Following Martin Scorsese’s comments outright disowning anything Marvel Studios and its impact on film, journalists got a real kick out of asking precisely the same question to other well respected filmmakers, hopefully riling them up and getting just as venomous a response. James Cameron came out just recently to personally condemn the MCU and its storytelling approach. Collecting their comments below shows a litany of genuine gripes (more creative visions are being pushed aside for Spider-Man 5), while others show a sincere lack of self awareness (Cameron’s own game changing works on his The Abyss and then T2 paved the way for the kind of cutting edge CGI we are so used to today).

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But the below quotes only tell half the story. In the same week that Cameron trash talked comic book movies, DC Studios announced universally beloved director James Gunn as their co-CEO and co-chair going forward. Elsewhere, Oscar-winning writer and BAFTA winner Spike Lee, citing his own comic book roots as a boy, has told the public of being open to directing the next Marvel epic.

The fantastic Lynne Ramsay is eager too, pitching: “I would love to do a superhero movie, I love comic books. I read them as a kid. They don’t ask me to do things like that.” You can always count on the voice of a whole slacker generation, Kevin Smith to be (naturally) vocal supporter of the films, and Tyler Perry actively let Marvel shoot Spider-Man at his studio lot.

Below are some of the spicier comments on Marvel and their movies that some of highest quality of filmmakers have said. Excelsior, this ain’t.

James Cameron (The Terminator, Avatar)

     20th Century Fox

Time and again revitalizing cinema box offices with his movies (Avatar is the highest grossing picture of all time, his Titanic is third, with only Avengers: Endgame separating them), the great James Cameron shows no irony when talking to The New York Times in promotion of Avatar’s sequel. Directly calling out Marvel and DC, he said:

When I look at these big, spectacular films — I’m looking at you, Marvel and DC — it doesn’t matter how old the characters are, they all act like they’re in college. They have relationships, but they really don’t. They never hang up their spurs because of their kids. The things that really ground us and give us power, love, and a purpose? Those characters don’t experience it, and I think that’s not the way to make movies.

Mel Gibson (Braveheart, The Passion of the Christ)

     Icon Productions

Talking to The Washington Post to promote his Hacksaw Ridge, Mel Gibson quipped about the mature content of the MCU. The star of such bloody movies like Lethal Weapon (where he physically beats Gary Busey close to death), the same man who kills the US President by slicing off his head in The Simpsons, and the director of such bloody movies as Passion of the Christ and Braveheart, opted to weigh in on Marvel’s use of violence:

Bong Joon-ho (Parasite, Snowpeircer)

     CJ Entertainment

Having directed Chris Evans, Captain America himself, in 2013’s fantastic Snowpeircer, Bong Joon-ho has his own hand in fantasy and respects the medium. Speaking to Variety, and after praising the likes of Logan, Guardians of the Galaxy and Winter Soldier, Ho had a very diplomatic approach:

To talk about the violence question, look at any Marvel movie. They’re more violent than anything that I’ve done, but [in my movies,] you give a s— about the characters, which makes it matter more. That’s all I’ll say.

Jane Campion (The Piano, The Power of the Dog)

     Netflix

Also starring Doctor Strange himself, Benedict Cumberbach, The Power of The Dog director made no bones about it when discussing mutants, Spider-Men, aliens or super soldiers. Jane Campion bluntly told Variety, “I hate them,” and doubled down, “I actually hate them.” Adding a little more context as to why, she continued:

I have a personal problem. I respect the creativity that goes into superhero films, but in real life and in movies, I can’t stand people wearing tight-fitting clothes. I’ll never wear something like that, and just seeing someone in tight clothes is mentally difficult. I don’t know where to look, and I feel suffocated. Most superheroes wear tight suits, so I can never direct one. I don’t think anyone will offer the project to me either. If there is a superhero who has a very boxy costume, maybe I can try.

Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now)

     Paramount Pictures

Having just been awarded the Prix Lumiere award for his contributions to cinema in 2019, and backing his buddy up, Coppola supported Scorsese’s comments — making it clear that, no, he was not a fan of the MCU. Yahoo reported that Coppola said:

I think it’s safe to say that I will never do that. They’re so noisy and like ridiculous. Sometimes you get a good giggle, but I don’t know what the thing is with the capes, a grown man in tights. I feel like it must come from pantomime.

Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, Moonfall)

Having most recently come away from making the most expensive independent movie of all time, Mr. Explosions himself Roland Emmerich approaches Marvel slightly differently. Asked if the disaster filmmaking landscape has altered, and noting his own European roots, Emmerich said to Den Of Geek:

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 […] Martin was kind when he said it’s not cinema. He didn’t say it’s despicable, which I just say it is.

Oh yes […] Because naturally Marvel and DC Comics, and Star Wars, have pretty much taken over. It’s ruining our industry a little bit, because nobody does anything original anymore.

He continues:

Steven Spielberg (Jurassic Park, Jaws)

     Universal Pictures

Having been the major voice of blockbuster cinema since the 1970s, Steven Spielberg has every right to weigh in on which way he believes cinema will head. Citing fads and trends, the Saving Private Ryan director compared the superhero movement in film to the death of the Western genre, telling The Associated Press (via The Hollywood Reporter):

There were [The Adventures of Tintin comics], but they were very childish and there were no superheroes. So that’s why at the very beginning, superheroes didn’t work in Germany. They needed 10 or 15 years [of movies] to get to the same level as the rest of the world…. But I just have never found any interest in that kind of movie.

However, Spielberg did praise a select few when talking to The Omelete at Cannes, in 2016 (which has been translated originally from Spanish):

We were around when the Western died and there will be a time when the superhero movie goes the way of the Western. It doesn’t mean there won’t be another occasion where the Western comes back and the superhero movie someday returns.

Ken Loach (Kes, I Daniel Blake)

     United Artists

In promotion of his BBC/BFI-backed 2019 film, Sorry We Missed You (a film focused on zero-hour contracts and a man making his living as a white van driver), British cinema icon Ken Loach matter of factly commented on superhero films in general (and not Marvel’s output in particular), telling Sky News:

I love the Superman of Richard Donner, The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan, and the first Iron Man, but [the] superhero film that impressed me most is one that does not take itself too seriously: Guardians of the Galaxy. When the movie was over, I left with the feeling of having seen something new in movies, without any cynicism or fear of getting dark when need be.

Martin Scorsese (Raging Bull, Taxi Driver)

     Columbia Pictures

Now we get to the origin story, if you will. Where it all began. The quote that would launch a hundred memes. Speaking to Empire in October 2019 (in an interview which would reappear in basically every outlet devoted to entertainment), Martin Scorsese derided the Marvel steamtrain, and its effects on the screen. He said:

I just find them boring. And they’re made as commodities like hamburgers, and it’s not about communicating and it’s not about sharing our imagination. “It’s about making a commodity which will make a profit for a big corporation - they’re a cynical exercise. “They’re market exercise and it has nothing to do with the art of cinema.

A month later, writing exclusively for The New York Times, Scorsese clarified somewhat.

I don’t see them. I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema […] Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.

It was almost as if Scorsese had broken the dam, and great directors as disparate as Paul Schrader and Ridley Scott began dunking on superhero movies as if they played for the same team. The debate continues, with probably no one changing their minds.

Many of the elements that define cinema as I know it are there in Marvel pictures. What’s not there is revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk. The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes. They are sequels in name but they are remakes in spirit, and everything in them is officially sanctioned because it can’t really be any other way. That’s the nature of modern film franchises: market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, revetted and remodified until they’re ready for consumption.

Another way of putting it would be that they are everything that the films of Paul Thomas Anderson or Claire Denis or Spike Lee or Ari Aster or Kathryn Bigelow or Wes Anderson are not. When I watch a movie by any of those filmmakers, I know I’m going to see something absolutely new and be taken to unexpected and maybe even unnameable areas of experience. My sense of what is possible in telling stories with moving images and sounds is going to be expanded.