Marvel and the death of American cinema

Okay not really, American cinema is fine, I just wanted a clickbaity title.

Martin Scorcese said earlier that he didn't think the MCU films, and other movies in that style, are real cinema, likening them more to theme park rides rather than an exploration of the human condition.

To be fair to Scorcese he did say he has tried watching them, and does acknowledge the technical skill that went into making them, as well as that of the actors involved. But this does have a hint of "Old man yelling at clouds" about it if you ask me, which you did not.

Per Merriam-Webster, the definition of cinema is simply a motion picture, or a reference to the art of making movies, the latter must be what Scorcese is referring to, which suggests that he does not consider the movies to be art. What is art exactly anyway? Definitions vary and I don't really know that I have any other than "I know it when I see it". The main criteria often/usually includes that it makes the viewer feel something though, and by that definition there is barely anything that can be created that isn't art to someone.

People shit on the Marvel Cinematic Universe as being very... commercial and cold, emphasizing spectacle and profit rather than telling a human story or being deep examinations of the world or whatever, I have to ask though, "Why are you going into Iron Man 3 expecting to gain a deeper understanding of man and the world?" I also wonder if we watched the same movies.

Over the last decade-plus we have seen a lot of films in the MCU, and I think it is disingenuous for anyone to say that they have watched them all and come away cold from it, just enjoying the spectacle without connecting on some level or reacting emotionally to things. There were absolutely duds for sure, I am not trying to say these movies are perfect, none of them are, but to say they aren't impact-full or that they didn't tell a story that resonates with a lot of people is flat out wrong. 

As to the cookie-cutter thing, ehh, I mean the nature of a comic book story demands some similar progression, and there are only so many hero's journey's you can go on before it starts to seem old hat it is true. But a lot of the best movies hid some good stories in the spectacle, Tony Stark's learning to grow up in the Iron Man films and the Avengers, Captain America certainly had things to say about fascism and the police state in his movies, stories which seem increasingly unsettling as the years roll on honestly, Black Panther was a cultural shockwave which, as I have written about before, those of us who are white just maybe can't quite understand. More personal stories about family, rejection, and acceptance are all woven throughout, these do resonate, and to call them them park rides is doing both them and you a disservice, I mean, if you watched the movies and didn't see these ideas, then you weren't looking, and therefore you only saw what you went in to find.

Could Marvel/Disney have told those stories better? That is actually a good question, from a pure quality level there are certainly films with room for improvement, but the stuff that resonates, the social commentary is admittedly done in such a way as to be as non-confrontational as possible, excepting Black Panther perhaps, which, let's be honest here, could have gone terribly, terribly, wrong in so many ways.

You could perhaps make the argument that the impact these stories have on a lot of people, as watered down for mass consumption as they are, says a lot about us and our desire to latch onto anything at all that makes us feel, that validates or challenges us, but not too much. And you wouldn't be wrong to do so, but in that respect the MCU is a symptom and not the disease and perhaps says more about mass market American cinema before the MCU kicked off if we grabbed onto it so tightly, because if it didn't make us feel anything, why do we love it? Why didn't we stay latched onto whatever else we had in the before times, the long long ago if it was such a great improvement? Marketing plays a role for sure, but it isn't like Marvel invented marketing, movies and series were being forced down our throats before the MCU kicked off, so why did things have to change before they blew up they way they did unless there was some need or urge that they met that previous efforts had not?

I personally am easy to entertain, I like the big noises and witty dialogue, I love the shit out of crossovers, I love seeing the comics I read when I was young brought to the big screen and treated with respect, in a very real sense these movies are made specifically for me, well, for the millennial white male anyway. 

I am not saying everyone has to love them, or feel the same way about the movies, or anything like that, you do you. But to call them not cinema, or art, is pretty damn wrong.

I am also not saying that Marvel/Disney is perfect, but the harm they do has more to do with being a monopoly with untold wealth and power and virtually no competition or oversight rather than the super-hero movies they put out once or twice a year rather than the calculated murder of American cinema.