Marvel Studios and Sony's Spider-Man: No Way Home and other highly beloved Marvel projects have experienced incredible critical and box office success. Still, renowned director Francis Ford Coppola has joined the bandwagon of criticism once again, describing Marvel projects as unoriginal prototypes, repeated over and over again.
Coppola gained notice three years ago for his comments about the MCU in defense of Martin Scorsese, who faced backlash for calling the films produced by the studio "not cinema," which Coppola agreed with. However, Coppola felt Scorsese was generous with his comments, calling the Marvel Studios films despicable because of what they fail to give audiences.
Coppola's feelings about the MCU have stayed relatively consistent as years have passed. While speaking with GQ about his timeless classic The Godfather and his upcoming project Megalopolis, which has been in the works for nearly 40 years, the iconic director talked about his displeasure with the modern film industry. "There used to be studio films," expressed Coppola. "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." Coppola continued his debatable point by bringing Denis Villeneuve's Dune and Cary Fukunaga's No Time to Die into the conversation, calling them good films made by talented people, but ones that felt similar to the prototype films churned out by the MCU.
.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=1500&dpr=1.5)
"Even 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," said the iconic director. "The same sequence where the cars all crash into each other. 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." Dune currently has the second most nominations at this year's 94th Academy Awards, recognized in ten categories, including Best Picture.
Some would argue that Coppola's points about the MCU are valid, but it doesn't diminish the work done to bring the worlds to life. Spider-Man: No Way Home injected a shot of adrenaline into a box office suffering from dormant audiences due to the pandemic. Spider-Man: No Way Home became the first billion-dollar film since 2019, and it continues to climb box office charts internationally and domestically. However, despite its success, the film only earned one Oscar nomination, which lingers in the realm of Coppola's point. MCU films are formulaic, but it's a formula that works and attracts audiences. It would be intriguing to see Marvel Studios take steps in other directions with their narratives, but as the say goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," and the moment it's working and has been for years.
Coppola believes films should be personal, which he finds hard to accomplish when one is a part of a school of films that follow a similar pattern. The renowned director praised the efforts behind Steven Spielberg's West Side Story, hoping the film would remind audiences of the importance of cinema debuts over streaming. One could argue that the MCU has ignited that passion in audiences, but the bias centered around the genre prevents some from giving it deserved recognition. Nonetheless, Coppola's opinion is not singular, shared by other directors of his caliber, but the "prototype" films are working and returning audiences to theaters more than they have been in the past two years.
Source: GQ