My Response to Martin Scorsese

unpacked for Jason

by Fritz

In this essay, I respond to Martin Scorsese's New York Times Editorial where Scorsese unpacks his distaste for Marvel movies.

"Opinion | Martin Scorsese: I Said Marvel Movies Aren't Cinema. Let Me Explain. Cinema is an art form that brings you the unexpected. In superhero movies, nothing is at risk, a director says. nytimes.com"

The nut of his argument is that Marvel Movies don't have "authors" and therefore the movies can't "take risks". And because they don't take risks, they can't surprise, and they can't reveal.

But I suspect that, because Marvel Movies lack "authors", even if they could "reveal" something it wouldn't matter because it wouldn't reveal a human truth.

But I think this gets at the heart of Boomer misunderstandings of the nature of "Auteur" theory itself. The "Auteurs" that inspired the theory were all studio directors working in a tightly controlled business environment. The evidence for their unique "auteur" identity was teased out after close inspection of the subtle flourishes and incidental amplifications they introduced into the tightly controlled assembly lines in which they worked.

The directors who then set out to be "auteurs" fetishized individuality and autonomy in all aspects of their work. Instead of seeing their art in the subtle flourishes, they said it couldn't be art unless they were narcissistically at the center of every aspect of the film.

Maybe the old studio system was a suffocating commercial enterprise with only hints of humane truth; but HEAVEN'S GATE destroyed the industry, crashed the company that made it, and prompted the consolidation of the industry in the hands of international finance.

Which is to say, the profligacy and self-indulgence of high "auteur" film-making set the stage for a return to industrialized studio film-making.

Only now, even the studios can't play this game. If any studio other than Marvel could compete, then his theory would hold water. But it can't be a risk-free and reliable corporate system if only one producer knows how the new system works. Kevin Feige is the new AUTEUR.

A director is an Auteur of a movie, but Feige is proving to be the Auteur of a company, and maybe of the entire industry. Art doesn't die in the age of Global Capitalism; it just gets bigger, and stranger.

It's expensive to learn to play the guitar; more expensive to play a baritone saxophone in an orchestra. More expensive still to direct a movie. And more to produce 22. And more to manage a multimedia behemoth with theme parks across the globe.

It's a strange world that demands Feige play international capitalism as effortlessly as if it were a ukulele. But against all sense and reason, he seems capable of doing it. A giant, like Galactus, has picked up the world economy and started playing it.

I don't think it is fair to compare Marvel Movies to Cinema. Or to Theme Parks either. Or corporate focus group decision making. Any more than it would have been fair to compare Cinema to the theater.

A global culture is awakening. I'm not celebrating it, or deriding it. But when the giants who sleep beneath the mountains stand up, they shake the trees and the villages from their backs.