Legendary The Irishman director Martin Scorsese confirms that he’s never been approached by Marvel to direct a film. Scorsese of course made major waves earlier this year when he declared that Marvel movies aren’t cinema, but are instead something more akin to theme park rides. It did not take long for many in the industry to fire back at Scorsese over his dismissal of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which thus far has taken in $22.5 billion worldwide.

Of course, Scorsese has built a massive reputation over the course of decades with revered films like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas and many more. But that reputation did not shield Scorsese from criticism, as he was taken to task for his Marvel remarks by everyone from Robert Downey Jr. to Samuel L. Jackson to Kevin Smith to the Russo Brothers. However, not everyone disagrees with Scorsese’s assessment of Marvel movies as being detrimental to film. Recently, Scorsese’s fellow old school director Terry Gilliam also took Marvel to task, and specifically set his sights on the blockbuster Black Panther.

Speaking to THR as part of their annual Directors Roundtable, Scorsese again talked about Marvel, this time confirming that he’s indeed never been approached to direct a Marvel movie. In the same comments, Scorsese again worked in a shot at blockbuster films for blurring the line between movies and amusement park attractions:

Scorsese of course is not entirely against comic book movies, as he was involved in Joker at one point as a producer, but revealed that he exited the project early on and ultimately had nothing to do with Todd Phillips’ film (even without the director’s involvement, the film bears obvious Scorsese influences). Joker has indeed received plenty of its own acclaim since being released earlier this year, and even Scorsese conceded that the movie has merit as cinema.

No. Never came to me. I remember when Disneyland was built. I’m that ancient, you know? I was here in 1970 in L.A. and one of the aspirations of the studios was to become as important to American culture as Disneyland. And the first studio to really do that was Universal with the tour. And then you add the blockbuster on top of that — and why not? People go to the movie. Enjoy it. That sort of thing. So the sense of a theme park has always been there. It’s not bad. We used to love to go to amusement parks. But now in an amusement park, you have the film.

Regardless of the ultimate cinematic merit of Marvel movies, there’s no questioning the films’ success, and there’s also no questioning the approach taken by Kevin Feige and everyone else at Marvel and Disney as they grew the MCU into a behemoth. Whether Scorsese’s way of working would have fit in with that particular approach is a fair question to ask, as the movies are by and large not examples of auteur filmmaking a la Scorsese, and at the end of the day, it sounds like Scorsese would not have been interested in working on the movies anyway.

Of course, there was a time when Marvel did give superhero movies to more artistically-minded directors like Guillermo del Toro, who did Blade II, but then Del Toro clearly appreciates comic books more than Scorsese who is of an earlier filmmaking generation that quite frankly looks down on comic books as less-than-serious works. Ultimately, there does seem to be an age-related component to the divide between those filmmakers who find merit in superhero films and those who view them as mere amusement park attractions in movie form. For that reason alone, a Scorsese Marvel movie probably would have been a terrible idea anyway.

More: Every Martin Scorsese Movie Ranked, Worst To Best

Source: THR

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