One of our writers weighs in on the ongoing debate about the need for more Marvel movies…
Recently, Martin Scorsese, director of films including Taxi Driver, Goodfellas and now The Irishman, said that Marvel films are “not cinema”, instead likening them to roller-coaster rides. He added that: “It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”
He was later joined by The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola, who went even further and dubbed them “despicable”. It’s worth mentioning that not everyone agrees with Scorsese, least of all Robert Downey Jr. and James Gunn. However, his remark poses two questions: are the Marvel films good cinema, and have we reached the point where there are too many?
It’s definitely easy to understand why people might be getting frustrated with Marvel films. We’ve seen the superhero behemoth reign in cinema for a decade with the MCU, and even longer with its predecessors such Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, Christopher Nolan’s Batman – and I think it’s safe to say that no-one really wants to think about the Daredevil film more than they have to.
The MCU originally challenged these films, giving a new fun and polished feel to the genre. Iron-Man, Avengers: Assemble and Guardians of the Galaxy were all smash hits, and rightly so. They were exceptional when they were released and still stand up now, but as the years have rolled by, we’ve started to see a formula emerging that these films all follow.
What was once fresh and exciting is now predictable and tiresome. Avengers: Endgame, which many fans loved, for me felt a little too safe. It didn’t take real risks, ask serious questions of its characters and ultimately just came to the conclusion we were kind of all expecting when we sat down to watch it.
One big character death, everyone else gets a happy ending but we’re not doing the Avengers anymore and here are all the new people for the next set of films. There was no real finality. It was meant to be the end of an era, but it just felt like a full stop in a paragraph that’s already gone on way too long.
This, I think, comes down to the writing of these films. They are formulaic, with Marvel writers taking their characters from joke to joke, with a few fights, one ‘emotional’ moment where the hero supposedly improves or grows but actually barely changes before defeating the ‘Big Bad’.
Guardians of the Galaxy 2 sums this up perfectly for me. Instead of building on what the first film built – a strong team of heroes ready to take on the universe after setting aside their differences for the common good – they just re-hashed the same film. They still fought, they joked, had a CGI fight and came together at the end after learning the same lessons they’d learnt in the previous film.
It’s definitely too many of the same or same style of film, but whether it’s good cinema or not is another matter. Thousands of people adore this franchise, Endgame is the best-selling film of all time and whilst they’re never going to take home Best Picture they are always going to be close to people’s hearts. Everyone has a favourite character or movie. Do they tell the most hard-hitting, emotional stories? No, but they never did. They have their human moments, scattered between the banter and battles, but they’re not really human stories.
What they provide instead are excitement, ridiculous fun and enjoyment served by using a tried and tested formula. They’re like the modern day buddy-cop films, Stallone action flicks, or Spaghetti Westerns. Every so often there is a huge franchise or genre that takes over for a while, and by calling it “not cinema”, Scorsese has implied that these films are something different – but they’re not.
It really depends what you’re looking for, but they’re clearly good cinema to thousands of people. Will they survive much longer with the Avengers gone and people being forced to re-watch the same film over and over again? Personally, I don’t think so.
By Chris King
Feature image credit: Disney