The Marvels director Nia DaCosta has no beef with Martin Scorsese saying that superhero films are “not cinema.” DaCosta directed 2018’s breakout crime drama Little Woods and 2021’s Candyman reboot, then pitched Marvel boss Kevin Feige on her vision for The Marvels and ended up landing the job.
DaCosta participated in a panel on Tuesday called “How to Save Cinema” in Glastonbury in the U.K. WGTC’s David James was in the audience, where DaCosta answered a question about how some of her filmmaking heroes view the Marvel machine in which she’s currently toiling.
DaCosta said, “I’m not surprised by [Scorsese’s] opinion on Marvel films.” However, she said, it’s not difficult for her to reconcile two very different types of movie-making:
“[H]e’s been making movies since like the ’70s, and … that’s a period in filmmaking that I’m super inspired by, probably the most inspired by. And also, as a 12-year-old, when I saw Spider-Man in theaters for the first time, I was like, ‘Holy shit.'” … Filmmakers in the ’70s made me feel like … you can tell the craziest stories. You can do Dog Day Afternoon, you can do The Deer Hunter. And then watching Spider-Man, I was like, ‘Oh my god, this guy got hit!'”
DaCosta added that she fully supports “preserving film and films that aren’t all superheroes or big action or Fast and the Furious.” She finished her answer succinctly: “My own personal experience is I love [Scorsese] so much, and I also like Spider-Man.”
The filmmaker also discussed the challenges of making a Marvel film, noting that she wasn’t a huge fan of Captain Marvel at the outset, but once she learned that her personal favorites Ms. Marvel and Monica Rambeau would also be starring characters, she leapt at the chance to direct it. However, when she came on board, Feige apparently told her that The Marvels is sort of “a sequel to five things.” DeCosta recalls thinking to herself, “How did I end up with this horribly difficult job?”
Apparently, she’s still tinkering with the film — which was recently delayed until Nov. 2023 — because it has to be everything to everyone who could possibly want to see it. She explained, “Because it’s a sequel to five things, the entertainment factor has to be so high.”
And that’s probably one of the reasons Scorsese said in 2019 that Marvel films aren’t cinema and are more akin to “theme parks” with the primary goal to entertain rather than challenge. Truthfully, that’s a fair assessment. We at WGTC consider them to be cinema because they play in movie theaters, but we’re not going to argue with a director who has a completely different frame of reference for what that word means.
We’re happy that Scorsese will never make a superhero film and instead is keeping the flame alive for mature, emotionally complex dramas. Better he tackles Killers of the Flower Moon instead of Moon Knight.
Published: Jun 21, 2023 05:52 pm