Martin Scorsese: I Said Marvel Movies Aren’t Cinema. Let Me Explain. via nytimes.com

Apparently Martin Scorsese threw some shade—at least that’s how some people saw it—at the Marvel films:

I’ve tried to watch a few of them and they’re not for me, they seem to me to be closer to theme parks than they are to movies as I’ve known and loved them throughout my life, and in the end, I don’t think they’re cinema.

He then wrote an opinion piece to clarify what he was trying to say:

There’s worldwide audiovisual entertainment, and there’s cinema. They still overlap from time to time, but that’s becoming increasingly rare. And I fear that the financial dominance of one is being used to marginalize and even belittle the existence of the other.

Read his words how you want, but one of my interpretations is: data-driven movie making has ruined cinema:

everything in [The Marvel movies] is officially sanctioned because it can’t really be any other way. That’s the nature of modern film franchises: market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, revetted and remodified until they’re ready for consumption.

“But the data proves that’s what the people want!” He addresses that:

And if you’re going to tell me that it’s simply a matter of supply and demand and giving the people what they want, I’m going to disagree. It’s a chicken-and-egg issue. If people are given only one kind of thing and endlessly sold only one kind of thing, of course they’re going to want more of that one kind of thing.

He concludes:

In the past 20 years, as we all know, the movie business has changed on all fronts. But the most ominous change has happened stealthily and under cover of night: the gradual but steady elimination of risk.

I wonder if this is happening in pockets software design and development, for better or worse...