Alan Moore outdoes Scorsese in his hatred for superhero movies

[PC2]

You are aware that discussions of how market incentives influence artists to make less confrontational material is artistic argument, right?

Yeah but there's nothing wrong with some movies being more mainstream and some of them targeted at a more sophisticated audience. Also the movie industry isn't zero sum and you can't just assume that if they didn't spend $100 mil on one movie then that investment would have been put into a type of film that could win an Oscar.

He's basically saying that modern superhero movies are bourgeois/finished theatre and not "theater of the oppressed".

heh I hadn't even heard of "theater of the oppressed" before. Why am I not surprised this is a thing.

Y'all really need to make an effort to actually understand Marxist film theory before talking shit.

oh gawd, weren't you the one who said "Everything is political" a while back. You can put Marxist in front of any discipline... Next year it's going to be "Marxist mathematics" and how math has traditionally been a bourgeois form of knowledge.

[Ivanstone]

No idea why you would say that iconic characters are white supremacist dreams of a master race, I thought Captain America fought those guys?

Those iconic characters are still perfect white people. Steve Rogers is an Aryan wet dream despite punching Hitler in the nose. Most of your favourite heroes were created when America was a lot more racist.

I can't take this author seriously when he literally inserts workers rights issues into what I originally thought was an artistic argument.

The American comic industry is notorious for treating its freelancers like shit. It steals their ideas and tosses them away when they're no longer useful. Siegel and Schuster should've been millionaires but both died penniless.

But at least you got to insert your half-assed conservative beliefs into a subject you know nothing about.

[Elegiac]

Yeah but there's nothing wrong with some movies being more mainstream and some of them targeted at a more sophisticated audience. Also the movie industry isn't zero sum and you can't just assume that if they didn't spend $100 mil on one movie then that investment would have been put into a type of film that could win an Oscar.

Actually, we can assume that exact thing.

The consolidation of more and more of the entertainment sector into fewer hands, mostly Disney's, has created an environment where an increasing proportion of entertainment capital is going to a smaller number of big budget productions.

This is why people like Scorsese are making films for Netflix; there is no room in this environment for mid-level cinema productions.

heh I hadn't even heard of "theater of the oppressed" before. Why am I not surprised this is a thing.

oh gawd, weren't you the one who said "Everything is political" a while back. You can put Marxist in front of any discipline... Next year it's going to be "Marxist mathematics" and how math has traditionally been a bourgeois form of knowledge.

I sure can: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_theory

"Marxist" has to do with the lens of analysis - i.e. focusing on media as a function of economics and social class rather than, say, race, or gender, or the personality of the director.

And no, film is a social medium and as such it's perfectly appropriate to analyse it through a social lens.

[rogueMatthias]

I have ridiculous respect for Moore in a lot of ways, and part of that requires rolling my eyes at all the stupid shit he says. Anyone who knows about him knew what his opinion would've been without asking.

LMAO this exactly 100%.

People are making way too much out of "Superhero movies". They're just big action blockbuster movies - It's not different than from before the MCU came along and we had Pirates of the Caribbean, Transformers, Terminator 2, Harry Potter etc. Can you REALLY tell me that a film like Winter Soldier is radically different and more "Comig Booky" than films like Mission Impossible? Is Guardians of the Galaxy more "Comic booky" than Star Wars of Trek? People are singling out Marvel because they've been pretty damn good at the Super Action Blockbuster formula, and because they're (seen as) easy money.

It's not like people are ONLY going to see Superhero movies though. If anything the issue is more that other studios are massively complacent and not risking money on more original concepts.
(You can see this even in Comic Book Movies. It didn't take us so long to get a WonderWoman movie because "white male fans" didn't want it. It took so long because WB didn't have the balls to risk making DC Universe movies that weren't Batman.. AGAIN. IT was hard enough to get them to make a Superman movie).

[Kraenen]

Those iconic characters are still perfect white people. Steve Rogers is an Aryan wet dream despite punching Hitler in the nose. Most of your favourite heroes were created when America was a lot more racist.

A strong white man who is a hero and is attractive is... racist? The subject matter is probably making this hard to parse, but the fact that racists like something doesn't make that thing itself racist.

[Ivanstone]

A strong white man who is a hero and is attractive is... racist? The subject matter is probably making this hard to parse, but the fact that racists like something doesn't make that thing itself racist.

Do you think a character like Black Panther would've worked in 1940? Captain America was pretty safe to white audiences. Hell, the people who created him had to play it safe themselves. Stanley Lieber, Jacob Kurtzberg, Max Ginzberg, Robert Kahn and Hymie Simon all changed their name for a reason.

[Dwarfhamster]

Meh. It’s Alan Moore. He’s just being him. It’s simple: like a movie, go see it. Don’t like it, don’t go see it. What’s all the hand-wringing about?

[s_bushido]

What’s all the hand-wringing about?

It's just the usual Chicken Littles bemoaning the death of cinema.

It certainly might be more interesting if every director's passion project could have a $150million budget...but capitalism just doesn't work that way.

[Milchshake]

Moore has consistently been critical of the fascist undertones of superheroes. Vigilantes enforcing their own view of the law. The US has a weird fascination with vigilantes. Moore critiques the commercialization of this mythology.

A 2017 interview with Moore by Brazilian outlet Folha de São Paulo was reprinted by the Alan Moore World blog in English. After explaining why he believes mainstream superheroes and their movies are having a negative impact on society, Moore is reported to have said, "I would also remark that save for a smattering of non-white characters (and non-white creators) these books and these iconic characters are still very much white supremacist dreams of the master race. In fact, I think that a good argument can be made for D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation as the first American superhero movie, and the point of origin for all those capes and masks."

Moore and Gibbons' Watchmen literally equates the KKK and support for superheroes in the backmatter paratexts through a New Frontiersman editorial.
An excerpt from the New Frontiersman paste-up including as backmatter in Watchmen #8 (April 1987), in which the explicitly right-wing and racist paper makes the connection btwn superheroes and the KKK that Moore is criticizing.

[ravenswood]

I hate Scorsese's movies and I think his and Coppola's films are overrated, that said, I 100% Agree with him about Super Hero or Comic Book Movies.

I think Cinema and real life culture has been made worse because of it.

why do you hate scorsese’s movies?

[Bapestar]

Superhero movies have been trash for a while.

[Xeones]

I think a lot of the current run of superhero movies is just feeding off the appeal to childhood nostalgia. Now we are seeing newer comic book inspired superhero movies that subvert the original themes and question our assumptions, like Watchmen did originally. For example, the Umbrella Academy and The Boys.

As for the white supremacist angle, I guess I can kind of see how it could be portrayed as such, since a bunch of the comics are just super powered white people running around saving the world. Kind of like a modern 'white man's burden'.

Marvel started the cinematic universe with Iron Man. I had zero childhood nostalgia. Most people I know did not read comics. Aside from Spiderman and the Xmen I'd argue that there wasn't much specific knowledge of marvel comics aside from simply the names of other comic characters.

The marvel movies ran off being great movies.

[Mormolyce]

If there is anyone on the planet with a legitimate cause to bitch about superheroes and superhero films in particular, it's Alan Moore.

Watchmen was a garbage movie.

Who?

*Facepalm*

I can't take this author seriously when he literally inserts workers rights issues into what I originally thought was an artistic argument.

I take it this is your first introduction to Alan Moore and the history of comics in general lol.

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It's just the usual Chicken Littles bemoaning the death of cinema.

It started out that way, but to be honest a lot of the people making these comments have some interesting and valid things to say.

Mostly this is just clickbaiting because journalists realise that "person X hates the things you like" generates an infinite stream of rageclicks, so they go around baiting everyone famous to try to get a sound byte out of them they can turn into a shitty headline. If you read their full comments, many of them are actually saying something quite a bit more nuanced.

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A strong white man who is a hero and is attractive is... racist? The subject matter is probably making this hard to parse, but the fact that racists like something doesn't make that thing itself racist.

I think his point is that these characters were mostly created in the US between 1938 and 1965, so they're heavily skewed towards the demographics that were acceptable by the racist standards of the time.

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Do you think a character like Black Panther would've worked in 1940?

Yeah, he was hugely controversial and progressive even in the 60s in fact. And he didn't get his own book for like a decade, by which time the Civil Rights Era was in full swing.

[Flarelaine]

Who?

Alan Moore is not exactly a "Who?". He did very solid comics. But he has been grumpy at superhero movies since forever, so no surprise there.

I will continue to respect and admire both Moore and Scorsese while also enjoying superhero movies and ignoring their scorn.

[Ivanstone]

Alan Moore is not exactly a "Who?". He did very solid comics. But he has been grumpy at superhero movies since forever, so no surprise there.

I will continue to respect and admire both Moore and Scorsese while also enjoying superhero movies and ignoring their scorn.

Moore has some fairly legit reasons for not liking them.

First and most importantly he has very strong opinions about copyrights. Two of his most important comics he doesn't own the copyrights for and he's pretty fucking cheesed about it. He's actually given any royalties from the movies to the artists of Watchmen and V For Vendetta. In the case of V, David Lloyd was entirely cut out of any money which also pissed off Moore.

He was ambivalent about the LoEG movie until he got sued over it. The producers decided to use only superficial elements from the comic and plagiarized someone else's play to make the script.

V For Vendetta has had a few other issues such as producers making false claims about Moore, crude caricatures of English people, ignoring the comic's themes and the half-assed attempt at making it about American politics.

Moore's made some of the best comics ever yet none of the adaptations have ever come close to the quality of the comics. The adaptations more than ably prove Moore's point.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...wood-interview

The crazy thing about all of this is that DC probably could've convinced Moore to write a script for a movie but they didn't treat him well and here we are.

[Flarelaine]

Moore has some fairly legit reasons for not liking them.

First and most importantly he has very strong opinions about copyrights. Two of his most important comics he doesn't own the copyrights for and he's pretty fucking cheesed about it. He's actually given any royalties from the movies to the artists of Watchmen and V For Vendetta. In the case of V, David Lloyd was entirely cut out of any money which also pissed off Moore.

He was ambivalent about the LoEG movie until he got sued over it. The producers decided to use only superficial elements from the comic and plagiarized someone else's play to make the script.

V For Vendetta has had a few other issues such as producers making false claims about Moore, crude caricatures of English people, ignoring the comic's themes and the half-assed attempt at making it about American politics.

Moore's made some of the best comics ever yet none of the adaptations have ever come close to the quality of the comics. The adaptations more than ably prove Moore's point.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...wood-interview

The crazy thing about all of this is that DC probably could've convinced Moore to write a script for a movie but they didn't treat him well and here we are.

Agree with all of that. As for the LoEG movie... the original story could never fly in today's climate. Being not politically correct doesn't begin to describe it.

[Ivanstone]

Agree with all of that. As for the LoEG movie... the original story could never fly in today's climate. Being not politically correct doesn't begin to describe it.

Counterpoint: Mina Murray is a fucking bad-ass. The SJW's would love her, the anti-SJW's would call her a Mary Sue. The salt would be magnificent.

[Theodarzna]

I think the MCU feeds off of the nostalgia for childhood; primarily because the world of regular adulthood has become so painfully bad that a lot of people in that 18-35 retreat into the realm of fandoms for childhood things or fantastical things because adulthood is both materialistic and desiccated but its also agonizingly awful to think about too deeply so many adults flee from it because its just a non-stop grinding hustle. Sometimes people just want to hear an interesting story, to enjoy a spectacle for its own sake rather than have to be consistently aware or trapped in a specific temporal moment and bound up in the material world.

Fandom has become the "safe space", the safe harbor in sea of abject misery and people increasingly pour more and more of their heart and souls into it because it is the last unreal and fantastical mind space left to the great masses. Beyond that there is D&D/Tabletop RP if you are able to get four adults to sit in the same place for a few hours on the same day, and then there is Pagan and Pseudo-Pagan religious cults or LARPing, and if you are truly a sick individual, truly lost, there is politics.

[Moadar]

Who cares what Scorsese thinks. Hes a pedo sympathizer.

[Jotaux]

I think the MCU feeds off of the nostalgia for childhood.

I disagree, the MCU had to take a bunch of B list - D list superheroes and make do. Iron man sparked the whole thing and his comics were tanking. Marvel's bread and butter has always been X-Men and Spider-man (and Fantastic Four back in the day) which they did not have the rights to. If you were to ask people to choose between the X-men, Spider-man, Hulk, or Ironman cartoons from the 90s, I am certain they would pick Spider-man or X-men.