First off, let\u2019s take this on a micro level. On the level of individuals and individual taste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s been a lot of huff lately because Martin Scorsese has been on record saying that he thinks Marvel movies \u201caren\u2019t cinema.\u201d Francis Ford Coppola has backed him up. The backlash is that people are now saying that anyone who doesn\u2019t like the Marvel films is a snob.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wait a second. We\u2019re all snobs. And we have to be. It\u2019s self-defense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All you have to do is scroll through Netflix and see the endless movies that are on there, and realize that it represents only a fraction of the movies produced and the ones that are available. If you sat and watched them all day, you\u2019d never get to the end of it. You have to be your own filter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You have to say, \u201cI like this kind of film, and I don\u2019t like that kind of film.\u201d It\u2019s that simple. It\u2019s the way we eliminate things. It\u2019s stereotyping, and it\u2019s inherently unfair. And it\u2019s snobbish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And before you say, \u201cStereotyping is always bad,\u201d remember that stereotyping has probably saved your life today. We all do it. We do it to save time and energy. You\u2019re out driving and you think, \u201cthat van driver is an idiot. He\u2019s weaving badly,\u201d and you avoid him. A minute later and he veers into your lane, and you were right. You stereotyped him as an idiot, it was probably unfair, and you saved your life because of it. You may not have even been aware of it. Movies are the same way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I filter movies in the same sort of way, and you probably do, too. I hate seeing the same thing over and over again. I hate getting 2\/3 of the way through a movie and knowing how it\u2019s going to end. You know the drill:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The killer monster isn\u2019t REALLY dead, and he\u2019s coming back for you…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The guy we thought was the cattle rustler isn\u2019t really the cattle rustler, and the bad guy is actually a good guy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
James Bond gets out of a deadly situation because the bad guy comes up with some convoluted plan instead of JUST SHOOTING HIM. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The gangster is an emotionally constipated guy who is ruthless and deadly, and eventually causes a violent gang war in the last act of the film…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I hate movies like this. If I think they\u2019re going to be completely predictable, I will skip them. My definition of a good movie is something that has me guessing by the last act. Charlie Kaufman films are good movies in my book. Sometimes I don\u2019t even know what the hell they\u2019re about even after I\u2019ve left the theater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I have to confess that I\u2019m not a big fan of Marvel Comics movies. They\u2019re cookie-cutter movies, following the rules of Save the Cat<\/a>, and I\u2019d rather skip them. I know people will yell at me about this and tell me that I\u2019ve never seen any of them, so how would I know? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, that\u2019s kinda the point. I actually have seen some of them, in parts. I saw part of one of the Spider-Man <\/em>movies by Sam Raimi. I like Raimi as a filmmaker, so I thought I\u2019d give it a shot. The movie was not only predictable, but the CGI effects were idiotic and ruined the entire picture. They were so idiotic that I thought the animation in the old Filmation Spiderman shows was superior. That\u2019s not a compliment to Filmation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And now, they\u2019ve rebooted it, what, twice? No, thanks. I assume the CGI is better now, but it needs to be a lot better and the plots a lot more interesting before I\u2019m in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Have I always been against superheroes? Well, no. I cut my teeth on the old George Reeves Superman <\/em>shows, and I loved the old Batman <\/em>shows with Adam West. Those were done in the accepted old way where we said, \u201cHey, these are comics, we can\u2019t take it seriously, and so let\u2019s be silly with it.\u201d And the serious comic fans hated that (the Batman <\/em>series much more so than the Superman <\/em>series.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1978, there was a reboot of Superman<\/em> with Christopher Reeve. Reeve was a magnificent actor, and he did a lot with the part we hadn\u2019t seen before. Moreover, they took the tone somewhat more seriously\u2014it played more like a James Bond picture. There\u2019s no coincidence there: the screenwriter was Tom Mankiewicz, who had written some of the Bond pictures in the early 70s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It wasn\u2019t until 1989 that the superhero movies piqued my interest. It was Tim Burton\u2019s reboot of the Batman character. It wasn\u2019t patterned after the comics, but it was reworked as a film noir\/German Expressionist kind of film. It was a complete departure from what had been done before. Sign me up. Let\u2019s give it a shot. I wasn\u2019t the only one: lines were around the block just to see the trailer for this one. We all thought it would be a joke with comedic actor Michael Keaton in the lead, and we were wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1992, he followed it up with a better version of the story, making it even MORE German Expressionistic (I\u2019m a sucker for that), and we had a character named after 1920s German actor Max Schreck. I\u2019m on board. But Burton\u2019s vision was too dark for Warners, so they hired director Joel Schumacher to take over, and he camped it up again. Yawn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since then, the now-rebooted-twice DC universe has been in a race to be as dark as possible and as kid-unfriendly as it can be. The dark tone gets ridiculous because it\u2019s so overdone. I generally like Christopher Nolan\u2019s movies, but his Batman epics are, in my opinion, unwatchable. Too much cut-cut-cut spastic editing, too dark, and no characterization. Not interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I\u2019ve written off both the DC universe and the Marvel universe. I guess the reasons are slightly different, but I still don\u2019t care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But that\u2019s OK. I write off lots of stuff. I think Martin Scorsese is a great director, but I don\u2019t like gory violence in movies, and I think gangster movies are so clich\u00e9d that I can\u2019t stand them. Scorsese\u2019s non-gangster movies (like Hugo <\/em>or The Aviator<\/em>) are excellent, but once I see DeNiro in the cast, I start to wonder if I want to see it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I know a lot of people love gangster movies, but I have always thought the best one was The Public Enemy <\/em>in 1931, which set the limits for every one to follow, and still has the most brutal ending of any gangster movie I\u2019ve ever seen (even though they couldn\u2019t show spurting guts in color, it\u2019s still <\/em>brutal.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The pattern is always the same: Young upstart takes over the underworld, he\u2019s emotionally constipated, can\u2019t relate to anyone, very cold, and he fights, claws, and kills his way to the top. At the end, there\u2019s a gang war and he\u2019s either triumphant or is killed, depending on this slight variation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Godfather<\/em> films are a nicely made version of this, and we have two characters in the films who play this plot out. Then there\u2019s Goodfellas <\/em>and Casino <\/em>and The Departed <\/em>and… I didn\u2019t watch them. If they\u2019re substantially different, then someone tell me and I\u2019ll skip past the spurting guts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Someone told me about The Sopranos <\/em>and I thought, WOW, this must be finally the new wrinkle in the gangster stories I\u2019ve hoped for. With the introduction of the psychologist character and a gangster who has emotional issues, I thought it might be something new. It was, but only for a while. They finally decided that Tony Soprano was a sociopath and was going to keep killing people anyway. And that sucked, because why would a sociopath seek counseling? They think they\u2019re better than everyone else from the start… they would never talk to a counselor. I skipped the last couple of seasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, if you\u2019re keeping score, I\u2019ve just written off the Marvel universe, the DC universe, and a lot of Scorsese and Coppola. I must be a super snob. I\u2019ve spent about 1300 words defending my positions for disliking all these films and I\u2019m now ready to completely refute my argument. Well, maybe not refute it, but I\u2019ll definitely reframe it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because now, we\u2019re going to transfer ourselves into the macro universe. The big picture, where we talk about cinema itself, the audience, and the direction of art. Not about individual preferences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It doesn\u2019t matter what I think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It doesn\u2019t matter what you think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It doesn\u2019t particularly matter what Scorsese and Coppola think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s the problem: whether you like the superhero films or not, they are <\/em>cinema. They may be cinema we don\u2019t like, but they\u2019re cinema. The problem is that the superhero movies are crowding out everything <\/em>else from theaters. This is by design. They see teenagers as ones who will buy merchandise (they make more money from that than tickets), and they see anyone outside that demographic as irrelevant. It is by design <\/em>that I\u2019m turned off by too many superhero movies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I spoofed this in one of my podcasts<\/a> where Dr. Film went to the multiplex to see Stan and Ollie<\/em> and everything playing there was a superhero movie. (Incidentally, the reason I positioned the Dr. Film character as a film superhero was just to spoof this kind of thing. The podcast episode has me turning into a superhero to complain about superheroes. It\u2019s a joke on a joke. Sorry I had to explain that!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n And this points up a bigger problem: what the hell is the world of cinema coming to when Martin Scorsese can barely get a film into the multiplex? Coppola can\u2019t do it, either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019re at a point were Netflix is controlling the world of movies (they financed Scorsese\u2019s latest picture), and Netflix has yet to decide whether they\u2019re only a streaming service or a theatrical distributor AND a streaming service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meryl Streep has complained that we\u2019ve catered films to teenage boys<\/a> because they are the most reliable audience for theatrical movie. She\u2019s right, and gee whiz, what did we get? Superhero movies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We don\u2019t have a wide audience going to movies because we\u2019re catering to teens. The teens don\u2019t know how to behave in movies, so they\u2019re rude. They drive out the older folks. Add that to badly maintained projectors and theaters, and we have a microcosm of what\u2019s wrong with movies today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t hate superhero movies. I don\u2019t particularly want to see them, and that\u2019s by design. The trouble is that we need variety back in theaters. We need the voices of Scorsese and Coppola. Hell, even Roger Corman. I\u2019d rather see them come back than one more reboot of Spider-Man.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" First off, let\u2019s take this on a micro level. On the level of individuals and individual taste. There\u2019s been a lot of huff lately because Martin Scorsese has been on record saying that he thinks Marvel movies \u201caren\u2019t cinema.\u201d Francis Ford Coppola has backed him up. The backlash is that people are now saying that … Continue reading “On Marvel and Snobbery”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"powered_cache_disable_cache":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,207],"tags":[201,198,200,199],"class_list":["post-1861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-films-pocket-rants","category-film","tag-coppola","tag-marvel","tag-scorsese","tag-superheroes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1861"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1862,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861\/revisions\/1862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}