Let’s raise one up for Martin Scorsese’s latest blockbuster Killers of the Flower Moon. This ambitious, personal film is yet another critical hit for the iconic auteur. Full disclosure: Martin Scorsese is easily my favorite director, and several of his movies are among my absolute favorites. I appreciate that he really has a true passion for the art form of cinema. I don’t think he’s lost any of his creativity or skill as he’s gotten older, as happens to a lot of creatives. He is a titan of cinema and a hugely influential filmmaker whose films have inspired multiple generations of artists across multiple mediums and who has devoted a considerable amount of his life to preserving film and encouraging new voices, but has an opinion about Marvel movies some might disagree with.
These latest opinion pieces making the rounds on the net are some real tryhard shit.
You have successfully convinced me that the deterioration of cinema as an art form pales in comparison to websites that once aspired to criticism lapsing into the same sort of disingenuous, faux-moralizing mega corporate cheerleading that any joker with a wall of Funko Pops could put up on TikTok. Between the poorly developed theses and the weird, pointless subheads, many of these read like an “Intro to Composition” essay written by a college freshman before they could rely on ChatGPT to develop their ideas for them. I’d offer additional criticism, but at this point, it’d feel like I’m grading somebody’s homework.
Look to date, Scorsese has directed twenty-six feature length narrative films, seventeen feature-length documentary films, and has co-directed one anthology film. His films Mean Streets, Raging Bull and Goodfellas (Goodfellas is better than The Godfather – yeah, I said it) are often cited among the greatest films ever made. After Hours, Age of Innocence, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, The Aviator, Hugo, Kundun, Silence, and Boxcar Bertha are all underrated Scorsese films. His decades on decades body of work goes far beyond male-centric mafia films.
But if you must.
Scorsese has always interrogated toxic masculinity—before that term was even coined and long before the topic entered the popular consciousness. He has never celebrated male violence. Or is the problem supposed to be that because it’s a recurrent theme in his work he was somehow giving it more attention than it’s due? One of the most powerful things art can do is reflect the pain and darkness of the world back to us in ways that help us make sense of things. The men in Scorsese’s films are bad, and he makes it apparent that they’re bad men and not to be emulated, and oftentimes they meet very bad ends because of their actions.
This latest Marvel dust up. Apparently, Eternals will replace Citizen Kane as the go-to movie for film school students to study. If your opinion is that Scorsese is overrated and Marvel films are actually more important to film history, you shouldn’t be writing about film. And I say that as someone who is a big Marvel fan.