Stop Proving Martin Scorsese's Point About Cinema

Once again, Film Twitter is taking aim at Martin Scorsese for his preservation stance on cinema. Shocker. 

Two years ago, Marvel fans and creatives wanted his head on a spike when he called the Marvel Cinematic Universe “not cinema,” a moment that also delighted many DC Films fans, especially with Joker releasing that year. 

Now in an op-ed essay for Harper’s, he’s concerned about how the business aspect of the movie industry has affected the art form, and furthermore the curation of the art form itself. He specifically singles out the word “content,” a term we hear applied to all media produced today, but most notably in a digital sense with streaming apps. Content creation is at a premium with companies now and Scorsese believes that mindset is all but threatening the preservation of the art form, the cinema itself, going forward. 

If you want to read his entire essay, I’ll link it here, but let’s talk about what it means and how so many people are falling into his “trap” that he didn’t even actually set. 

First, we all know on some level that movie making is a business, and in the past decade with comic book films especially, we have learned that business decisions are made based on perceived viability and financial success of a property. If a hero or storyline tests well, it gets made and if it sells well to the public, then more will be made from it. 

As fans, we’ve used this as our logic for and against things being created. We use it to prop up the MCU by touting how popular it is across the world, or to slam it by saying it proves that it has no depth and only appeals to the surface of people’s emotions. When a DC film is attacked for being unpopular, box office was the first thing we clung to when arguing otherwise, and now with HBO Max we’re looking at subscription data and trailer views on YouTube. 

We have absorbed the business end of movie making into our critical conversation and critique of the medium and we have done it almost seamlessly since the streaming age started to grow. 

That’s exactly what Scorsese is talking about with his concern. 

Look, he knows the opportunities that streaming services provide creatives. The Irishman doesn’t exist without Netflix and neither does his upcoming project Killers of the Flower Moon for Apple TV+. That’s not his issue, so if your first instinct is to attack him for his connection to that, congratulations on missing the point entirely, and for also proving that you’re part of the problem. 

Scorsese is not wrong about content creators, especially with Internet Service Providers now being in charge of studios, which is the case with NBC Universal(Comcast), and Warner Bros.(AT&T). The CEOs of these companies aren’t interested in the art form, they’re interested in building massive content libraries that people will subscribe to monthly and yearly. They aren’t being run by directors and writers that have a passion for the craft itself, it’s tech guys and data crunchers that want the numbers to go their way in the new era. 

So if that’s the case, why do we defend them if they don’t really care about the art form? The biggest reason is because we as an audience at large, want content. We binge things now. We consume whatever we can get our hands on when we want to, and the more of it we have, the more options we feel we have and the more satisfying it is to know that we won’t ever run out of things to watch. 

In addition to that, these tech guys are also smashing the Old Hollywood principles when it comes to running the industry. There are no loyalties to old producers and studio heads that have been around for decades and follow the traditional way of things, which has involved a culture of systematic abuse and scandal for many involved over the years. We’re not hearing the same “Me Too” stories from streaming productions as we have been with traditional Hollywood ones, and in numerous cases including Scorsese, creatives that can’t get a film greenlit in the traditional sense are finding homes on streamers now, meaning more original content is being produced at the digital level. 

On top of all of that, because these tech guys running the show aren’t Hollywood veterans, they’re not meddling the same way the Hollywood guys have for generations and they’re letting these creatives spread their wings with their projects far more. Hence why Scorsese was able to make The Irishman, why Zack Snyder is making Army of the Dead and why filmmakers like Regina King, Lin Manuel Miranda and Halle Berry are part of Netflix’s ambitious 71-movie slate for 2021. It’s an expanded option for creatives to really cut loose in a way that traditional Hollywood won’t let them. 

So knowing all of that, why is Scorsese taking shots at them? 

He isn’t. He’s saying WE need to take more responsibility for the art form itself. 

Look, many of us are ecstatic that Zack Snyder’s Justice League is about to see the light of day on HBO Max, right? We’re very grateful to Jason Kilar and HBO Max for that opportunity to now be realized, no question about it. 

At the end of the day though, it’s just one 4-hour piece of content for WarnerMedia’s new streaming service, and if it does well, more will be ordered to continue the success business-wise. They’re really not concerned about the IMAX aspect ratio of the film, the nuances of Snyder’s “show, don’t tell” abilities, the writing of Chris Terrio’s dialogue or the acting performances of Jared Leto as the Joker. 

They just hope it all gets them a massive subscriber boost when it’s all said and done. 

So when it comes to classifying and regarding the Snyder Cut as an art form, we can’t leave it up to Kilar and the tech guys to do that, because they’re not interested in that aspect of it. They simply sign the checks and say “go make it,” and then they sell it as best they can through digital means. If it works, they’re happy. If it doesn’t, they say oh well and move on to the next content creation idea. 

This means WE must be the ones that curate and regard projects like the Snyder Cut as an art form within cinema. THAT is what Scorsese is talking about when he says we can’t depend on the movie business to take care of cinema. It’s not that he thinks streamers are bad, he’s saying we must be the ones to remember the art form within what they create, because THAT is the essence of cinema, not the business end of how many subscribers it brings in. 

The reason people don’t get this point from him though is because they’ve assimilated the business end so much into the lexicon and support this content creation ideal so much for all of the above reasons, that they believe the evolution of cinema IS the business aspect itself, which isn’t the case. No, we’re not considering subscriber numbers, trailer views and app recommendations the same way we do camera angles, writing choices and acting performances. The subjective nature of art is still separated from the business end and is still there to be curated and considered, even in the middle of content being mass produced on an accelerated level with lower budgets for streaming services. 

WandaVision is part of the massive Disney+ slate of MCU content, as is The Mandalorian part of the LucasFilm slate, as is Zack Snyder’s Justice League part of HBO Max’s slate of movies and so on and so forth. All of it is content created for business purposes to sell to willing subscribers. 

Scorsese just wants us as an audience to not forget the art form within it and not let the business aspect drown that altogether. That’s all.