James Cameron Takes Aim At Marvel, DC Characters: “They All Act Like They’re In College”
25.10.2022 - 22:57
/ deadline.com
Add James Cameron to the list of elite filmmakers taking umbrage with today’s superhero films.
The three-time Oscar winner critiqued the storytelling of Marvel and DC in an interview with The New York Times published on Tuesday. “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,” he said. “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.”
Cameron is in good company, when it comes to his views on today’s superhero-driven blockbusters, with Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott, Francis Ford Coppola and Jane Campion among those having expressed a similar distaste for them. “I don’t see [Marvel films]. I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema,” Scorsese told Empire magazine in 2019. “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.”
Coppola was among those backing Scorsese up at the time, even if directors like James Gunn took issue with his point of view.
“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,” said Coppola while in France to accept the Prix Lumiere for his contributions to cinema. “I don’t know that anyone gets anything out of