Martin Scorsese goes about to say how he does not think Marvel movies are not considered cinema and he is using this article as a way to explain what he meant by that statement he made during the Empire magazine interview. He defines what cinema is and he defines it as “ about revelation… the complexity of people… the way they can hurt one another and love one another and suddenly come face to face with themselves.” He then says Marvel does not have “ revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk.” and that is what he means when he does not consider it cinema. He then names Marvel “ worldwide audiovisual entertainment” as he describes Marvel as a series that panders to what the people want which is franchises and being seen on Netflix over the big screen in movie theaters.
The problems with some of his claims is that Marvel in fact does have what it takes to be cinema. He says Marvel does not have “revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk.”, while in fact it does. There were so many scenes that represent cinema during Infinity War and Endgame, and I will be using those 2 as examples because those are the most popular ones. During Infinity War, there was mystery as during the end of it you would not know what was going to happen next. You were left on a cliff hanger once Thanos got half of the population wiped and during some of those scenes, there was also genuine emotional danger. I am talking about the scene where Spiderman gets deleted right in front Iron Man, and you can really feel for Iron Man because he was treating Spiderman like his own son during the entire movie. During Endgame, there was the moment at the end where Iron Man sacrifices his own life to bring back everyone back from the quantum realm and after that the burial scene play and there was emotional connections between all the characters who went to his burial and even his daughter was there, the main reason he did not want to go to the war at the first place to take care of her. Marvel also shows the complexity of people and how “they can hurt one another and suddenly come face to face with themselves” during Endgame. When Black Widow and Hawkeye went to go for the soul stones they had a difficult time deciding who to sacrifice to get the stone, they were fighting each other wanting each other to live as whoever sacrifices themselves for the soul stone would be gone forever. Another way Marvel showed the complexity between people is how some of the super heroes act in the first scene of Endgame, no heroes wanted to join the fight because they all have families to care for. They can’t just run out there in the battlefield and just blow up Thanos, which they later just did but it took them a while which was 5 years and then wanted to take action again. How Martin Scorsese describes cinema, Marvel has all of those features so Martin’s points are somewhat contradictory.