Marvel boss Kevin Feige has finally addressed Martin Scorsese’s criticism of the company’s superhero films.
Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, responded to Scorsese’s comment that Marvel films aren’t cinema in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter‘s Awards Chatter podcast.
“I think that’s not true. I think it’s unfortunate,” Feige said.
“I think myself and everyone who works on these movies loves cinema, loves movies, loves going to the movies, loves to watch a communal experience in a movie theatre full of people.”
Scorsese originally told Empire of Marvel’s superhero blockbusters: “I don’t see them. I tried, you know? But that’s 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.”
The filmmaker’s comments resulted in such a shock wave that he ended up clarifying them in an op-ed for The New York Times.
“The fact that the films themselves don’t interest me is a matter of personal taste and temperament. I know that if I were younger, if I’d come of age at a later time, I might have been excited by these pictures and maybe even wanted to make one myself,” he wrote.
“But I grew up when I did and I developed a sense of movies – of what they were and what they could be – that was as far from the Marvel universe as we on Earth are from Alpha Centauri.”
