Movie studios like Disney have changed the landscape of the film industry; and maybe not for the better.
Recently, I’ve become especially sick of comic book movies.
When Disney’s slate of Marvel films started in 2008, I was initially a big fan but somewhere along the way they’ve lost me.
Maybe it’s because they feel so factory produced now, or maybe with how many of them there are I just feel over-saturated.
Whatever it is, lately I’ve been craving a different kind of movie.
On a Sunday in late August, I was possessed by a sudden urge to go to the movies. Specifically, I really wanted to see Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.
I found my seat as the previews were ending; my thoughts consumed by the horror stories of awful theatre etiquette coming out of the pandemic. I was a little uneasy when the raucous crowd’s loud intermingling conversations began to bleed into the beginning of the movie, but my fears were quickly assuaged when Cillian Murphy appeared on screen, and everyone quieted down.
Though nothing was overly distracting, the rumours were in fact true. People holding conversations at normal volume at key plot points or scrolling through Tik Tok while the bomb was going off. The most heinous began with a couple having a fairly public fight directly next to me. The boyfriend eventually stalked off while the other remained at the movie only to also scroll through Tik Tok the entire time.
I wouldn’t go nearly so far as to say that it ruined my viewing experience, but it was definitely jarring. It was bizarre to see a group of 19+ people at a VIP showing unable to remain focused on a movie for its full duration—let alone one of the most successful films of the 21st century.
I find Oppenheimer an interesting case. Movies like this don’t seem to get made much anymore. It’s a three-hour, exposition-heavy, biopic with an all-star cast and director that a lot of people seem incapable of investing their full attention in. However, I would argue its box office success is evidence of a larger demand for films of its ilk.
The media seemed to think so too.
After Martin Scorsese sat down with GQ to discuss the state of the industry and his filmmaking, Dexerto released an article comparing Scorsese’s upcoming movie, Killers of the Flower Moon, to Oppenheimer.
The author, Daisy Phillipson, suggested that “Killers of the Flower Moon may be the next Oppenheimer following a rush to bag tickets by fans looking for their next cinematic fix.”
The Phillipson added that both films’ successes “demonstrates audiences’ thirst for adult-targeted cinema and compelling storytelling.”
With all due respect, what on earth does that mean?
“Cinematic fix” and “adult-target cinema” just seem completely absurd. They suggest that the majority of movies are not targeted to adults and that “cinema” is a rarity.
It’s a particularly interesting comment to make, especially considering the contents of the Scorsese interview that prompted it.
While Zach Baron—the interviewer—and Scorsese began by discussing his past as a director, his life and childhood, they eventually got on the topic of the state of the industry.
“Well, the industry is over,” said Scorsese, one of the industry’s greatest.
It was around this point that the interview took a bitter turn.
In Scorsese’s mind, many of the industry’s problems begin with Marvel and other “comic book movies.”
“The danger there is what it’s doing to our culture,” Scorsese said. “Because there are going to be generations now that think movies are only those—that’s what movies are.”
Scorsese then doubled down saying, “They already think that.”
It certainly feels that way.
One response to Scorsese’s comments came from a now-deleted post on X, formerly Twitter, that drew a lot of engagement. Quoting Canadian media critic John Campea, the post suggested that audiences resonated more with media like Ms. Marvel, a Marvel TV mini-series, than The Wolf of Wall Street.
“Nobody can relate to being a billionaire getting busted by the feds.”
Sure —that’s almost certainly true —and also misses the entire point of The Wolf of Wall Street, a film about the insatiable greed of America’s 1% and the repercussions of their actions.
At the end of the day, I can’t argue with the results; it looks like it’s what the fans want.
Since being bought by Disney in 2009, as of February, Marvel has earned $28.2 billion at the global box office.
Despite the success of these films, they often feel like they’re missing something. Another post in this Scorsese discourse from a comic-book-movie fan illustrated it excellently: “You have to micromanage a shared universe for it to work. You want that much creative freedom, watch indie films.”
This was something else that Scorsese touched on in his interview as well. A long-time antagonist of the major studios, Scorsese believes that much of this lack of emotional depth comes from these studios.
“[Studios aren’t] interested any longer in supporting individual voices that express their personal feelings or their personal thoughts and personal ideas and feelings on a big budget,” said Scorsese, “Now…they’ve pigeonholed [those movies] to what they call ‘indies.’”
This division has occurred in cinema so that we now have two kinds of films: movies and entertainment products.
Don’t get me wrong, entertainment is always a good thing, and there’s a lot to enjoy about comic-book movies. At a certain point, though, some of it becomes a little insulting to the viewer.
Their stories feel increasingly pallid and hollow. They lack character development, pushing on from one plot point to the next. The dialogue feels vapid, every moment of sincerity undercut by a snide remark or lame quip. They don’t push the boundaries of the form, except in how much they can spend on CGI. Most importantly, they lack the substantiative qualities that separate art from simple content. They stand for nothing and therefore risk nothing. It’s all manufactured to appeal to the maximum number of people with a minimal amount of risk of alienating even a single viewer.
Perhaps the best example is the “multiverse” storylines that are cropping up, full of forced character cameos, characters coming back from the dead, slapping 15 pieces of Marvel IP together with $100 million of CGI and calling it a day.
The pattern —noticeable in Marvel, DC and Star Wars— bears a striking similarity to the returns from the dead of WWE wrestlers like The Rock.
I queried my roommate, a WWE fan, about the comparison. His response was, “Yeah, but it’s really cool.”
He’s not wrong, and neither are the Disney writers who are completely aware of this.
But fake wrestling isn’t an art form. It’s becoming harder to say that the comic book movies are anything close either.
It shouldn’t be like that. Film is an art form. It’s art in the same way a painting, a sculpture or a piece of music is. What’s happening in film now is as if the most successful style of paintings on the market were Canva infographics.
We’ve entered a point in cinema discourse that positions these comic book movies as movies for the everyday person due to their easy digestion. The simplistic nature of comic book movies’ enjoyment is considered the overwhelming merit of the work itself, rather than any artistic liberties the movies choose to make. “Let people like what they want!” is a common refrain used to absolve any film from the rigours of critical analysis.
On the other hand, more complex movies, with nuanced and conflicting characters, stories and moralities, have their intricacies used against them like a cudgel. People can’t be bothered to put in the work to unpack a movie and think that any movie that requires that or encourages that is “pretentious.”
It’s likely a sign of the times: people’s tastes —and the industry itself—have changed.
I have a number of friends who tell me they mostly watch TV shows because they better match their shorter attention spans; they don’t watch movies outside the Disney ones or raunchy comedies. The type of movies I am talking about require a rigorous attention that the average viewer has no desire to expend.
The American movie industry has also moved in a different direction as a whole.
Since Wall Street started to expand into Hollywood in the ‘90’s, the industry has been dominated by hedge funds, whose capitalistic approach impacts the ways movies get made.
Hedge funds, by nature, want to squeeze every single dollar out of a property in the most efficient way possible, and their movie-making practices reflect this.
Every single Marvel movie makes money, no matter how much of an affront to the idea of cinema it is; if the big Hollywood execs know they can make money churning out a few comic-book movies every year, why would they stop?
To cap it off, the diminishing theatre industry hurts “indie” films too. Studios now own massive streaming services that they are incentivized to populate with their own IP.
In turn, the streaming services cut deeply into the revenues of theatres, which are then forced to make choices about what kind of movies they show. Why would they give chances to indie films when they’re barely clinging to survival?
The film industry has been fundamentally changed.
However, that doesn’t mean I think people who care about great cinema should just give up either.
Based on Killers of the Flower Moon and Oppenheimer, there is demand for it, but people need to show the hedge funds that in the only way they understand: money.
Buy tickets to the theatres, visit film festivals like TIFF, and subscribe to streaming services like Criterion or Kanopy that support a wider range of film makers.
Disney and its hedge-funded brethren might be committed to anti-art, but that’s only because it’s profitable.
If people show that they care about good art with their wallets, more of it will be made.
The industry as we know it may be over, but it’s not dead yet.