The Academy Award-winning director, writer and producer Martin Scorsese wrote a piece in the New York Times, clarifying his interview in Empire where he likens Marvel films to “theme parks.” While Scorsese nuanced his position, he ultimately reiterated that he wouldn’t consider the films a form of cinema.
The filmmaker made many solid critiques of the modern film industry, where “market-researched, audience-tested” pop culture and nostalgia is assembly-lined for mass consumption. “Nothing is at risk” he argues, claiming that Marvel films lack the “spiritual revelation” and the deep dives into human complexity the most transformative cinema provide us.
Scorsese writes: “Many films today are perfect products manufactured for immediate consumption. Many of them are well made by teams of talented individuals. All the same, they lack something essential to cinema: the unifying vision of an individual artist. Because, of course, the individual artist is the riskiest factor of all.”
Even though some of Scorsese’s critiques have a sense of truth and authority, the over-commodification of art stops us from asking why it is popular to so many of us. While we should resist the conflation between popularity and quality, auteurs can often overlook the deeper meaning that even the common fan naturally intuits.
A key reason Marvel films — especially Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: End Game — are cinema is because they are films that wrestle with a heavy zeitgeist, most specifically relevant to American audiences.
Question: why was “Thanos was right” a thing?
For those who aren’t privy to the Marvel film canon, Thanos is a super-villain bent on retrieving six Infinity Stones—powerful gems that will allow him to mold the universe according to his will and vision. Despite the Avengers’ resistance, he gets the stones and snaps away half of all life in the universe. Thanos sees this drastic measure as a “disinterested” way bring out prosperity — utopia razed from apocalypse.
It would be a mistake to reduce Thanos’ anti-hero reasoning to a kind of pop-culture blogger think-pieces, t-shits on TeePublic or chatroom talk where fans do hypothetical “who would win in a fight” debates. Whether you agree or not with his answer, he asks us to consider that destruction is a reality we may have to confront eventually. It relates, not only to the Marvel cinematic universe, but what is going on in our real lives.
We live in a world of extreme inequality, endless war and terrorism, and an impending climate crisis made exponentially worse by overpopulation. As bad as it is, the scarier prospect is the thing we rather not say out loud: because of greed and self-interest, isolation, political division, allegiances, corruption and the narcissism in nationalism, there’s a very good chance that we won’t do anything about it.
We can argue the morality of ending half of all life in the universe (Thanos is obvious wrong and bad), but his appeal is that he is willing to go to—to quote Jay-Z—raise hell until it’s heaven. As an anti-hero is that, even if what Thanos does is wrong, he does something. Thanos (like other popular anti-heroes like The Joker) is a philosophical manifestation of anarchy taken to its extreme violent ends. The rational person — the Captain Americas, Tony Starks, and Captain Marvels of the world — have a moral compass that forces them to adjusts to the unjust society. They can be seen as the defenders of slow progress. But the irrational person— the anti-hero — adjusts the unjust society. They get things done quickly.
Again, Thanos is the villain, but he isn’t evil for evil sake. He has some sense of justice, even if it is distorted. The reason he is wrong is because “disinterested justice” is a contradiction in terms — by definition, justice is interested in who is guilty and who is innocent. He also can’t see he is merely role reversal where he is the new oppressor. He is “The Mad Titan” — both “mad (righteous anger) and “mad” (reactionary; not thinking clearly).
Empathy towards him by many Marvel film fans is rooted in the zeitgeist. They want someone to do something about the chaos. And though he is a fictional character, there are some (albeit not one-for-one)parallels to Thanos in real life. Where in society do you see people cheering a man who promises utopian ends through dystopian means? An irrational man forcing a rational society to adjust to him? Someone who thinks he is the final arbiter justice, who assumes he can dictate even the very notions of truth and reality?
I can think of at least one.
“Thanos was right” likely does not become a discussion in a different zeitgeist. People empathize with his nihilism even as they get a kind of “negative” hope — cheering for “the hero always wins” inevitable plot outcome, though they know in real life, as Naomi Klein often says, “no one is coming to save us.” Marvel films ask us to look at humanity as a whole, not just the self.
Are Marvel films perfect? Definitely not. And many people go to see the Marvel films because of nostalgia, pop culture, flying superheroes, explosions, etc. But while fans may come for the style, they do leave with some substance. It isn’t all aesthetics. The films’ creators tapped into something deeper, whether it was intentional or not.
Whether the designation of “cinema” is a low or high bar to clear may be the wrong framing. If Scorsese were to look closer, he could see the depth and substance in Marvel films that get obfuscated by the money-grab.
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This post was previously published on Medium and is republished here with permission from the author.
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