{"id":139795,"date":"2022-11-26T09:46:06","date_gmt":"2022-11-26T09:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/quentin-tarantino-doesnt-think-marvel-actors-are-movie-stars-so-what-movies\/"},"modified":"2022-11-26T09:46:06","modified_gmt":"2022-11-26T09:46:06","slug":"quentin-tarantino-doesnt-think-marvel-actors-are-movie-stars-so-what-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/quentin-tarantino-doesnt-think-marvel-actors-are-movie-stars-so-what-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"Quentin Tarantino doesn’t think Marvel actors are movie stars. So what? | movies"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

I<\/span><\/span>s Quentin Tarantino just the latest in a long line of auteur film-makers to get roundly pummelled by Twitter for daring to question the enduring hegemony of superhero movies at the global box office? That’s the story you might think you’re reading judging from various reports this week, including this piece in the Hollywood Reporter.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t love them,\u201d Tarantino told Tom Segura’s 2 Bears, 1 Cave podcast when asked about superhero movies. \u201cNo, I don’t. I don’t hate them. But I don’t love them. I mean, look, I used to collect Marvel comics like crazy when I was a kid. There’s an aspect that if these movies were coming out when I was in my 20s, I would totally be fucking happy and totally love them. [But] they wouldn’t be the only movies being made, they would be those movies amongst other movies. I’m almost 60 so I’m not quite as excited about them.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy only ax to grind is they’re the only things that seem to be made,\u201d Tarantino continued. \u201cAnd they’re the only things that seem to generate any kind of excitement amongst a fanbase or even for the studio making them \u2026 So it’s just the fact that they are the entire representation of this era of movies right now. There’s not really much room for anything else. That’s my problem. It’s a problem of representation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of the Marvel-isation of Hollywood is you have all these actors who have become famous playing these characters,\u201d he added. \u201cBut they’re not movie stars, right? Captain America is the star. Thor is the star. I’m not the first person to say that. I think that’s been said a zillion times, but it’s these franchise characters [that] become a star.<\/p>\n

\u201cBack in 2005, if an actor stars in a movie that does as good as the Marvel movies do, then that guy’s an absolute star. It means people dig him or her and they like them and want to see them in stuff. Sandra Bullock is in Speed \u200b\u200band everyone thought she’s amazing in it. Everyone fell in love with her \u2026 They were excited by Sandra Bullock and wanted to see her in something else. That’s not the case now. We want to see that guy [keep] playing Wolverine or whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regular readers of this column will recall we have (sort of) been here before, when Martin Scorsese sparked the original anti-Marvel furore with comments made during his Bafta David Lean lecture in October 2019. The venerable director described cinema as having become like \u201c amusement parks\u201d thanks to an overabundance of superhero movies. He then went further in an interview with Empire, opining: \u201cThe value of a film that’s like a theme park film, for example, the Marvel-type pictures, where the theaters become amusement parks, that’s a different experience \u2026 it’s not cinema, it’s something else.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
<\/picture><\/div>
<\/svg><\/span>Outspoken \u2026 Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese think superhero films are ‘not cinema’.<\/span> Photograph: AP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Francis Ford Coppola later followed up with comments made to journalists in Lyon after his acceptance of the Prix Lumi\u00e8re for contribution to cinema.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen 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,\u201d said the director of Apocalypse Now and the Godfather trilogy . \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tarantino’s comments have drawn particular ire from the star of Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Simu Liu, who wrote on Twitter: \u201cIf the only gatekeepers to movie stardom came from Tarantino and Scorsese, I would never have had the opportunity to lead a $400m-plus movie. I am in awe of their filmmaking genius. They are transcendent auteurs. But they don’t get to point their nose at me or anyone. No movie studio is or ever will be perfect. But I’m proud to work with one that has made sustained efforts to improve diversity onscreen by creating heroes that empower and inspire people of all communities everywhere. I loved the golden age too … but it was white as hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n