Martin Scorsese encourages supporting directors like Christopher Nolan to ‘save cinema’

Renowned director Martin Scorsese has called on moviegoing audiences to support directors like Christopher Nolan to “save cinema,” noting the current landscape in Hollywood output is largely from franchise films.

Scorsese, known for directing movies like Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, and The Wolf of Wall Street, described Hollywood’s focus on comic book films and films part of preestablished franchises, and that the “danger” of this focus is that future generations will think “that’s what movies are.” Because of this potential future, the director encouraged people to “fight back stronger” against the current output from Hollywood.

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“It’s gotta come from the filmmakers themselves,” Scorsese said in a new interview. “And you’ll have, you know, the Safdie brothers, and you’ll have Chris Nolan, you know what I mean? And hit ’em from all sides. Hit ’em from all sides, and don’t give up. Let’s see what you got. Go out there and do it. Go reinvent. Don’t complain about it. But it’s true, because we’ve got to save cinema.”

The director has been no stranger to critiquing the focus on franchise films from Hollywood and its lack of original filmmaking. In 2019, Scorsese kicked up a storm on social media when he claimed that Marvel movies are “not cinema,” comparing comic book movies to theme park attractions rather than movies that “convey emotional, psychological experiences.”

Scorsese also suggested that movie theaters will not entirely die out, despite growing concerns that streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ pose significant challenges to the theater business. The director’s reasoning comes from his belief that people want to experience things, including movies, together as a group.

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“But at the same time, the theaters have to step up to make them places where people will want to go and enjoy themselves or want to go and see something that moves them,” Scorsese said.

Earlier this year, Nolan released his latest film, Oppenheimer, a biopic detailing the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, who played a key role in the United States’s Manhattan Project, the quest for the atomic bomb. Released on July 21, the film has grossed $321,209,425 in North America and $926,456,425 globally, making it the highest-grossing biopic of all time.