Why Zack Snyder is okay with Martin Scorsese slamming superhero films
Zack Snyder won't be raising an army of the dead to dual Gangs of New York director Martin Scorsese over the elder filmmaker previously calling superhero films "not cinema."
In fact, the Justice League "Snyder cut" director doesn't have a problem with what Scorsese said about Marvel films — comments that caused an internet uproar in 2019.
"Oh, it's fair," Snyder said in response to a fan question in his interview with The Guardian. "Martin Scorsese is a genius. If you're really good at something, commenting on that world is completely within your rights. And it doesn't diminish my respect for him. I'm certain he wasn't talking about my movies. [Laughs] He might've been, but I like to think he wasn't. He meant the other ones."
Scorsese hit the headlines the year before the pandemic when he weighed in on the genre (he was specifically asked about whether he'd seen Marvel films). "I tried, you know?" The Goodfellas helmer previously commented to Empire magazine. "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."
After finding out his comments provoked outrage from comic book film fans, Scorsese penned an editorial for The New York Times, where he explained that he grew up in a different time and indicated he had a different creative brief when it came to making movies.
"For me, for the filmmakers I came to love and respect, for my friends who started making movies around the same time that I did, cinema was about revelation — aesthetic, emotional, and spiritual revelation. It was about characters — the complexity of people and their contradictory and sometimes paradoxical natures, the way they can hurt one another and love one another and suddenly come face to face with themselves," Scorsese wrote.
In Thursday's Guardian piece, Snyder offered praise for Marvel films when answering a question from a fan who wanted to know what he'd do differently if he were in charge of one.
"Nothing. I could have changed it so it would have maybe made less money or been less beloved. But for what they've created — I don't know that there is a better way to do it."
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