Director Ridley Scott has shared his opinion about superhero movies.
The 83-year old Oscar-nominated director who has two movies out this year has expressed his opinion on how he thinks most modern blockbuster superhero films are subpar.
The director tagged most superhero films as boring and the scripts poor. Scott directed Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982) and Gladiator (2000), which he tags as three of the “great superhero films” he has directed. Amid reactions to his criticism, he doubled down on his criticism of the latest offerings from superhero filmmakers. “Why don’t the superhero films have better stories?” he asked. “These films are mostly saved by special effects and that is boring for everyone who has the money to work with special effects,” he said.
The director has one of his two films The Last Duel out already, with the second one House of Gucci slated for release on November 24.
In the same vein, renowned director Martin Scorsese has also decried the quality of modern-day superhero flicks. In an October 2019 interview with Empire, he made the declaration that superhero films are similar to theme park rides. The 78-year-old director further explained his stance in an opinion piece he wrote for The New York Times one month later that he grew up in an era when filmmakers took more risks rather than franchises dominating movie theatres like it is nowadays.
Another director, James Gunn, who directed the films Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad movies, also gave his reservations about Scorsese’s criticism of superhero films. “It just seems awful cynical that he would keep coming out against Marvel and then that’s the only thing that would get him press for his movie. So then he just kept coming out against Marvel so that he could get press for his movie,” he argued at the time. “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.”
However, Lady Gaga has sent praises towards Ridley Scott in a New York Times article about her time working with the director on Gucci. She said: “I’ve never had a better experience with a director. He loves artists, and some directors don’t. They love themselves.” She revealed that the way he treated her made her empowered.