Hating Both Sides of the Marvel Debate

We’re in a weird point in the history of movies. A point where everybody seems to be mad at each other.

Everyone’s mad at Marvel for the ubiquity of their product and the perception that it’s watered down the medium from both an economic and artistic standpoint, Marvel fans and those who work for Marvel are constantly on defense, those who don’t care frequently find themselves in the crossfire, and me, I feel like I’m on a balcony overlooking this mess, and I’m mad at both sides of the debate.

I know that the amount of time I spend on Letterboxd and reading articles about the state of the movie industry fuels my distaste for seemingly all film fans. But I can’t help it. The conversation about the art does a lot to shape its perception, and I want to watch my movies in peace without thinking about the Marvel chud or the annoying A24 bro or anyone in between. So here’s where I’m at.

I’m Sick of the Marvel Glut Just Like Everyone Else…

To jump ahead to the point of this article, I have issues with a lot of the critiques about the MCU. But just to be clear, in spirit, I’m with the detractors.

At this moment in time, I’ve seen every Marvel movie and a small handful of the shows. I’m still going to watch the movies they put out, and there are some Marvel movies I genuinely like. (Seeing Black Panther on opening night was one of the most joyous movie theater experiences I’ve ever had.) But at this point, it’ll be more out of academic curiosity than actual passion.

Like everyone else, I’ve been worn down, and at this point I doubt I need to explain why. So this section might be a little short.

It’s your usual talking points. Most of them look like flat lifeless shit, and that’s before you get into the quality of the CGI churned out by the underfed peons in the VFX sweatshops. Add on top of that you’re typical points about the ubiquity of the MCU. Even though in 2024 it feels like we’re at the end of the superhero era, one could glance at the box office returns of Deadpool & Wolverine and get the feeling that it can rear its ugly head back at any given moment. Though Marvel’s starting to see some failure, it still feels like an unseen force hovering over all. 

But if I’m being honest, my biggest problem is the simple nuts and bolts storytelling.

Since Endgame, Marvel's storytelling has felt adrift, and not just in the sense that it’s lost this feeling that all the movies are leading up to some massive moment or confrontation. I’m talking about just basic plotting. Say what you will about the pre-Endgame slate of Marvel films, but at least there’s a baseline quality to the way they structured their stories. There was a feeling of causality between the storybeats and it made sense how one event naturally led to the next. This by no means qualifies them as “good movies” (though, again, I like some of them), but merely competent ones. You could track character arcs and do all that basic screenwriting 101 shit you do to endear an audience.

Fuck if I could keep track of any of that stuff in Quantumania. Or Black Widow. Or Shang-Chi. (Though, to be fair, I still liked Shang-Chi for other reasons.) And really, a lot of the more recent ones. And even if I can tell you what happens in them, I can’t tell you what they’re trying to convey.

I’m hardly the first to point this out, but most of our contemporary superhero movies, let alone MCU films, are arguably about curing us of the trauma of 9/11. These stories center around villains with evil schemes and motives that cause catastrophes that shake the world. They destroy New York or assassinate world leaders, killing hundreds, if not thousands, in the process. Luckily for us, however, there are people with supernatural abilities, elite training, and endless wealth to serve justice and reaffirm the status quo.

To their credit, Marvel’s trying to evolve. Eternals tried to shift the focus away from 9/11 towards climate change, and as Marvel content feels like its getting increasingly conspiratorial, particularly in the shows, it’s starting to resemble the rise of right-wing fascism we’ve been seeing in the Trump years. Neither have done an effective job. Some of that has to do with each project’s individual problems, but it feels more like they’re trying to grasp something at a meaning beyond Marvel’s cultural reach. Or at least the reach it’s allowed to have under Disney.

9/11 revenge fantasies are, emotionally speaking, simple and clean. “They” did the bad thing, so let’s get them back. Climate change, on the other hand, isn’t as tangible, and Marvel uses fascism as a backdrop more than it’s interested in actually exploring and combating it. So they either try to address a trauma most of the country has emotionally moved on from or they’re doing a poor job addressing the newer issues plaguing our subconcious.

Maybe this is overthinking. Maybe the subtext of the MCU isn’t really the issue so much as its declining quality and the loss of its cultural value because of its oversaturation. But more so than ever, Marvel doesn’t feel like it’s about anything, and when its relevancy isn’t clear, it becomes easier to dismiss.

…But the Marvel Detractors Can Be Just as Annoying, If Not Worse.

All that being said, I find the Marvel detractors just as insufferable these days, if not more so, than the IP or its stans.

Let’s be clear up front: I’m talking in generalities. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to dislike Marvel movies, and some of them have to do with the actual problem looming over this debate. (You’ll never guess what it is!) But if you take the temperature of the way people talk about MCU movies, the tweets and the thinkpieces and the pissing contests between “real” directors and those who make Marvel films, the conversation gets petty.

The idea that Marvel movies don’t have merit or that they’re somehow lesser art is, at best, intellectually dishonest. I may think they look flat, but setting aside that this isn’t always the case, I would never say that there isn’t any thought or signs of humanity behind why they look the way they look. I could say the same about all the other aesthetic elements of the MCU, be it sound, music, or anything in between. We take all these elements for granted, and we usually do so at the expense of the hundreds of artists who make them. I don’t think anyone wants to erase these people, but when we infer that Marvel movies don’t have merit, that’s effectively what we’re doing. A human being made every decision that led to the creation of what you’re seeing. We can debate whether the sum total of their work is effective or not, but we shouldn’t deny their actual merits in the process.

A similar point can be made about their content. The perception of Marvel films is that they’re apolitical or right-wing. It is, after all, a series of movies backed by a billion dollar “family friendly” corporation in which mostly men with super powers police the world. The de facto leader of these men, at least for most of the movies, was a billionaire tech genius with a heart of gold whose family fortune came from arms manufacturing.

Nobody’s wrong for thinking this way, but I also don’t think it’s that simple. Specifically, and this may be a hot take on my part, I don’t think they’re as apolitical as they seem. The Winter Soldier is a movie about the government being infiltrated by, essentially, nazis. A scary concept that mirrors the times we live in now more than it did when it came out, and it’s film pretty overtly critical of authoritarianism and oppressive government intrusion. Captain Marvel is a movie about its lead character realizing she was complicit in colonialism and genocide because she never questioned the environment and values of the nation that raised her. Then, of course, there are the Black Panther movies.

Despite how Marvel frames these characters, the heroes constantly take down those who seek to be worshipped as demagogues or rule as tyrants. These movies frequently oppose subjugation and prejudice. It would be ridiculous of me to sit here and pretend that it always tackles these subjects effectively or that these movies are somehow leftist or anything like that. More often than not, the messaging is muddled or not even present. But I don’t think their politics are as simple as many make them out to be.

Which brings us to Martin Scorsese.

Whether or not it was his intention, Scorsese has become the face of the anti-superhero movement. He’s so synonymous with Marvel critique that he’s become a meme and people use his face and name when invoking the merits of “real cinema” or poking fun at those people while saying “kino” a million billion times. His status as the leader of the anti-Marvel movement comes in large part because of an op-ed he wrote in the New York Times entitled Martin Scorsese: I Said Marvel Movies Aren’t Cinema. Let Me Explain., in which he argues, among other things, that Marvel movies are more like theme park rides, and they lack the element of personal expression that’s defined film since its conception as an art form.

Despite its reputation, it’s a fairly mild critique. Most of the article consists of him explaining what qualifies as cinema and where it came from, and it’s really only the back third where he gets into his critique. Throughout the article, he does not deny the artistry on display, but he does take issue with how these films are assembled and how much of the market they’re allowed to control. Personally, I think the designation of MCU movies as theme park rides is needlessly condescending. But I agree with the general thesis of what he has to say.

I cannot say the same for a number of other filmmakers. 

In a 2014 interview with Deadline, director Alejandro G. Iñárritu said:

“The problem is that sometimes they purport to be profound, based on some Greek mythological kind of thing. And they are honestly very right wing. I always see them as killing people because they do not believe in what you believe, or they are not being who you want them to be. I hate that, and don’t respond to those characters. They have been poison, this cultural genocide, because the audience is so overexposed to plot and explosions and shit that doesn’t mean nothing about the experience of being human.”

When I read this, my impulse is to be petty. I feel the need to point out that none of the plots of superhero movies, should you actually choose to pay attention to them, support the assertion that superheroes kill over ideological differences and that he’s painting a specific false image of superhero films and attacking that rather than what’s actually there. I also feel a need to roll my eyes at the comparison of superhero movies to genocide, even a non-literal one, and that the values of several of Iñárritu’s films, mainly Birdman and Bardo, are as shitty as what he claims to oppose. These two films lionize a pervasive kind of man. The brilliant “tortured” artists who, like a lot of “brilliant artists” throughout history, use their talent and temperament as weapons of abuse and horrendous behavior. These movies will break their backs trying to persuade you that’s the point, but coming from the filmmaker who says superhero films are “cultural genocide,” I’m not inclined to believe them.

But really, the problem with Iñárritu’s point is that it’s not rooted in genuine care for the medium, but pretentious gatekeeping. The arbitrary quantification of one kind of art over another not based in merit or resonance, but the illusion of “artistry.” Auteur films don’t deign to include explosions or action set pieces! No, auteur films are about, at least based on Iñárritu’s recent filmography, surface level trauma porn and insincere self-flagellation about how hard it is to be an artist who’s won awards.

Iñárritu is far from the only director who’s gone after Marvel for these kinds of reasons. Jane Campion told Variety, on the subject of making a superhero movie, “I think it’s safe to say that I will never do that. They’re so noisy and like ridiculous. Sometimes you get a good giggle, but I don’t know what the thing is with the capes, a grown man in tights. I feel like it must come from pantomime.” During a press conference in Lyon in 2019, Francis Ford Coppola said:

“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. I don’t know that anyone gets anything out of seeing the same movie over and over again. Martin was kind when he said it’s not cinema. He didn’t say it’s despicable, which I just say it is.”

During a 2021 interview with Deadline, Ridley Scott said that superhero movies are “fucking boring as shit” and said “Their scripts are not any fucking good.” I don’t actually have a problem with this one, I just wanted to include it because it’s hilarious.

Still, for as much as I respect and love the work of Jane Campion and Francis Ford Coppola, these opinions, intentionally or not, assert that Marvel films don’t have any merit. More so, they revel in the idea that disliking Marvel movies is some sort of signifier of sophistication or taste. However, say what you want about Marvel, but when one of their actors was found guilty of assaulting his girlfriend, they cut ties. Francis Ford Coppola, however, hires accused sexual predators and racist Trump supporters on purpose just to appear “not woke” before engaging in misconduct himself. I know I’m making a petty point, but if you want to talk about merit or who gets to make true cinema or what is and isn’t despicable, let’s talk about what despicable really means.

The Actual Problem Is Corporations and Capitalism

Who could’ve seen that coming?!?

Over the last few years, it’s felt more and more like when people say “Marvel” they don’t really mean the MCU, but rather major Hollywood films in general. The sequels, prequels, tie-ins, adaptations, remakes, and the seemingly endless flaunting of intellectual property that’s come to define mainstream filmmaking this century. Marvel, rhetorically speaking, is no longer a subdivision of Disney that makes superhero content, but a pattern of business practices. It’s just easier to say “Marvel.”

The real issue I have with the Scorseses and the Coppolas and all the other directors who’ve spoken out against superhero movies is that I think they know damn well that the problem isn’t the movies themselves. The problem is mass media conglomerates, led by arguably the most incompetent generation of CEOs in the history of Hollywood, prioritizing unsustainable short term profit. These multinational corporations popped the streaming bubble and severely wounded the theater business at their own expense, and when you add on top of that a number of other practices including but not limited to routinely absorbing businesses they can’t actually afford half the time, none of the studios are willing to make take financial or creative risks. As a result, we get the ceaseless churn of IP, and while you may get some subpar movies, it’s really the artists and the labor that suffer the most. 

They know this is the problem, but they can’t say it, presumably because they’re also trying to get a part of that pie. Scorsese took that Netflix and Apple+ bag, Campion took a Netflix check as well, and Denis Villeneuve, who’s also spoken out against superhero movies, makes mega budget IP films for Warner Bros. The only filmmaker who hasn’t is Francis Ford Coppola, but as I write this sentence on September 29, 2024, his self-funded film Megalopolis has made $4 million domestic of its $120 million budget. 

And just to be clear, as an aspiring filmmaker myself, I don’t blame any of these filmmakers for taking that money. If any of them were to offer me money to make something for them, I would take it in a heartbeat. I just resent the fact that these filmmakers have presented all this as some sort of artistic or cultural problem, and not a capitalist one.

So here’s my suggestion. Next time you have an impulse to voice your disgust for Marvel movies or IP movies in general, do so. But then pick up your phone and call your representatives. Tell them, politely, that you have a problem with the way that studios are allowed to conduct their business. Tell them, specifically, that you would like them to put pressure on the Justice Department to stop treating anti-trust laws like they’re a big fucking joke and break up some of these media conglomerates.

Or at least recognize that Marvel isn’t the problem. They’re just a symptom.