Can Superhero Movies Be Cinema?

It says much about the world that we live in that Martin Scorsese’s criticism of Marvel movies has generated infinitely more passion, cultural conversation and headlines than the legendary filmmaker reuniting with Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro for the first time in decades, and working with Al Pacino for the first time ever on The Irishman, a one hundred and sixty million dollar three and a half hour mob movie that is almost universally being hailed as a towering, late-period masterpiece. 

Scorsese famously and controversially responded to a question at a press conference for The Irishman by dismissing the MCU as “not cinema”, elaborating, “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.”

Within the context of Scorsese’s career and the press conference, Scorsese’s comments were eminently understandable. Here he was, proudly promoting yet another massive masterwork for grown-ups and what the world seemed to care about most was his opinions on Dr. Strange, Captain America, Ant-Man, The Incredible Hulk and the like. I can only imagine how frustrating that must be. 

Here he was, a true Artist, trying to make Great Art while being confronted at every turn by the overwhelming, crazy-making forces of commerce as epitomized by the intertwined blockbusters of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

I will start off by pointing out the obvious. Martin Scorsese is one of our greatest, most consistent and most enduring artists. He's one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, a living legend, the very soul of cinema personified. I fucking love the guy. The dude made Taxi Driver. Taxi Driver. And Goodfellas! Not to mention King of Comedy and After Hours. I’m getting excited just thinking about all the great movies Scorsese has made over the course of his legendary career. 

Scorsese has every right in the world to talk shit about whatever he wants. He’s earned that. He’s the best of the best. I am a total fanboy.

At the same time, I think his comments need to be understood within the proper context. At 76, Scorsese belongs to an older generation socialized to dismiss comic books and superhero movies as kid’s stuff, juvenile nonsense.  He didn’t grow up with Maus or The Watchmen or various other graphic novels largely credited with elevating the comic book, or graphic novel, to the level of high art. 

It must suck to spend years of your life trying to make a movie that expresses something important and incisive about the human condition, only to get slaughtered at the box-office by a two hundred million dollar movie about a magical wizard, or a Norse God from outer space and a scientist who turns into a giant green monster whenever peeved. 

Trying to get a mass audience interested in grown-up movies like The Irishman and Silence in this environment must feel like trying to sell a 600 page sociological text at a comic book store. 

Still, I find the idea that superhero movies by definition cannot be art or cinema, that they cannot express truths about the human condition or the world around us because of the genre they’re in both deeply wrong and incredibly discouraging. 

The notion that a comic book movie CANNOT "convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being”, that it is absolutely impossible for any motion picture derived from the world of comic books or superheroes to rise to the level of art is reductive and dismissive. If comic books CANNOT be art, if they cannot say anything important or true, then why bother even trying? If your work is going to be looked down on as nonsense for the kiddies why bother investing yourself in your work? 

Logan, for example, may, in fact, be about a wolverine-man with titanium claws in a future gone mad but it also absolutely expresses powerful and genuine ideas about what it means to be human, to live and die and lose everything. Mangold was expressing Logan’s Noir-tinged psychological and emotional truth, just as Christopher Nolan captured something dark and enduring about who we are and how we see the world in The Dark Knight. 

We get into trouble when we start drawing a concrete line between what is art and what cannot be art. Art and truth should be accessible and democratic, something we can not only aspire to but attain. Video games can be art. Comic books can be art. Food and television themed parodies of pop songs can be art. Just about anything can be art. You don’t need to get permission from cultural gate-keepers to make art; you need to just fucking do it. 

Comic book filmmakers, don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t make art or cinema, that you can’t express important truths using superheroes in spandex, even if the person in question is a cultural God on the level of Martin Scorsese. 

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