Why the hate against Marvel is unjustified

A lot of Hollywood directors have expressed their contempt for Marvel movies and have found their presence to be intrusive, nonsensical, juvenile, or all of the above. Many directors like Jane Campion, Roland Emmerich, Ridley Scott and, especially, Martin Scorsese, have had their beef with Marvel films.

Many of these films have not gotten the respect from the film industry and are often deemed only for children’s entertainment. Since these films don’t look like they are going anywhere anytime soon, it’s only fair to say that the hate against Marvel movies and the superhero genre, by extension, is truly unwarranted.

Some Marvel movies (not all) are cinema

Scorsese has made a few comments about why Marvel movies are not cinema and that they are adjacent to amusement park rides. He has a point, but only for some of the films that are made primarily for children.

What he fails to realize is that Marvel movies cannot be looked at through such a narrow lens that diminishes their value by reducing them to an amusement park ride. If you told people that Black Panther wasn’t cinema, they would laugh in your face and call you crazy. Minimizing films like Marvel to their simplest forms doesn’t mean that the assessment is correct.

Also, since people like Scorsese, Scott, and Campion are expressing their hatred for Marvel movies and don’t believe that they are true cinema, perhaps we should take it a step further. Would these same directors say that movies like Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings are not cinema? Admittedly, people wouldn’t consider Fantastic Four or the reboot cinema in the same way that people may not consider Batman & Robin or The Fantastic Beasts series cinema.

Not every film in the genre will be great, but there is no denying the certain films that have made waves in that particular genre and paved the way for the smaller films.

Marvel movies go deeper than superhero fantasy

Many people like the directors mentioned before have had their gripes with Marvel, but that is only because they have been seen as one-dimensional tools for box-office fortune and juvenile entertainment. That may be true for some of the films but not all.

Rewatching Avengers: Endgame, it struck people with a sense of awe and majesty that could never be replicated with resplendent earnestness and poignance. Many critics have said that one can’t learn anything from Marvel movies but the contrary could easily be made.

In Endgame, audiences see the risk and sacrifice of the heroes that took place before their eyes. With that being said, a lot was at risk and fans understand the emotional hardship undergone when they see Natasha Romanoff’s Black Widow and Tony Stark’s Iron Man die on the screen. People understood the struggle and the passion of the characters and were able to learn from their sacrifices.

Marvel movies are good but a steady diet of them may not be beneficial unless they are balanced with films from other genres. That seems fair enough.