There was a lot of talk last year about how the overwhelming success of major franchises like Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe was changing the face of movies. Legendary director Martin Scorsese infamously said that Marvel movies were “not cinema.”
"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."
Scorsese wasn’t the only old school filmmaker talking about stuff like this. Hell, when The Godfather Francis Ford Coppola sounded off on the subject, he made Scorsese sound downright tame.
"When Martin Scorsese says that the Marvel pictures are not cinema, he’s right because we expect to learn something from cinema, we expect to gain something, some enlightenment, some knowledge, some inspiration.I don’t know that anyone gets anything out of seeing the same movie over and over again. Martin was kind when he said it’s not cinema. He didn’t say it’s despicable, which I just say it is."
Yikes.
That brings us to Quentin Tarantino, a filmmaker younger than Scorsese and Coppola but still old enough to have come of age in a time when franchise films weren’t absolutely dominating the movie industry like they are now. I mean, have you looked at the list of the highest grossing films of 2019? Avengers: Endgame, The Lion King, Frozen II, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Captain Marvel…you have to get down the list a ways before you find a movie that’s not a sequel or a remake are part of some cinematic universe.
And that’s necessarily bad, but it is different, and I can understand how it might bother filmmakers who are used to executing on their own visions rather than doing work designed to fit into a bigger franchise strategy. Speaking to Deadline, Tarantino put it a little different. “I actually think a war for movies got played out this last year,” he said.
"As far as I can see, the commercial product that is owned by the conglomerates, the projects everybody knows about and has in their DNA, whether it be the Marvel Comics, the Star Wars, Godzilla and James Bond, those films never had a better year than last year. It would have been the year that their world domination would have been complete. But it kind of wasn’t. Because of what you said, a lot of original movies came out and demanded to be seen, and demanded to be seen at the theaters. That ended up becoming a really, really strong year. I’m really proud to be nominated with the other films that just got nominated. I think when you sum up the year, it’s cinema that doesn’t fall into that blockbuster IP proof status, made its last stand this year."
Tarantino is in the Oscars mix this year for his movie Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood, which did indeed do very well despite not being part of a franchise. And for the most part, the Best Picture nominees are the kinds of movies you’d figure Martin Scorsese would consider “cinema”: The Irishman, Little Women, Marriage Story, 1917, and so on. With the possible exception of Joker, which is kind of a special case, there aren’t any big franchise films contending for the major Oscars this year.
That’s why I’m not sure I agree with Tarantino that this was a “last stand” situation; it seems like there’s plenty of will to make smaller movies, although they won’t get made as easily. “To combat something like Avengers: Endgame, which for the month before it came out and the month after, you couldn’t talk about anything else,” he continued. “They tried to do that with this last Star Wars and I don’t think it quite worked, but you couldn’t get on United Airlines without running into all the tie-ins, and even the safety commercial had a Star Wars scene.”
Well, he’s right about the ubiquity.
Although Tarantino has never directed a franchise film himself, he has flirted with the idea. There were a lot of rumors that he might direct a Star Trek movie sometime, although that seems to have fallen through. “I think they might make that movie, but I just don’t think I’m going to direct it,” he said. “It’s a good idea. They should definitely do it and I’ll be happy to come in and give them some notes on the first rough cut.”
Personally, I think Avengers: Endgame should be on the list of Best Picture nominees over Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and if that puts me on the wrong side of the “war,” I’m okay with that.
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