner Brother films from THE JOKER and WONDER WOMAN to CASABLANCA. So another issue is all these big mergers, which are slowly moving us towards a place where all the movies and TV are owned by a few companies, like Disney or AT&T. 

There are a lot of reasons why films go out of circulation, and that was true before Netflix. It can be very complicated to secure the rights to films that are sitting in studio vaults unseen because the owners don't see their value. On a smaller level, films go out of circulation because a filmmaker's surviving relatives think they can get more money--so they hold onto them.

Some of these stories are very painful to me because these departed filmmakers were people I loved. Who I spent countless nights talking about their frustration getting their films seen. And now a spouse has basically ended any hope of their movies ever seeing the light of day.

For composers, it might actually be a positive thing. Because there is going to be a ton of new content created to fill the endless needs of these streaming services. And all of those shows will need music. What kind of music they will use I have no idea.


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## synkrotron (Nov 6, 2019)

TigerTheFrog said:


> Fandor



Had a quick look at that.

My problem is, there are so many streaming services coming up that I can't justify signing up to each and every one just to catch the odd film I want to watch.

I'm old, so I really do miss the demise of the video rental outlets. I suppose you could argue that if you are watching a lot of movies then streaming could work out cheaper, but I don't watch a lot of movies.

For some of my favourite movies I will wait for the bluray to come out and drop to a "reasonable" price. DVD's just don't cut it anymore... Got a pile of DVD's and when I try to watch them on my Big Telly, sat a couple of metres away for that "cinematic experience," the quality is dire, even when upscaled.


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## givemenoughrope (Nov 6, 2019)

josejherring said:


> All 4 hrs director's cut with intermission. I was transfixed, on the edge of my chair the whole time. I thought it was the best movie ever!!!! At that time anyway. Oh man, that's CINEMA!



The first I saw it was probably the only time I've yelled out load watching a film. The climax can really get you if you are along for the ride. 

Yea, apparently there are so many different edits of it...I've seen several (I guess?) bc when you get so deep into it it really feels like a dream and you're not totally sure what has been edited. I read somewhere that although it wasn't widely a success upon release the unedited version played for about a year in Paris (or something like that). Also, Vince Gilligan made each Breaking Bad director watch it in order to capture the tone of what they were going for.


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## givemenoughrope (Nov 6, 2019)

TigerTheFrog said:


> Scorsese is a very nice, talented man, but he should shut the fuck up about Marvel. Essentially he is insulting everybody that likes them. I can like a Marvel film, but also like PARASITE, MIDSOMAR, THE NIGHTINGALE, etc. It's not mutually exclusive. It doesn't make me a dunce or somebody who doesn't appreciate quality. Even if it's from a director who assumes that three and a half hours is the right length.



I thought he went OUT OF HIS WAY to not insult people, just to say that these franchise movies are something else and they are making it so difficult for different films to be made...so difficult that he had to take Netflix money. 

I appreciate your post though. Thanks.


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## Reid Rosefelt (Nov 6, 2019)

This will be my last post on this, but Scorsese just made an art film for 140 million dollars. 

To say that Marvel movies are making it difficult for other movies to be made is such utter bullshit that it makes me want to scream. Big-budget studio movies like WOLF OF WALL STREET are being squeezed out by Marvel, yes. But not cinema. 

What Scorsese is really saying is that he wants to make studio movies like TAXI DRIVER for $100 million and those days are over. Well boo hoo. His TAXI DRIVER screenwriter Paul Schrader continues to make movies like FIRST REFORMED and they are brilliant. Just nobody is taking home $10 or $20 million dollar paychecks.

Artists will not stop making art because of comic book movies. 

Beyond his work in film preservation, Scorsese produces tons of independent films and he is a mentor to many of the best young filmmakers. A lot of the best films we see out there are due to his generosity and kindness. Lovers of cinema owe him a great debt.

But I've worked with Guillermo del Toro and he is a very similar kind of guy to Scorsese. His love for cinema is boundless as is his kindness. And I know he would never take shots at Marvel because he loves that kind of movie, and brings his own perspective to genre often.


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## Land of Missing Parts (Nov 6, 2019)

TigerTheFrog said:


> If you don't think that many movie theatres aren't going to close as the process of computers deciding what gets made unfolds, you haven't been paying attention.


You've put your finger on something I think about more and more: about computers making curating decisions for us.

I'm particularly stubborn on this point. I try my best not to let computers put _any_ suggestions in front of me. I'm not naive though; Algorithms are whispering into all of our ears.


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## JohnG (Nov 6, 2019)

Land of Missing Parts said:


> Algorithms are whispering into all of our ears.



That reminds me, HBO has added a program you might like...


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## Loïc D (Nov 6, 2019)

charlieclouser said:


> And I struggled to even remember exactly what the hell I had just seen, what the actual story / explanation was behind the hailstorm of pixels that had been battering my face for the last two-plus hours. I realized I didn't actually know how to answer her question....
> 
> ... and, more to the point, I didn't care.



Damn, I had exactly the same experience with my wife...

The argument that strikes me most in MS article is the* sheer lack of risk taking* from the studios.
Which is the root of all problems with MCU to me:
- no risk = put as many big names on the screen than we can. There were so many characters in EndGame that I wouldn't have been surprised to see Darth Vader, Snoopy or Donald Trump
- no risk = give a little background story to each character but not too much
- no risk = oh man, that's already 20mins of movie running. We need pointless saber-cut action scenes
- no risk = hey this is going gloomy. Let's put a joke out of nowhere and give 3 seconds after for the audience to laugh
- no risk = eventually heroes are heroes and foes are foes. Easy : they are ugly. Ok, let's have a brawl.
- no risk = let's put a heavy layer of CGI makeup everywhere to show our budget
- no risk = BRAAMS
=> Shake & loop all this every 25 mins.
=> End with a superbig brawl, a pinch of emotion, and a cracking joke. And teaser in end credits.

Those movies have the exact structure of fireworks.
We all enjoy fireworks and we go to watch some every year. 
It's a safe show, pleasure guaranteed with very little surprise. 
We forget them the week after.

If the studios were putting more guts into it, I'm sure MCU could be great movies. They're just too lazy. Not worth it, the cash machines is full on. And eventually, when the trend shifts, they'll produce something else.

Worst is that action movies are NOT necessarily dumb or lazy (Spielberg, Mc Tiernan and al showed the way far before as we all know & appreciate).


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## chocobitz825 (Nov 6, 2019)

TigerTheFrog said:


> Martin Scorsese is in business with Ted Sarandos of Netflix, who, IMO more than anybody ever, has directly encouraged the destruction of the history of the cinema. I find it sad, that Scorsese, who has devoted so much of his life to preserving cinema history, doesn't see the irony.
> 
> Instead he takes a shot at Marvel movies, which have nothing to do with anything. There have always been movies like that. You could have crowdpleasers like THE TOWERING INFERNO and AIRPORT, and it had no impact at all on the films of Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, Stanley Kubrick, Sidney Lumet, Ingmar Bergman, or Scorsese himself. (Let's not forget that Scorsese, like so many, began his career working for the king of Art Cinema, Roger Corman, who set quotas about the required amount of T&A and violence in his films.)
> 
> ...



I feel like this idea of movies disappearing is filtered through concept that gatekeepers still control access.

getting to a big studio is hard as it ever was, sure, but how much power do creators have now? If purely for the art and being seen, people can crowdfund a movie and have it up on Youtube right now. We can say the internet impacted music distribution in the same way, but what does it mean for a small name songwriter who can now have their music heard on SoundCloud or Spotify, instead of waiting for a label or publisher to pick up their work?

There is so much freedom for creators now if they divorce themselves from the old system of seeking corporate funding and release through the gatekeepers preferred method.

I still believe we’re more free now as creators..the only thing we lost was the perceived guarantee of a big pay day for our work.


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## rhizomusicosmos (Nov 6, 2019)

Whether they are cinematic art or not, the MCU franchise does employ a lot of people and (hopefully) pays them properly. From my perspective as someone who has only worked on independent films with tiny budgets (that are completely exhausted on the cost of equipment hire), that mitigates their shortcomings.

How many of us would leap at the chance to be involved in the next superhero blockbuster?


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## synkrotron (Nov 6, 2019)

I watched Taxi Driver


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## Thomas Kallweit (Nov 6, 2019)

NoamL said:


> Coherence (2013)
> Upstream Color (2013)
> Ex Machina (2014)
> Annihilation (2018)
> ...



Hey, thanks a lot : )

I've seen Coherence and Ex Machina, liked both.
The others are noted!

Here are my humble recommendations of some great non-block busters I liked:

Elisabeth Harvest (2018) (was inspired by Ex Machina!) SciFi-Thriller
Hevi reissu (2018) finnish Black-Metal-Comedy
The killing of a sacred deer (2017) Thriller
Marrowbone (2017) spanish horror
Don’t Breathe (2016) Horror
The eyes of my mother (2016) Horror
Ethel and Ernest (2016) Animation
Die letzte Sau (2016) german tragicomedy
El Clan (2015) argentinian crime story
Hrútar (2015) icelandic drama
Enklave (2015) Kosovo civil war drama
Reality (2014) absurd comedy-drama
Still life (2013) Drama


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## Thomas Kallweit (Nov 6, 2019)

And sorry to interrupt with this.

Very interesting read the whole thread is to me, as being a movie-fan for a long time. Without any insight into the internal processes. But having read some of them this could make me frightened, but .... that's economy.

I still refuse to use netflix or other streaming services and I'm glad there are still BluRays and DVDs (and the local library which has lots of good movies and still gets new ones). 
Though I know that this market is getting smaller. And I don't like the idea to depend on a streaming service. With all those AI-suggestions as we have gotten familiar with since youtube or other sites.
But so it goes.


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## synkrotron (Nov 6, 2019)

Thomas Kallweit said:


> But so it goes.



Exactly...


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## charlieclouser (Nov 6, 2019)

NoamL said:


> What I got from the trailer is that _Joker_ wants to be seen as risky and groundbreaking. But as people have already pointed out in this thread, _Taxi Driver_ got there thirty years earlier...



It does want to be seen that way, but I thought Joker was just plain a good film. I don't give a rat's about the backstory of some comic book character, and Joker doesn't shove that down your throat too much at all. It's a dark story about the downward spiral of a pained character.

Even if you've never heard of Batman or whatever, I think it works as a standalone film - Joaquin's performance is fantastic, the story is layered and compelling, and there's a real arc there (although it's a downward-pointing arc!). The cinematography, art direction, and score are all very good, and it's got plenty of "grit" on the screen, both visually and plot-wise - kind of the same flavor of grit that Se7en had.

The only place where it's not at the top of my list is in the casting of supporting characters. They're serviceable but mostly unremarkable. That's where guys like Scorsese and (sometimes) Fincher get the nod - even the minor characters who don't speak a single line are intriguing and interesting, like the hoods who throw Nicky and Dominic into the hole at the end of Casino, "this Mormon fuck right here" John Nance, or all those "box manager, floor manager" types at the casino (and of course Don Rickles as the mostly-silent casino manager) - their look and bearing takes you right into the time and place and they feel "legit" and make the whole film feel very authentic. Joker didn't have that.

But I still enjoyed it and would watch again. The score was pretty great too, and a welcome change from the usual try-too-hard, epic / thematic stuff you often hear in DCU/MCU movies.


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## NoamL (Nov 6, 2019)

I'll check it out eventually for the score, really liked HG's work on_ Chernobyl. _


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## Eric G (Nov 6, 2019)

WOW...SOME of you guys need to really get out of this forum (and off your HIGH HORSE) and actually listen to the millions of people around the globe that love MCU movies (23 in 10 years making over $20+ Billion).

Just go to youtube and watch average GROWN ADULTS reviewing Avengers Endgame for example. Watch an overwhelming amount of them get emotional about the characters and what happens to them. Watch them cry and tell me these movies haven't had an impact and don't matter or are not CINEMA. Perhaps its YOU that doesn't know what CINEMA is. I mean these are the folks paying good money to go see these movies. And that is why you make movies RIGHT, for REAL Average people to see them RIGHT?

Also, Many of them adore the SOUNDTRACK made by SILVESTRI and the emotions he helped evoke during certain SCENES in the movies. He has scored more than one MCU movie and SILVESTRI is not a HACK. YES he was paid but I don't think he was EMBARASSED to SCORE these movies.


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## JohnG (Nov 6, 2019)

chocobitz825 said:


> I feel like this idea of movies disappearing is filtered through concept that gatekeepers still control access.



I mean this in the friendliest way, but do you actually work in this business? Because the cost to release a movie theatrically has leapt and leapt. They are spending $50-100 million (sometimes more) on releases now.

Consequently, the "gatekeepers" are certainly in place if you want to make even a small-budget movie, if you want it in theatres. With a Big Orchestra included.



chocobitz825 said:


> getting to a big studio is hard as it ever was, sure, but how much power do creators have now? If purely for the art and being seen, people can crowdfund a movie and have it up on Youtube right now.



I don't think it's even remotely conceivable to crowd fund enough to make (and, more importantly, release) a 90-120 minute movie; even something like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," with no need for CGI and all that. You still have to pay the actors and feed everyone, and then there's distribution.

(And don't forget the enormous orchestra....)



chocobitz825 said:


> We can say the internet impacted music distribution in the same way, but what does it mean for a small name songwriter who can now have their music heard on SoundCloud or Spotify, instead of waiting for a label or publisher to pick up their work?
> 
> There is so much freedom for creators now if they divorce themselves from the old system of seeking corporate funding and release through the gatekeepers preferred method.



For a song, sure. For a 30 minute orchestral piece? That's several orders of magnitude more.



chocobitz825 said:


> I still believe we’re more free now as creators..the only thing we lost was the perceived guarantee of a big pay day for our work.



But without the payday (lots of them, actually, one after another for quite some time), it's hard to get really good at anything, even if you turn your back on having and supporting a family. Whether you're an accountant or a painter or a composer, it takes most people many years to achieve something that is both artistically worthwhile and original.

I know the pages of history reveal a handful of savants who seemed to need no training at all, but for the vast majority of people, it takes 10-20 years or more to learn what you need to know and to have the experience to make it happen.


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## JohnG (Nov 6, 2019)

Eric G said:


> millions of people around the globe that love MCU movies



Millions of people around the globe eat at McDonalds too; that doesn't mean it should be the only choice. I think that's what MS is worried about. If even HE can't get funding for a somewhat-daring theatrical picture, then who can?

One of my friends, a clever guy with a double first at Cambridge, used to scorn reading anything written before 1950. Having been raised by professors, I suggested this was robbing him of some rich experiences.

Finally, he was persuaded (not by me) to try a book written hundreds of years ago that people generally regard as a classic (not some stuck-up classic, but a book people enjoy). He couldn't believe it -- how good it was.

So that's my beef too. I don't mind going on a roller-coaster sometimes but I like to read Hardy, or a Booker Prize shortlisted book, or "Arrival" or even a comedy that's pushing things a little -- something that is at least _trying_ to work a bit on what it's like to struggle through life.


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## Eric G (Nov 6, 2019)

JohnG said:


> Millions of people around the globe eat at McDonalds too; that doesn't mean it should be the only choice. I think that's what MS is worried about. If even HE can't get funding for a somewhat-daring theatrical picture, then who can?
> 
> One of my friends, a clever guy with a double first at Cambridge, used to scorn reading anything written before 1950. Having been raised by professors, I suggested this was robbing him of some rich experiences.
> 
> ...



Yeah well, his ideas of CINEMA have to compete in the market of ideas just like everyone else. Maybe his ideas are not good enough to be funded to appear in 4000 theaters anymore. That's why he went to a different channel like Netflix. The new bastion of great creative movies.


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## Guy Rowland (Nov 6, 2019)

I do have a fair bit of sympathy with your view Eric, even though I personally am uninterested in superhero flicks, but lose a bit of sympathy when you say his Scorsese's aren't "good enough" to appear in 4000 seaters. That's just silly.

Someone somewhere made the very good point that the MCU actually increasingly resembles the likes of Game Of Thrones, more than other movies. I agree with you that fans are totally invested in character, and that is in part because the characters can develop over many many hours, a function of the form of TV series more than movies.

Maybe this is what Scorsese was getting at... probably not, but IMO its a better argument than the one he makes.


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## chocobitz825 (Nov 7, 2019)

JohnG said:


> I mean this in the friendliest way, but do you actually work in this business? Because the cost to release a movie theatrically has leapt and leapt. They are spending $50-100 million (sometimes more) on releases now.
> 
> Consequently, the "gatekeepers" are certainly in place if you want to make even a small-budget movie, if you want it in theatres. With a Big Orchestra included.
> 
> ...



but you’re still quoting an old standard. Yes movies take a lot of money to make. what’s changed though are the options for how to make those movies. What I see is people losing sight of the art and instead focusing on fulfilling some dream fantasy.

“I want my movie shot on x camera, and shown in the best theaters with a huge budget, a red carpet event and a massive payday! I want a full orchestra and a score by my idol!”

you don’t need to follow the tradition to make a great movie. We have so many new tools and platforms that allow innovative folks to do impressive things for a fraction of the cost. I’m not saying you can make a Scorsese style film on iPhones (though maybe some creative person will someday), but what I am saying is, if we are unwilling to compromise, that makes us look foolish. If you want studio money, you play by studio rules and their trends and their opinions and their decision to promote or not promote films comes with the package. 

If you want to take full control of your vision, there are some things you have to change about how you make it, but a creative mind finds a way...

I think Danny Elfman said something like that recently....


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## Kony (Nov 7, 2019)

JohnG said:


> for a somewhat-daring theatrical picture


Not sure if one can classify The Irishman as daring. Essentially, it's Scorsese teaming up with his old actor buddies to retread old ground - ie gangsters, mob violence etc. Nothing new or daring there really - and this may be why there's a lack of studio interest. Not a case of whether he's good at his craft but whether there is a demand.

I actually agree with both sides of this discussion - and enjoy Marvel movies as much as watching Cyrano De Bergerac/Manon Des Sources etc - but just offering another potential reason why Scorsese struggled to get this movie made.

MS also sounds like he's saying "movies used to be better in my day" - and motivated to criticise movies that do well today because he hasn't moved with the times and still offering the same tired formula which becomes boring after all these years. Having said that, I am a hypocrite and will probably watch The Irishman 10-20 times, just not at the cinema.


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## borisb2 (Nov 7, 2019)

JohnG said:


> They are spending $50-100 million (sometimes more) on releases now.


I worked on endgame (vfx though) .. they said the budget for marketing was as big as the budget for making the film (+150-200 mio each)


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## KallumS (Nov 7, 2019)

NoamL said:


> I'll check it out eventually for the score, really liked HG's work on_ Chernobyl. _



I'm watching that at the moment, the soundtrack is fantastically interesting!


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## Guy Rowland (Nov 7, 2019)

chocobitz825 said:


> We have so many new tools and platforms that allow innovative folks to do impressive things for a fraction of the cost.



This is analogous to music. The democratisation of the tools has given rise to a new problem - being swamped with content. There are literally thousands of movies "released" every year, the figure is likely thousands a month actually. Aspiring filmmakers from all over the world making things microbudget, and some of them will be really good. But the problem is that no-one will ever be even aware of even 1% of them.

It's all about the marketing, and that's why 50% of a budget is spent on it. The gatekeepers still exist, in effect.


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## GtrString (Nov 7, 2019)

Guy Rowland said:


> This is analogous to music.
> 
> It's all about the marketing, and that's why 50% of a budget is spent on it. The gatekeepers still exist, in effect.



Yeah, it's really interesting that the most obvious tools we have access to, isn't taken advantage of. Everyone have the means to self-publish and market their own products, yet publishers, middlemen and gatekeepers have the time of their life, skimming rights and money from creative content creators.

That marketing 50% is the next level battleground!


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## chocobitz825 (Nov 7, 2019)

Guy Rowland said:


> This is analogous to music. The democratisation of the tools has given rise to a new problem - being swamped with content. There are literally thousands of movies "released" every year, the figure is likely thousands a month actually. Aspiring filmmakers from all over the world making things microbudget, and some of them will be really good. But the problem is that no-one will ever be even aware of even 1% of them.
> 
> It's all about the marketing, and that's why 50% of a budget is spent on it. The gatekeepers still exist, in effect.



Creators are not entitled to an audience. This is that murky BS that creators keeps indulging in lately. That’s why I hate these arguments criticizing the quality of one thing as not being “real art” but clever marketing, and real art being suffocated by a lack of marketing. Are you doing art or the business of art?

First of all, be honest. the fact that 1% of people won’t experience real art doesn’t diminish its value as art. There’s also no way to predict which art will reach the masses until it’s created, and given the chance to be experienced. How much art never made waves until the creators were long dead and gone? This sense of entitlement to exposure is ridiculous. Just because it’s art doesn’t mean it’s pop culture. Just because something is pop culture, doesn’t mean it’s not art. People need to stop shitting on media because they’re mad that they’re not more popular themselves.

Many have said it, Scorsese’s work stands the test of time. Academics will discuss it and people will talk about his influence for decades to come. it doesn’t matter if he has a wide release or not. For aspiring filmmakers there are film festivals, and streaming services, and YouTube and a number of platforms to try and have their media seen. Because 1% of people seeing their art online today is probably more than what we had when your only hope was to be screened in a theater or local community hall that had a projector. Anybody’s art has the potential to be experienced now, and the ability to influence and become a classic without the gatekeepers. There are documentaries on YouTube more thought provoking than things on network television. There are short movies filmed on new media hitting film festivals and being acknowledged. Creatives are not being strangled, they’re being handed a life line and yet they still insist they're drowning.

All art has the same problem right now and that’s the difficulty in getting exposure to the masses, but we have the tools to do that better than any previous generation. Scorsese only confirms that by doing a movie with Netflix.


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## Guy Rowland (Nov 7, 2019)

I'm not qutie sure what the point we're debating now, Choco - you were the one who said Scorsese's films weren't "good enough" for a mass market, which which you now seem to have countered by your own argument.

Exposure has always been a battle, now its a much bigger one - time was when only a handful of films were released per week of any budget. Making any kind of movie was extremely difficult. Its still no picnic today, but clearly many of the challanges have diminished to the point where we're over-saturated. So it's not accurate to say nothing has changed.

The Wolf Of Wall St cost $100m to make, and made $392 at the Box Office (just theatrical release here, remember). Interesting to compare and contrast with Gravity, whcih cost $100m to make, and made $700m at the Box Office. Both original crowd-pleasesers by auteurs. Cuaron wanted to make a more personal film next, and chose Netflix to make Roma, just as Scorsese has chosen The Irishman. However, perhaps the difference between those two is that Roma on paper was a far riskier bet - 3 hour foreign language story of a domestic help in Mexico in black and white. The Irishman - or what I know of it - is exactly the kind of film a big studio would have thrown their weight behind 30 years ago, as they did The Wolf Of Wall St.

But in this, I'm broadly with you. Boo hoo - he had to make it through Netflix. And demonstrably, the studios will still back original and risky premises when they can project the possible rewards - neither Gravity nor Wall St were slam dunks.

Actually where I've been disappointed with Netflix is that their own quality control when making movies is all over the place. For every Roma or The Irishman there are a dozen insipid genre pictures with no distinguishing characteristics other than they are forgettable. I endured an absolutely dire time travel film called See You Yesterday. The script, acting and direction were barely of film student standard, and I couldn't fathom how it ever got made. There are so many talented young filmmakers out there with original ideas, tens of thousands of original screenplays of real merit and quality yet they make far too many duds. I'm concerned "A Netflix Movie" will become tarnished with the same brush as "direct to video", which absolutely needn't be the case


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## chocobitz825 (Nov 7, 2019)

Guy Rowland said:


> I'm not qutie sure what the point we're debating now, Choco - you were the one who said Scorsese's films weren't "good enough" for a mass market, which which you now seem to have countered by your own argument.
> 
> Exposure has always been a battle, now its a much bigger one - time was when only a handful of films were released per week of any budget. Making any kind of movie was extremely difficult. Its still no picnic today, but clearly many of the challanges have diminished to the point where we're over-saturated. So it's not accurate to say nothing has changed.
> 
> ...



sorry, typing while traveling. in the case of Scorsese, it’s easy to say that his movies are often film culture, but not always pop culture.

your point about Netflix becoming like “direct to video” is a part where I think we have to adjust our expectations. The platform and medium should not, and can not guarantee the quality of the art. To say that Netflix should only do “good film” is demanding that Netflix become another gatekeeper concerned only with quality and/or profit. The fact that their profit is not necessarily dependent upon quality can be a potential positive. It sucks to see what we think is a bad movie, but our ability to see even bad movies on netflix is a good thing for creators. It means even the riskier ones, or less mainstream ones have a shot. I mean, most of Adam sandlers films from his deal were just awful imo, but fans of that style got to see movies that would have never made it to theater. Ive seen documentaries and foreign films I’d never have access to in my market here in Japan because of Netflix. Some good, some terrible...some not good but actually better than reviews said. Almost all one's that could never get theatrical release here.

if we really want to encourage the most artistically open and abundant generation ever, we have to stop demanding a certain kind of media only be allowed. All art, good and bad should be allowed to breathe. Some will be hugely popular, and some will be obscure, but so long as we have open platforms and options for getting those films out to the public, we should celebrate the results.

over-saturation is not necessarily indicative of the diminished quality of art. It’s just the realization of how much art is actually out there, both good and bad.


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## Guy Rowland (Nov 7, 2019)

Choco, broadly I disagree. If the ratio of good / bad Netflix Original movies is 1:1, that's fine. But if it is 1:10, you will start to ignore the releases all together and worse devalue the brand. If Netflix starts to get assosciated with bargain basement, its in trouble - especially with its Disney content having left it.

Of course good / bad places no restrictions on genre - horror, rom-com, sci-fi, whatever. Just make it good at what it does. Also - crucially in this context - good doesn't mean highbrow. Make a ton of crowd-pleasers in the overall mix alongside arthouse, Korean etc. Just make as many of them as possible good is all I ask. I'd have thought that was fairly uncontentious as an aspiration at least, as opposed to "throw enough at the wall and some of it will stick".

I think actually this is the great value of The Irishman and Roma to Netflix - its a counter to the dross in terms of public perception and brand value.


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## chocobitz825 (Nov 7, 2019)

Guy Rowland said:


> Choco, broadly I disagree. If the ratio of good / bad Netflix Original movies is 1:1, that's fine. But if it is 1:10, you will start to ignore the releases all together and worse devalue the brand. If Netflix starts to get assosciated with bargain basement, its in trouble - especially with its Disney content having left it.
> 
> Of course good / bad places no restrictions on genre - horror, rom-com, sci-fi, whatever. Just make it good at what it does. Also - crucially in this context - good doesn't mean highbrow. Make a ton of crowd-pleasers in the overall mix alongside arthouse, Korean etc. Just make as many of them as possible good is all I ask. I'd have thought that was fairly uncontentious as an aspiration at least, as opposed to "throw enough at the wall and some of it will stick".
> 
> I think actually this is the great value of The Irishman and Roma to Netflix - its a counter to the dross in terms of public perception and brand value.



1:1, 1:10, or whatever is not an objective fact. It's your opinion of the quality of the content. People keep saying they need to protect their brand by putting out "good" content, but thats an ideological slippery slope for a business that always leads back to the inevitable. Good = Profitable. 

Your fatigue as an individual can be remedied by the thing people keep saying they hate. Algorithms that cater to your tastes, or otherwise, the manual approach of trial and error. Either one of them works. if we want the freedom for art to be seen on various platforms, quantity is the game for streaming media. It works against us when we encourage them to determine what quality is for us because what they deem quality might not at all be based on the values we consider paramount. 


just a side note:
I'll admit, my perspective has been drastically impacted by my experience in music having to listen to thousands of classic songs, and unreleased songs for new artists, while also monitoring various streaming audio platforms every year. The amount of music in the world, released and unreleased is exhausting. My experience left me feeling that most music is derivative and that some of the most unique stuff, no one has ever heard. The beauty of streaming music is that now, all those gold nuggets are available, but you have to search for them. You have to dig through a lot of crap to get there, but its finally there for everyone. Equal access. 

All the charts are still populated by the common pop dribble, but if you're dedicated to quality, we live in an age where it's easier now to find it. I can listen to a no-name band's demo tape, from half a world away, instead of it being some limited print that I'd never get my hands-on. I can watch an incredible indie movie or documentary, that otherwise would have likely died off in some small film festival I didn't attend. For a lot of these movies, these rare gems, if we couldn't see them on streaming platforms, realistically, where could see them in a non-digital age? In the current climate, what would have happened to The Irishman?


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## Guy Rowland (Nov 7, 2019)

I think this tangent has probably run its course.


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## JohnG (Nov 7, 2019)

chocobitz825 said:


> but you’re still quoting an old standard.



Baloney. It costs a fortune to release a movie wide. If you think "if only I'm creative enough, the world will beat a path to my door!" I'd say you're naive.

And what if they do? What if you're like Gagnam Style and for whatever reason, you get a billion views on Youtube? Unless you're set ahead of time to monetise that, you've mostly provided free entertainment to a lot of people. I've seen one NYT estimate that he made $2 million. A hit like that, if we were in the olden days, would have made 5-20x that much. 

So yes, things have changed; as someone predicted 20 years ago, we're getting digital pennies compared with the old analogue dollars.

*Money = Access = Sustainability*

If you want a life devoted to creating great films, or great symphonies, and you want to have a lot of people hear / see them, it still costs money. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars / pounds to hire a great orchestra, record them, get the parts copied, pay the studio -- all of that. It also costs money to sustain an artistic existence, especially if you don't want to live like a monk and / or have others who depend on you for sustenance.

What I thought I would be able to live on at 21 turned out to be a fraction of what it turns out you need when you have children and all that. Yes, you can live like a monk. But I don't wanna.


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## chocobitz825 (Nov 7, 2019)

JohnG said:


> Baloney. It costs a fortune to release a movie wide. If you think "if only I'm creative enough, the world will beat a path to my door!" I'd say you're naive.
> 
> And what if they do? What if you're like Gagnam Style and for whatever reason, you get a billion views on Youtube? Unless you're set ahead of time to monetise that, you've mostly provided free entertainment to a lot of people. I've seen one NYT estimate that he made $2 million. A hit like that, if we were in the olden days, would have made 5-20x that much.
> 
> ...



I 100% agree. We're in the same boat. Making a living off of the entertainment business as people did 20 years ago is pretty much impossible. What you're talking about is business, not art. If you want to make money, you have to do your business well. Part of that is making the product that sells because as I'm sure you know, it doesn't matter if you throw millions into a project if it's not marketable and profitable. All of us doing this professional, bend our art to the needs of the business. So when our priority is profit, and sustainability, we don't get to bitch about artistic integrity and purity.

Scorsese framed his argument as something about artistic integrity, when the only real factor is, someone made a more profitable brand than his right now. Tough shit.


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## Reid Rosefelt (Nov 7, 2019)

Alexandre said:


> OMG! So much ESSENTIAL INFO in these lines! Thank you so much for such pro insights even if it does feel like a cold shower in the middle of winter...


I think great Cinema will always survive the vagaries of the movie business just like great music will always survive the music business. People need to make art and somehow it gets through. 

There is a link to a lot of these posts by the way, in that Scorsese was involved in the restoration of ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. He introduced an expanded cut I saw at the New York Film Festival. 

I only went to Scorsese's place once in my life long ago, when I was in my twenties. He was kind enough to invite me after a screening along with others who were there. The first record he put on when he got home was the "Once Upon a Time in the West" soundtrack, which made me like him even more than I already did. 

I also met Leone once, if you can believe that (I can't) when he was in New York to make ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. Nothing to report, but I did shake the hand of the man who made my favorite film.


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## Loïc D (Nov 7, 2019)

TigerTheFrog said:


> I only went to Scorsese's place once in my life long ago, when I was in my twenties.


Wait wait wait, you mean that you're NOT actually a frog ???

ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. Ha, this movie breaks me. He's on my top 3 list. And the music, the music...

Speaking of art vs mass culture vs pop culture, I see a director who breaks all barriers : MIYAZAKI Hayao. (Personally, his movies are heart-breaking).

His long time buddy TAKAHATA Isao was a genius too.
_When you look at BBCSO taking all RAM on your PC, you can either pick "Grave of The Fireflies" (to see what true despair is) or "Pompoko" (to cheer up)._


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## Reid Rosefelt (Nov 7, 2019)

LowweeK said:


> Wait wait wait, you mean that you're NOT actually a frog ???
> 
> ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. Ha, this movie breaks me. He's on my top 3 list. And the music, the music...
> 
> ...



You might be happy to hear that WarnerMedia bought all the Studio Ghibli movies for their new HBO MAX streaming channel. Those films have been out of streaming circulation for a while. 

PS Of course I'm a frog. Scorsese is not a speciesist.


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## Pier (Nov 7, 2019)

JohnG said:


> And if you’re going to tell me that it’s simply a matter of supply and demand and giving the people what they want, I’m going to disagree. It’s a chicken-and-egg issue. If people are given only one kind of thing and endlessly sold only one kind of thing, of course they’re going to want more of that one kind of thing.



It's exactly a matter of supply and demand. The majority of people that want to go to the theater prefer to watch entertainment instead of art. Scorsese argues that consumers prefer entertainment because they have no choice, but consumers have been choosing for decades with their wallets.

Personally I generally enjoy Marvel movies, I even love a couple of those and own them in 4K Bluray, but it's clear to me these are not art.


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## Jimmy Hellfire (Nov 7, 2019)

Pier Bover said:


> It's exactly a matter of supply and demand. The majority of people that want to go to the theater prefer to watch entertainment instead of art. Scorsese argues that consumers prefer entertainment because they have no choice, but consumers have been choosing for decades with their wallets.



From my experience, people will go to see whatever there is to see at a given moment - or more precisely, what they were told that they're supposed to want to see. That's a big factor. I know several people who went to see that last big Marvel movie (whatever it's called) - you know, the one that's so awesome and everyone needed to see - not because they're particularly into Marvel, or superheroes in general, but because that was the movie to watch at that time. That's how that works.

The whole "supply and demand" is a funny little thing, because it's always misunderstood. The demand and supply are created from the same source, that's the trick.


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## GtrString (Nov 7, 2019)

I think it’s a zeitgeist thing also.. when the world feels dark and heavy, people want entertainment, and when the world feels nice and light, they want art to give it more depth.

The geist right now is pretty dark, imo.


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## Pier (Nov 8, 2019)

Jimmy Hellfire said:


> From my experience, people will go to see whatever there is to see at a given moment - or more precisely, what they were told that they're supposed to want to see. That's a big factor. I know several people who went to see that last big Marvel movie (whatever it's called) - you know, the one that's so awesome and everyone needed to see - not because they're particularly into Marvel, or superheroes in general, but because that was the movie to watch at that time. That's how that works.
> 
> The whole "supply and demand" is a funny little thing, because it's always misunderstood. The demand and supply are created from the same source, that's the trick.



Some people do want to see what's popular (or what is announced as popular) but I doubt this is actually the majority.


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## Jimmy Hellfire (Nov 8, 2019)

Pier Bover said:


> Some people do want to see what's popular (or what is announced as popular) but I doubt this is actually the majority.



It doesn't happen consciously. It's just how it works. You don't ask people what they need. You give them choices so they can pick one - provide the idea of agency. That's why the most powerful thing in capitalism is marketing. It's all about creating needs and demands to exploit. I'm not saying this is categorically bad, but that's how it works. You let people know that the flavor of the decade is Marvel, and Marvel they want.


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## YaniDee (Nov 8, 2019)

If you have ZERO interest in Super Hero, Fantasy , never ending StarWars movies, or comedies with chipmunks and / or a lot of farting and vomiting, you're out of luck these days..


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## chocobitz825 (Nov 8, 2019)

YaniDee said:


> If you have ZERO interest in Super Hero, Fantasy , never ending StarWars movies, or comedies with chipmunks and / or a lot of farting and vomiting, you're out of luck these days..



When was cinema better?


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## Markus Kohlprath (Nov 8, 2019)

Alexandre said:


> OMG! So much ESSENTIAL INFO in these lines! Thank you so much for such pro insights even if it does feel like a cold shower in the middle of winter...


This is really interesting. I always wondered why I never and I literally mean it never found a film I searched in netflix because of my interest, be it because of the score or a particular style. If you want to watch the films that morricone scored and study his development a netflix abo doesn’t help at all. You can only watch what is suggested by them or what is talked about somewhere. Not that it’s not entertaining or always bad quality but I feel completely dependent on what they want or do not want you to offer.


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## chocobitz825 (Nov 9, 2019)

Markus Kohlprath said:


> This is really interesting. I always wondered why I never and I literally mean it never found a film I searched in netflix because of my interest, be it because of the score or a particular style. If you want to watch the films that morricone scored and study his development a netflix abo doesn’t help at all. You can only watch what is suggested by them or what is talked about somewhere. Not that it’s not entertaining or always bad quality but I feel completely dependent on what they want or do not want you to offer.



So I just tried to sign up for Criterion Channel and found out it's not available in my region of Japan. I think people forget that this is part of the reason why Netflix had to move away from Hollywood films and start putting out its own content. Its a surface available around the world and not being able to provide the same content across different regions is a mess. Hulu in Japan is terrible. It has practically nothing that American Hulu provides and mostly ends up with a patchwork of local stuff from one network alone, and some random BBC and HBO content. The globalization of content is a major factor in the decisions of these big businesses. Guess in the meantime ill have to search elsewhere for classic film.


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## Consona (Nov 11, 2019)

Eric G said:


> WOW...SOME of you guys need to really get out of this forum (and off your HIGH HORSE) and actually listen to the millions of people around the globe that love MCU movies (23 in 10 years making over $20+ Billion).









Speaking for myself, I saw nearly every MCU film at the cinema. And I thought MCU was heavily over-rated nearly a decade before Scorsese's comments. I don't care how many people love MCU and how much money those films made. Those things don't constitute my enjoyment and experience of the films and people should stop using these non-arguments when speaking about the quality of those films (it's used over and over again everywhere I go).

I don't agree with Scorsese that MCU is not cinema, I agree that it's a theme park franchise. I disagree about Copolla's MCU films are despicable, but they are not exceptional either.



Eric G said:


> Just go to youtube and watch average GROWN ADULTS reviewing Avengers Endgame for example. Watch an overwhelming amount of them get emotional about the characters and what happens to them. Watch them cry and tell me these movies haven't had an impact and don't matter or are not CINEMA. Perhaps its YOU that doesn't know what CINEMA is. I mean these are the folks paying good money to go see these movies.


People cried when Stalin died. (What a counter-argument, jeez. ) People cry when watching football... or some b-movie romantic comedy or a telenovela or, whatever, again, not a measure of anything.

You know what's a fricking filmmaking feat? Not making you cry after seeing a character dying after spending 11 years with him, but Jackson making me cry when some nobody anonymous barely visible guys are lighting the beacons in The Two Towers!  That's something amazing.



Eric G said:


> And that is why you make movies RIGHT, for REAL Average people to see them RIGHT?


If you are Disney... It's basically their company motto.

So glad people like Nolan or Snyder exist, who don't aim at average. (Plus it's not only the average, but Disney must also appease and satisfy big different culture markets like China.)

They disneyfied the Marvel comics characters for MCU. Then they disneyfied some of those disneyfied versions again in Ragnarok and again in Endgame.  I prefer Fox X-men Marvel characters to MCU Marvel characters. And films as well, Days of Future Past, Logan or Deadpool 2 were better than anything from MCU. So bad Disney's bought Fox. Another standardization and disneyfication ahead.



Eric G said:


> Also, Many of them adore the SOUNDTRACK made by SILVESTRI and the emotions he helped evoke during certain SCENES in the movies. He has scored more than one MCU movie and SILVESTRI is not a HACK. YES he was paid but I don't think he was EMBARASSED to SCORE these movies.


He also scored My Stepmother is an Alien.



*ba dum tsss*


I don't think anybody accused him of being _a HACK_...


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## Eric G (Nov 13, 2019)

Consona said:


> Speaking for myself, I saw nearly every MCU film at the cinema. And I thought MCU was heavily over-rated nearly a decade before Scorsese's comments. I don't care how many people love MCU and how much money those films made. Those things don't constitute my enjoyment and experience of the films and people should stop using these non-arguments when speaking about the quality of those films (it's used over and over again everywhere I go).
> 
> I don't agree with Scorsese that MCU is not cinema, I agree that it's a theme park franchise. I disagree about Copolla's MCU films are despicable, but they are not exceptional either.
> 
> ...



I was entertained by your response (I mean every YAHOO has their own OPINION Right?) up to the point when you said you preferred the Fox X-Men and that Snyder made above average films.You have disqualified yourself from any further serious thought.


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## cqd (Nov 13, 2019)

I'd just have to wonder about fully grown ass adults going to superhero movies..


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## Bollen (Nov 13, 2019)

I have always believed those who love and care for "art" are the ones that keep it alive and pass it on from generation to generation. True, things cost money, but at the same time I am enjoying more of the "content" I like than ever before in my forty...(cough!) years of life. I would've killed to have YouTube when I was in my study years, I have never had access to so many avant-garde composers and concerts. And for my "arty" films, since they shut down LoveFilm, the pirate sites seem to have an ever expanding catalogue of the classics... !

Life always find a balance and I am yet to see an algorithm on anything, from shopping to music & films, to understands my taste at all!


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## chocobitz825 (Nov 13, 2019)

cqd said:


> I'd just have to wonder about fully grown ass adults going to superhero movies..



yeah!! As ridiculous as those crazy adults going to see Star Wars. That movie series has been, and will always be, for kids.

grow up! Right?

Although...if no adults go and see those films...that means there are tons of theaters filled with unattended minors watching violent fantasy films.......


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## Jimmy Hellfire (Nov 14, 2019)

cqd said:


> I'd just have to wonder about fully grown ass adults going to superhero movies..



I do wonder that there seem to be so many. I guess it just generally shows the current clear preference for frothy entertainment and escapism.


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## Reid Rosefelt (Nov 16, 2019)

Why don't we let Werner Herzog chime in on whether blockbuster movies are truly cinema?

"It's all cinema. Let's face it. I love both sides of the fence."

Warning: there are spoilers to "The Mandalorian" in the linked article.









The ‘Mandalorian’ Moment That Caused Werner Herzog to Call His Bosses “Cowards”


Producers Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni drew laughs at a ‘Star Wars’ event when recalling the actor’s reaction to a particular choice on set.




www.hollywoodreporter.com


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## Bollen (Nov 18, 2019)

TigerTheFrog said:


> Why don't we let Werner Herzog chime in on whether blockbuster movies are truly cinema?
> 
> "It's all cinema. Let's face it. I love both sides of the fence."
> 
> ...


I've never been interested in Star Wars, but now that Werner is involved well... I'm just gonna have to watch it!


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## Mike Fox (Nov 18, 2019)

cqd said:


> I'd just have to wonder about fully grown ass adults going to superhero movies..



I grew up reading X-Men comics. I was a die hard fan. Truthfully, it was an escape from my dysfunctional home life (i had an abusive step-father and a mentally unstable mother). X-Men comics were my escape from that reality, and i think it really prevented me from going down some dark paths, as silly as that may sound. 

That was a long time ago, but I'll always have a certain soft spot for that franchise. I've seen just about every X-Men film in theaters, and will continue to do so.


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