Kevin Smith responds to Martin Scorsese’s Marvel comments

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

By now, most of you are aware of the controversy which Martin Scorsese stirred up when he said that Marvel movies are more like theme park attractions than true cinema. "I don’t see them. I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema," Scorsese said. "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." Plenty of actors in the Marvel Cinematic Universe actors, including Robert Downey Jr. and Samuel L. Jackson, have responded to Scorsese's comments, and now Kevin Smith has chimed in with his two-cents as well.

Kevin Smith spoke with THR about Martin Scorsese's comments and let his thoughts be known. "Martin Scorsese is a genius. But to be fair, my entire film career — even prior to my film career — he's been pretty much saying the same thing about action movies," Smith said, but added that as Scorsese "practically invented cinema," he's more than earned his opinion. Smith continued:

My feeling is, Martin Scorsese never sat in a movie theater with his dad and watched the movies of Steven Spielberg in the early '80s or George Lucas in the late '70s. He didn't feel that sense of magic and wonder… I can still step into one of those comic book movies, divorce myself of that fact that I do this for a living, release, and my dead dad is back for a minute, for two hours. And it's personal for a lot of the audience. You know, and we're not arguing whether or not it counts as cinema.

"I guarantee you there's something he enjoyed with his parents, like a musical — I bet you some cats would say, 'A musical is not really cinema,' but Martin Scorsese grew up on musicals, and I bet they mean a lot to him," Smith said. "These [Marvel] movies come from a core. They come from a happy childhood. And they're reflections of a happy childhood. He's not wrong, but at the same time, neither are we for loving those movies. And they are cinema." Kevin Smith's next film, JAY & SILENT BOB REBOOT, is set to hit select theaters via Fathom Events on October 15th, and there will also be a screening on October 17th which will be a double-feature with JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK. Following those screenings, Kevin Smith will be launching a roadshow tour on October 19th which will hit a variety of cities across the U.S. until February 26, 2020.