James Gunn Rips Martin Scorsese Over Past Marvel Comments

Despite it happening all the way back in 2019, Martin Scorsese’s previous comments about Marvel not being “cinema” still strike a chord with certain fans. As one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Scorsese’s words hold a lot of weight and that pisses a lot of people off. We can add James Gunn to the list of people not stoked on the comments.

The Guardians of the Galaxy director has a vested interest in Marvel movies being successful. He’s currently making the rounds promoting his new film The Suicide Squad when he was asked about Scorsese’s comments.

“I just think it seems awful cynical that he would keep coming out against Marvel and then that is the only thing that would get him press for his movie,” Gunn said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “So he just kept coming out against Marvel so that he could get press for his movie. He’s creating his movie in the shadow of the Marvel films, and so he uses that to get attention for something he wasn’t getting as much attention as he wanted for it.”

Chalking up Scorsese’s very valid criticism of Marvel movies to self-promotion is a lazy argument on Gunn’s part. He’s been a top director for several decades and has earned enough respect to criticize any movie or franchise he wants. Gunn did follow his comments up with praise for the director.

“He’s one of the greatest filmmakers who’s ever existed,” Gunn continued. “I love his movies. I can watch his movies with no problem. And he said a lot of things I agree with. There are a lot of things that are true about what he said.

“There are a lot of heartless, soulless, spectacle films out there that don’t reflect what should be happening. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve talked to film directors before they went and made a big movie, and said, ‘Hey, we’re in this together, let’s do something different with these big movies. Let’s make them something different than everything that has come before them.’ And then see them cater to every single studio whim and be grossed out, frankly.”

It’s popular with Marvel fans to bash Scorsese these days but Gunn definitely alienated a lot of people in the film community with these comments.

Some very honest thoughts here from James Gunn on defending comic book movies from the likes of Martin Scorsese. Yikes. https://t.co/RUtfz9L6oK pic.twitter.com/d4CKkZeM2w

— Josh Horowitz (@joshuahorowitz) August 4, 2021