At the end of the day, he's Scorsese's problem:
He speaks of the elimination of risk and new filmmakers, but under the new system, the one where streaming services are around, new filmmakers and people of color are getting vastly more chances to direct their own original pictures and stories than they did in the heyday. Period.
So let's talk about what really happened. The mid-budget studio pic, which is where Scorsese and others like him (De Palma, Mann, Coppola, Fincher) used to play is gone. Because at the end of the day, TV caught up.
On the studio side, they need the return on investment, so they bet big to win big, but that's not really a Marvel thing. Studios will do what works until it doesn't, as evidenced by the many, many lean-budget horror films that launch each year. On the theater-side, they want to fill theaters and screens, which again leans heavily on the blockbuster film.
And on the audience side, the equations is always this: It costs 15 hard-earned dollars to go see a movie, at minimum. Now we pay up to $15 a month to get access to services that bring us Succession, Chernobyl, When They See Us, and more, it's real, real hard to justify spending $15 to see a drama on the big screen. And since The Irishman is coming to Netflix, Scorsese is actually only making that argument that much stronger.
Any discussion without those factors is missing the forest for the trees. And this part:
So I respect his work and understand his feelings, but disagree with the actual core foundation of his argument. Not the Marvel films, but the actual underpinning of the box office. (Plus, many of these arguments are used for horror films, so it already leaves a great distaste in my mouth on that side.)
And ladies and gents, he's not just aimed at Marvel films, that's his "Xbox=game console" talking. It's pretty much all blockbusters that are taking those screens.
He speaks of the elimination of risk and new filmmakers, but under the new system, the one where streaming services are around, new filmmakers and people of color are getting vastly more chances to direct their own original pictures and stories than they did in the heyday. Period.
So let's talk about what really happened. The mid-budget studio pic, which is where Scorsese and others like him (De Palma, Mann, Coppola, Fincher) used to play is gone. Because at the end of the day, TV caught up.
On the studio side, they need the return on investment, so they bet big to win big, but that's not really a Marvel thing. Studios will do what works until it doesn't, as evidenced by the many, many lean-budget horror films that launch each year. On the theater-side, they want to fill theaters and screens, which again leans heavily on the blockbuster film.
And on the audience side, the equations is always this: It costs 15 hard-earned dollars to go see a movie, at minimum. Now we pay up to $15 a month to get access to services that bring us Succession, Chernobyl, When They See Us, and more, it's real, real hard to justify spending $15 to see a drama on the big screen. And since The Irishman is coming to Netflix, Scorsese is actually only making that argument that much stronger.
Any discussion without those factors is missing the forest for the trees. And this part:
in a world where more women and people of color are getting a chance to direct their projects and tell their stories, because of streaming, feels a bit myopic.
So I respect his work and understand his feelings, but disagree with the actual core foundation of his argument. Not the Marvel films, but the actual underpinning of the box office. (Plus, many of these arguments are used for horror films, so it already leaves a great distaste in my mouth on that side.)
And ladies and gents, he's not just aimed at Marvel films, that's his "Xbox=game console" talking. It's pretty much all blockbusters that are taking those screens.
