After Martin Scorsese courted controversy around his remarks on Marvel films and the superhero franchise as such, another veteran filmmaker of the New Hollywood era, Francis Ford Coppola has spoken against them.
Coppola was speaking with the international media in Lyon, France where he was recently awarded the Prix Lumiere for his contribution to cinema.
Commenting on his fellow filmmaker’s statement he said, “When Martin Scorsese says that the Marvel pictures are not cinema, he’s right because we expect to learn something from cinema, we expect to gain something, some enlightenment, some knowledge, some inspiration. I don’t know that anyone gets anything out of seeing the same movie over and over again,” the 80-year-old filmmaker was quoted by AFP. “Martin was kind when he said it’s not cinema. He didn’t say it’s despicable, which I just say it is.”
James Gunn, director of both volumes of Guardian of the Galaxy films, responded to Coppola’s tweets just as he had commented on Scorsese’s earlier stance.
Gunn took to his official Instagram handle to wrote, “Many of our grandfathers thought all gangster movies were the same, often calling them “despicable”. Some of our great grandfathers thought the same of westerns, and believed the films of John Ford, Sam Peckinpah, and Sergio Leone were all exactly the same. I remember a great uncle to whom I was raving about Star Wars. He responded by saying, “I saw that when it was called 2001, and, boy, was it boring!” Superheroes are simply today’s gangsters/cowboys/outer space adventurers. Some superhero films are awful, some are beautiful. Like westerns and gangster movies (and before that, just MOVIES), not everyone will be able to appreciate them, even some geniuses. And that’s okay,” alongside a picture of characters Groot and Rocket.
Coppola also is working on his biggest project, Megalopolis, an announcement he had earlier made in April 2019 to Deadline.
Having nurtured the film for two decades he said, quoted AFP, “I wanted to make a film about a human expression of what really is heaven on earth. I would say it’s the most ambitious film (I’ve worked on) — more than Apocalypse Now. That’s the problem.”
The Godfather director joins the list of acclaimed filmmakers and actors to have received the Prix Lumiere, including Scorsese, Pedro Almodovar and Milos Forman.