Thor: Love and Thunder Director Taika Waititi Responds to Martin Scorsese’s Criticisms

Marvel movies as “Cinema” discourse has stretched into 2020 and Taika Waititi is the latest director to be asked to give a take on Martin Scorsese’s comments about superhero movies. He said they weren’t cinema when asked about it during the tail end of last year. The weeks that followed featured so many people getting rilled up about the comments in one way or another. The fact that we’re all still talking about it shows there’s a lot more of this conversation to come around the Oscars and beyond. When The Hollywood Reporter posed the question “Marvel movies are theme park rides, agree or disagree?” to the Thor: Ragnarok director, he was as playful as always.

“Agree,” he laughed before addressing it further. “He’s absolutely right, I’ve always said this. Disagree. Well, having worked for Marvel, I know he was specifically talking about the Marvel films. I know how much work goes into breaking stories for those films and how much work goes into shooting and the post-production. Basically, it’s all based on story for that studio. At the end of the day, that rectangle (he gestures to the Marvel Studios logo with his hands) is affecting people emotionally. It doesn’t matter if it’s too colorful, I guess its too colorful for him. The costumes might not look Italian enough.”

Now, this all stems back to the original comments that Scorsese made last year about the Marvel movies. Every person associated with comic book movies has been asked their take on his comments at some point in the last fews months and it has become clear that this conversation is going to linger well into 2020 as well. Here are his words to Empire back in October.

“I don’t see them. I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema,” Scorsese said. “Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”

The acclaimed filmmaker would double down on those comments on Popcorn with Peter Travers.

“It might be cinema to the kids seeing those films, but I don’t get it,” Scorsese explained. “Or least let me put it this way: I’ve seen one or two, that’s enough. Because it’s the same thing over and over, you know?“

He offered, “I think what makes cinema, to me… ultimately, it’s something that, for some reason, stays with you so that a few years later you can watch it again. Or ten years later you watch it again, and it’s different. In other words, there’s more to learn about yourself, or about life. That’s interesting.”

(Photo: Marilla Sicilia/Archivio Marilla Sicilia/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)

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