By Hard to believe but five years ago, filmmaker Martin Scorsese dropped an interview quote that has echoed on for years – by saying that superhero movies are not “cinema”.
In the years since, many writers, directors, and actors have responded – some taking argument with that stance, some agreeing with him. The superhero fans themselves have certainly had stuff to say.
One of his contemporaries is Francis Ford Coppola who dubbed them “despicable” a while back, and now “Star Wars” creator George Lucas has weighed in with his own take.
In a rare interview conducted at Cannes this past week where he was an award recipient, Lucas gave a ten-minute video interview to Brut France and was directly asked about Scorsese not deeming superhero films as cinema. He says:
“Look. Cinema is the art of a moving image. So if the image moves, then it’s cinema. I think Marty has kind of changed his mind a little bit.”
He then goes on to talk about his work with Scorsese on the film foundation which sets out or preserve cinematic works. He explains how he helped pioneer digital photography early, even as others he knew like Spielberg and Scorsese were initially advising him against it and have now come around to it.
In terms of the industry now, he’s not really into movies much these days:
“The stories they’re telling are just old movies. ‘Let’s do a sequel, let’s do another version of this movie’ There’s no original thinking. The big studios, they don’t have an imagination.”
Don’t expect him to get behind the camera and show ’em what’s what though – Lucas says he’s happily retired and has other things to do:
“No, I’m retired. The last one I did as a producer was a thing called Strange Magic, which is an animated film. So I was doing movies that I wanted to do rather than…I was financing myself and had my own studio. I am building a museum in Los Angeles. It’s keeping me very busy.”
The full interview can be found on X@BrutOfficiel
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