Just when we thought the whole “Martin Scorsese thinks superhero movies aren’t cinema” saga was finally winding down, Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige has decided to break his silence to put in his two cents on the matter.
And look, his response wasn’t particularly great if we’re honest.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Feige had a bone to pick with Martin Scorsese’s comment about the lack of risk in Marvel films, saying:
“We did Civil War. We had our two most popular characters get into a very serious theological and physical altercation. We killed half of our characters at the end of a movie. I think it’s fun for us to take our success and use it to take risks and go in different places.“
Okay, I see where Kevin Feige is coming from but that argument isn’t as good as he thinks it is.
Feige seems to be missing the point a bit about Scorsese’s risk-taking argument. Yes you did kill off a heap characters, Kevin, but can you really classify those deaths as “risky” when you’re going to resurrect them in the next movie?
Any emotional impact of nearly every Marvel hero death (except for Tony Stark and Natasha Romanoff) is sort of blunted when the audience already knows that a bunch of sequels have already gotten the green light.
And besides, can you honestly make an argument that Marvel films are creatively risky? Besides Doctor Strange – which looks cool but was essentially a visual rip off of Inception – all of them are crafted from the same, bland palette.
But weak argument aside, Kevin Feige did have a diplomatic umbrella answer to the whole Scorsese thing by essentially saying that “hey man, that’s, like, just your opinion, man.”
“Everybody has a different definition of cinema. Everybody has a different definition of art. Everybody has a different definition of risk. Some people don’t think it’s cinema. Everybody is entitled to their opinion. Everyone is entitled to repeat that opinion.
“Everyone is entitled to write op-eds about that opinion, and I look forward to what will happen next. But in the meantime, we’re going to keep making movies.”
Now that we’ve heard arguments from both Martin Scorsese and Kevin Feige on opposing sides of this increasingly ridiculous matter, can we finally make like Thanos and dust this topic once and for all?