Legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese, hot off his controversial take on Marvel movies, has now taken a swipe at Todd Phillips’ “Joker.”
Speaking to The New York Times for an interview published Thursday, Scorsese said he has not seen many films this year, including “Joker.” And he has no plans to see the film, calling it just “fine.”
“I saw clips of it. I know it. So it’s like, why do I need to?” Scorsese said of “Joker.”
“I get it. It’s fine,” he added.
As noted by the Times, “Joker” contains many homages to Scorsese’s own work. Moreover, “The Irishman” director passed on an offer to executive produce the film.
Moviegoers are not on the same page. Phillips’ “Joker,” starring award-winning actor Joaquin Phoenix, became the highest grossing R-rated film in history.
“With $788.1M worldwide, Warner Bros./Village Roadshow/Bron Studio’s ‘Joker’ has just passed Fox’s ‘Deadpool’ to become the highest grossing R-rated movie of all-time,” Deadline reported in October. “That Marvel pic ended its run with $783M. By the end of the weekend, it’s expected that ‘Joker”s global tally will stand at $825M. At least a $900 final tally is expected with a profit after ancillaries at $464M.”
In October, Scorsese caught the scorn of Marvel fans when he said the high-grossing films are “not cinema.”
“I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema,” Scorsese said of the movies, according to The Guardian. “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.”
As noted by The Daily Wire, famed director James Cameron is also not a fan of the Marvel universe.
“I’m hoping we’ll start getting ‘Avenger’ fatigue here pretty soon,” Cameron said IndieWire in 2018. “It’s just, come on guys, there are other stories to tell besides hypergonadal males (men who produce too much testosterone) without families doing death-defying things for two hours and wrecking cities in the process. It’s like, oy!”
“I’ve found myself as a father of five starting to think about what would an ‘Avatar’ story be like if it was a family drama. What if it was ‘The Godfather?’” Cameron continued. “It’s a generational family saga. That’s very different than the first film. There’s still the same setting and the same respect for the shock of the new. We still want to show you things that you haven’t even seen or imagined, but the story is very different.”
“It’s a continuation of the same characters … but what happens when warriors who are willing to go on suicide charges and leap off cliffs, what happens when they grow up and have their own kids?” he added.
Though Scorsese is in no rush to see “Joker,” he did enjoyed “Parasite.”
“Scorsese was circumspect when asked about movies from the past year that he had enjoyed, pleading modesty and the fact that he still needed to watch a lot of films, though he did say he had seen and liked Bong Joon Ho’s dark satire ‘Parasite,'” the Times noted.