Jon Favreau has given a diplomatic response to the criticism of Marvel by legendary filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola.
“These two guys are my heroes, and they have earned the right to express their opinions,” Favreau told CNBC on Tuesday. “I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing if they didn’t carve the way. They served as a source of inspiration, you can go all the way back to Swingers. They can express whatever opinion they like.”
“Martin was kind when he said it’s not cinema. He didn’t say it’s despicable, which I just say it is,” Coppola initially said about Marvel movies.
The “Apocalypse Now” filmmaker said those harsh words at a press conference after receiving a lifetime achievement award at the Lumiere Festival in Lyon, France. He is currently working on a utopian drama called “Megalopolis,” which he says would be more expensive than “Apocalypse Now” and be “the biggest budget I ever had to work with.”
But big budget Marvel movies draw Coppola’s ire. Speaking to reporters, he echoed Scorsese’s belief that comic book movies don’t reach the level of profound human depth that arthouse cinema does.
“When Martin Scorsese says that the Marvel pictures are not cinema, he’s right because we expect to learn something from cinema, we expect to gain something, some enlightenment, some knowledge, some inspiration,” he said. “I don’t know that anyone gets anything out of seeing the same movie over and over again.”