Expanding on his criticism of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Martin Scorsese has said while these films were made by people of considerable talent and artistry, there is an absence of "revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger" in them.
The multiple Oscar-winning director gives an insight into his comments that sparked a controversy between all other films and Marvel in early October, after he branded the superhero films as "theme park experience" and "not cinema".
In a New York Times op-ed, titled "I Said Marvel Movies Aren't Cinema. Let Me Explain", Scorsese wrote, "Many franchise films are made by people of considerable talent and artistry. You can see it on the screen. The fact that the films themselves don't interest me is a matter of personal taste and temperament.
"I know that if I were younger, if I'd come of age at a later time, I might have been excited by these pictures and maybe even wanted to make one myself. But I grew up when I did and I developed a sense of movies of what they were and what they could be that was as far from the Marvel universe as we on Earth are from Alpha Centauri."
"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."
"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."
"... 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."
"Many of them are well made by teams of talented individuals. All the same, they lack something essential to cinema: the unifying vision of an individual artist. Because, of course, the individual artist is the riskiest factor of all."
"(Netflix) and it alone, allowed us to make 'The Irishman' the way we needed to, and for that I'll always be thankful. We have a theatrical window, which is great. Would I like the picture to play on more big screens for longer periods of time? Of course I would. But no matter whom you make your movie with, the fact is that the screens in most multiplexes are crowded with franchise pictures."
"If people are given only one kind of thing and endlessly sold only one kind of thing, of course they're going to want more of that one kind of thing."