Director John Woo Sides With Scorsese on Marvel

After Scorsese, Coppola, Almodovar, and company, another significant director has fired shots at Marvel movies. This time it’s John Woo. The director of such classics as “The Killer” and “Hard Boiled” was at the Hawaii International Film Festival, where he received the festival’s Halekulani Lifetime Achievement Award. Woo actually made the anti-Marvel comments when he was on-stage, delivering his acceptance speech.

The 73-year-old Woo, a director whose iconic style changed how action was shot in the ‘90s, mentioned in his speech that he was primarily concerned about the way Marvel movies may shelter young moviegoers into a corner and prevent them from learning about real cinema, like the films of Stanley Kubrick:

“I’m concerned about when these [Marvel] movies get more and more popular, I’m afraid it will make young audiences get lost when it comes to knowledge about film,” he said, adding that Marvel movies have become the standard for younger movie audiences and that they may end up not wanting to study or watch “real cinema” such as Lawrence of Arabia, Mean Streets, A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Keep the conversation going, I’m loving it. The more we debate this, the better. I have been waiting for someone of Scorsese’s stature to stand up and, at the very least, spark a conversation about all the changes that have occurred in Hollywood ever since Disney monopolized the industry.