Francis Ford Coppola went viral in 2019 after he was quoted calling Marvel movies “despicable” while supporting Martin Scorsese’s critical beliefs about comic book films hurting the film industry. Coppola later clarified that he wasn’t talking about Marvel movies specifically, saying it’s “despicable” how the film industry now values commerce over art. Speaking to GQ magazine in a recent interview, Coppola again lamented over the state of Hollywood studio films and Marvel’s monotony.
“There used to be studio films,” Coppola said. “Now there are Marvel pictures. And what is a Marvel picture? A Marvel picture is one prototype movie that is made over and over and over and over and over again to look different.”
Even studio films that Coppola considers good are somewhat similar, the director maintained. “The talented people — you could take ‘Dune,’ made by Denis Villeneuve, an extremely talented, gifted artist, and you could take ‘No Time to Die,’ directed by…Cary Fukunaga — extremely gifted, talented, beautiful artists, and you could take both those movies, and you and I could go and pull the same sequence out of both of them and put them together. The same sequence where the cars all crash into each other.”
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Coppola added. “They all have that stuff in it, and they almost have to have it, if they’re going to justify their budget. And that’s the good films, and the talented filmmakers.”
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In his original comments from 2019, Coppola took aim at the “lack of risk” that exists in Hollywood film production these days. “Marty Scorsese says that the Marvel picture is not cinema, he’s right because we expect to learn something from cinema, we expect to gain some enlightenment, some knowledge, some inspiration,” the director said. “Arguably, I don’t know that anyone gets anything out of seeing the same movie over and over again, which is the Marvel movies. A thing that has no risk to it.”
Coppola concluded, “I’ve said before, making a film without risk is like making a baby without sex. Part of it is risk, and that’s what make it so interesting, that’s why we learn so much when it’s made.”
While Coppola has not directed a feature film since 2011’s “Twixt,” he’s currently in development on his passion project “Megalopolis.” Head over to GQ’s website to read more from the filmmaker’s latest interview.
