Seeing Cinema in 2020

We all know what a movie is, right? But what is cinema?

Recently this has become something of a pop culture debate as veterans of New Hollywood, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, have been publicly drawing a line to exclude the recent wave of superhero movies from the echelons of cinema. Naturally many fans of the Marvel “Cinematic” Universe have protested.

A lot of words change over time, just as a lot of technology changes over time. Film, photography, radio, and all things audio-visual related, are essentially understood alongside the technology that makes them possible. Therefore, our ideas about how to define these things are bound to change and evolve over time as well. In other words, it’s very natural for someone born in the shadow of the Great Depression to have a very different idea of cinema than a digital native. Neither, therefore, are necessarily wrong.

Relatively speaking, moviemaking hasn’t changed that much compared to how much the accessibility of movies has evolved. And I believe it’s this change in accessibility that has altered our relationship to whatever it is we call cinema. For most of film history, movies weren’t accessible on your daily commute with the mere touch of a finger. For a while, every movie was an event. You had to go to the movie theater, also known as the cinema, sit with a bunch of other people and enter the shared big-screen experience, with its projected magic show of lights, images and sound.

This was the cinematic experience, and cinema was what was up on the screen in that hallowed filmic temple. In the early days of motion pictures, one could say that there was an abundance of cinema since the medium was in the middle of inventing itself and testing boundaries. But at the heart of moviemaking there has always been a dicey relationship between art and commerce, or cinema and entertainment. Often times they come together to make great films, other times they leave the other half behind to chase a vision of artistic merit or big money. 

The Blockbuster, Part I

We can get into a debate about when this classic cinema experience began to lose its magic, or if it has at all, but I believe it underwent a significant loss of power in the 1980s, when home video, cable and multiplex movie theaters made movies more accessible. And when you make movies more accessible, you can’t help but take some of that early cinematic magic away. No one is going to call a sterile multiplex, with twenty daily 3D screenings of MEN IN BLACK 6, a “cinema.” 

The multiplex came to be, of course, in the heyday of the blockbuster, and it’s perhaps no coincidence that some people point to movies like JAWS as ringing the death knell of true cinema and ushering in a new wave of distracting movies meant only to entertain, not enlighten. 

I’ve always had trouble with this anti-blockbuster narrative, and not just because I happen to see a lot of cinematic magic in some of those early hit movies, like JAWS, BACK TO THE FUTURE, BEVERLY HILLS COP and a couple of those STAR WARS episodes. I have a hunch that the bigger issue here wasn’t that the blockbuster movies of the 80’s were bad, but that they were the popular thing at a time when the cinematic experience was being torn asunder. As David Hudson over at Criterion likes to say, they were sucking all the air out of the room. Meanwhile, the holy temple of cinema was now being overrun by school kids and flooded with cheaply made knock-offs geared toward these undiscerning teenagers. 

The brand of cinema was being heavily diluted in the 80’s. With the introduction of VCRs and Home Box Office, movies were being made with an eye toward the living room TV rather than the silver screen. And yes, this is very similar to the scenario we’re currently in with streaming platforms. Only now, the direct-to-home-video market has grown to become the place where cinema is taking root while the movie theaters cater to the blockbusters.

Of course, movies of the distracting entertainment-only variety are nothing new. One could look at many of the popular musicals, romantic comedies and B-movies of the 1950’s and 60’s as what Mark Cousins would call pure bauble. Yet if you grew up with this stuff, you’re likely to hold them up alongside the best of cinema. When we seek to define cinema, some of the criteria is often ambition, imagination, creativity, and pushing boundaries, which is exactly what some of those musicals and B-movies would excel in. And still to this day, some of our blockbusters can be described with these terms.

The big difference is, in the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s, if you wanted entertaining movies (without the edits and commercials of TV) you still had to go out and get it. Starting in the 1980’s, it became harder to avoid the entertaining distractions at the movie theaters. The multiplexes were taking over, you could catch a movie at your local mall for a few bucks, and you’d be lucky if you could find a screen that wasn’t playing a rom-com, a horror movie or some franchise picture. It begged the question, was cinema changing or becoming scarce?

Indie in the 90’s: The Quickening

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, right? So, in the middle of the 80’s, while the mainstream movie theaters in America were drowning in what MAD magazine lovingly described as “dreck,” the Sundance Film Festival emerged from the middle of Utah’s ski-country to give American indie cinema a much needed platform. Baby Boomers and Gen Xers were getting older, and they wanted something besides the next round of JAWS sequels, while the new generation of cinematic filmmakers realized they needed to go outside the Hollywood system to make their more personal movies. Steven Soderbergh, Jane Campion, Quentin Tarantino, Todd Haynes became the vanguard, and the small one-or-two screen independent cinemas in the US began to flourish again, however temporarily.

A new wave of world-cinema was also emerging in the later half of the 80’s, as French, German and Japanese (just to name a few) films found an audience of Americans eager to avoid the mainstream blockbuster culture. This also helped those smaller cinemas and repertory houses as indie cinema briefly went mainstream.

By the mid 1990’s, one could say that cinema had made a comeback -- but make no mistake, the top films were still made up of Disney fare, action movies and stuff like MRS. DOUBTFIRE. Nevertheless, the same mystical forces that brought Nirvana to the top of the music charts were bringing movies like PULP FICTION, THE PIANO and THE CRYING GAME into the mainstream conversation. There was a certain amount of unpredictability and excitement about going to the movies again. This felt like cinema. 

However, it should be noted that, if there was indeed a short-lived cinema Renaissance in the 1990s, it was due in part to the increase of accessibility and reducing of the cinematic experience that happened in the 1980s. For a new generation of auteurs emerged who’d been soaked in the wide array of movies that were newly available through home video technology and lovingly curated rental shops.

Anyone remember LaserDisc? Audio commentary tracks given by directors and other experts, first on LaserDisc and then DVD, were giving eager neophytes a better education than some film students were getting. Young Paul Thomas Andersons and Guillermo del Torros around the world were devouring abundantly accessible movies at a heretofore unprecedented rate. With a copy of Film Threat magazine and a well-stocked video rental shop (and a lot of free time) you could give yourself a strong, well-rounded, worldly cinematic education. Movies from every era and continent were being made available in ways that past cinephiles could only dream about. And thanks in part to the success of movies like SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE and PULP FICTION, more producers were taking a chance on DIY film students to make movies that were informed by a more expensive source of influences than ever before, and it was pretty exciting.

The Blockbuster, Part II

So let’s drag ourselves out of the 1990’s and into the 2000’s. In the US, this could be labeled as the time when Blockbuster Video did to rental stores what the multiplex did to independent cinemas in the 1980s. If you want 500 copies of SHREK, you’re all set. If you want that one Jim Jarmusch movie, you’ll probably go home disappointed. But then technology stepped up again with a little thing called Netflix, a service that started out as a cinephile’s best friend before becoming the source of much consternation.

You see, Blockbuster Video was terrible. But for many it was the only game in town. For me, these big, blue, horridly sterile rental outlets, with their focus on whatever was the top ten movies at the time, represented all that was wrong with cinema at the time. In the early to mid aughts, mainstream’s brief love affair with indie cinema was a bubble that had burst, and the blockbusters were getting more blockbustery — albeit under the unlikely direction of yesterday’s film-geek heroes, like John Woo (FACE-OFF), Sam Raimi (SPIDER-MAN), Guillermo del Torro (BLADE 2) and Peter Jackson (LORD OF THE RINGS). Was indie cinema subverting the blockbuster, or was the blockbuster eating indie cinema alive? Back then the answer to this question was unclear, but it was obvious that for the first time in history, comic book movies were being made that were actually watchable and entertaining, and in some cases (SPIDER-MAN 2, BLADE 2 and X-MEN 2) downright interesting.

At this point, I believe it’s worth mentioning that the 90’s was very much a Scorsese decade. It was a time when movies that were similar to GOODFELLAS, AGE OF INNOCENCE and KUNDUN were all over the place. It was a time of prestige meets violence, which could be called the very crossroads where Mirmax and the Weinstein brothers set up shop. Marty’s influence was in all corners. Part of me wonders if he felt the same about superhero movies in the early 2000’s since there was more of a feeling of risks being taken back then. Indeed, some of the early superhero movies did feel personal. Wasn’t Sam Raimi not far off from the nerdy goofball Peter Parker (at least as Toby Maguire played him)? Didn’t Del Torro just make a Marvel movie with a running vagina dentata theme? Will we ever fully dissect all the subversive elements to Brian Singer’s X-Men movies? They may not be as idiosyncratic as some of Hitchcock’s more outre films, but they didn’t feel like assembly line product, either.

Amidst the first good superhero movies, it was once again becoming hard to find the pure, uncut cinema unless you were lucky enough to live next to a good repertory theater or independently run video store. But then came Netflix and its insanely full-sized DVD library. They had just about everything that was currently available on DVD or Blu-ray. And they would mail it to you. It would take a day or two, but you could keep your movies for as long as you’d like. If you planned it right, you could cue up a week-long Hitchcock-Truffaut marathon. For a short while there, it was the days of peak home video as TVs were getting a lot better and access to a vast chunk of cinema was within reach, for only a small fee and a short wait. Soon, Blockbuster Video was essentially all but dead. It felt good, until it didn’t.

Netflix: The Awakening

Around 2010, Netflix began to take its predestined steps online, which essentially set us off on the journey to where we are today. For a while, DVDs and streaming coexisted, but it was clear that Netflix’s move to being wholly online, and eventually on your TV, was inevitable. As a kid, I fantasized about an à la carte viewing experience and being able to order any movie and have it start playing. Netflix, and the world of online peer-to-peer file sharing that rose in parallel, brought a certain segment of the world very close to that experience.

But is having all these movies, along with the entire runs of every television show that’s been digitized, a step too far in terms of reducing the cinematic experience? Is there such a thing as a viewer having too much control? Has the elimination of physical media, the simple need of having to get a movie, put it into a device and pressing play, made the act of movie-watching too passive? With many streaming platforms utilizing the annoying auto-play feature, you may not even need to do anything at all before the next thing begins. Does it make any sense that the experience of cinema could take place both in a darkened room, with a big screen and perfectly balanced sound, or on a bus, watching through a hand-sized device? Should the definition of cinema have anything to do with the intentions of the people who make it, and how they believe it should be experienced?

The answer to this question isn’t as obvious as it may sound. I believe the intentions of the filmmakers should be considered, but I have little faith that the majority of the movie theaters on the planet can deliver. In the early 2000’s, my traditional cinematic experiences were becoming so bad that staying home to watch a movie on Netflix was sometimes a welcome relief. Projections were routinely out of focus and getting so ridiculously dim that a screening of BROKEN FLOWERS looked like it was a projection of someone’s fuzzy memory of the film. Theaters were also becoming obnoxiously filled with people who treated the once sacred grounds as an extension of their living room, feasting on noisy foods, chatting and repeatedly checking their phones. The repertory houses still felt special, but there was a time when the major movie theater chains were so bad that if I were to have the choice of watching at home or at one of those multiplexes, I would’ve chosen home.

So, at the very time movie theaters should have been upping their game, they were deteriorating into a cinematic hell hole. Even when they began upgrading to digital projection, which resolved some of the issues around dimness, the theaters were once again filled with entertainment-only distractions — only now they were being shown in murky 3D conversions so that the theaters could charge more for a ticket. Yes, they were asking for more money to watch a crummy version of a disposable movie. Did the multiplexes care in the least bit about providing a quality cinematic experience? No. They only worried about losing customers and profit margins, and it showed. Staying home and not giving them your money could reasonably be seen as a matter of principles.

Netflix 2.0: Judgement Day

Now, here’s the tragic twist in the story. The Netflix that once had the best DVD library in town is now a slightly better version of that multiplex. They spread across the world and created a market for day-long binge-watching. In an effort to fill that market with product, they’ve effectively turned movies into just that: product. You could say cinema has become content, or content has, in some cases, become cinema… Or better yet, movies have become TV. Either way, there is a massive world-wide market for binge-able streaming content and so there’s an insane glut of it being made and released on what seems like a daily basis. No one can keep up with all this stuff.

There are good and bad things about this new streaming era of movies. As Netflix has become a global launching pad, never before has there been such access to international work. You could spend years just watching things from other parts of the world. From where I sit, Spain, France, India and Korea seem particularly well represented. As a distribution platform, Netflix has allowed movies to be instantly released around the world, often with a long list of subtitle and language options. This is another of those cinematic pipe dreams, to tear down the annoying region barriers that exist with DVDs and Blu-rays and let the people watch movies wherever they are and with whatever subtitles they may need. Knocking down region barriers and providing abundant subtitle options is a boon for patrons of cinema. In a way, this is one of the best (and in my view, simplest) promises today’s cinema technology can provide. And while we’re not exactly there yet, the international Netflix “original” movies are giving us a glimpse of that world.

The other side of that coin is that a lot of this streaming stuff is starting to look very similar, as if there’s some sort of common playbook for filming a ready-for-Netflix movie or TV show. Call it a streaming homogenization. It’s one thing for all American B-level content to look the same, but it’s saddening to see work from other countries look so indistinguishable from the US brand. This is the business of franchising, which is essentially what so much of this content, made to feed the streaming behemoth, really is. Movies and TV shows made in a proven-to-be-popular formula. It’s really not that different from how major TV channels have been churning out product since the 1950s, there’s just an overwhelming amount of product now being made to feed the binge beast.

TV shows are, of course, not cinema. This shouldn’t be up for much debate, right? Sure, there were the cinematic serials back in the days before TV, the kind of stuff that inspired the Indiana Jones movies, but long-running TV shows are by their very nature something else aside from cinema. I think we can define cinema, now and always, as something singular that stands on its own, not as a link in a serialized chain. And yet, there are an increasing number of shows being directed by cinematic superstars like David Lynch (TWIN PEAKS), Steven Soderbergh (THE KNICK, MOSAIC), Jane Campion (TOP OF THE LAKE) and Paolo Sorrentino (THE YOUNG POPE), just to name a few. Unsurprisingly, their work does stand out from the cookie-cutter product out there and in some cases, it’s not hard to see some episodes standing comfortably alongside their film work. In the case of PART 8, of TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN, one could see a crowning cinematic achievement. An exception to the rule?

The Curse of the Superhero

Marvel movies are very much like TV shows. By design, they all share the same tone and aesthetic. These days especially (as opposed to the days of Sam Raimi’s SPIDER-MAN), each one feels like a link in the same a serialized chain — or, in other words, like a two-hour episode of a TV show. Every once in a while, an episode will stand out from the rest as something singular, a work of one individual’s vision. Even those who agree wholeheartedly with Scorsese’s New York Times op-ed will likely recognize Ryan Coogler’s BLACK PANTHER, and maybe even Taika Waititi’s THOR: RAGNAROK, as being the work of a precise and unique director. Similarly, possibly, exceptions to the rule?

The debate about what counts as cinema didn’t start with Marvel movies. People like Scorsese used to draw lines between “movies” and “film” with the same sort of argument — one’s trying only to entertain, the other is trying to say something. One is commerce, the other is art. Likewise, the fear that commerce is taking over has been around a long, long time as well. Because of movies like JAWS, auteurs like Sam Peckinpah couldn’t get a decent film produced. Or so the myth goes.

Now, however, that fear can reasonably be intensified due to accessibility -- the encroachment of all this movie commerce into our mobile devices, and every other thing with a screen that lies in wait, in more and more dark corners of our existence. What’s more, critics can now point to something very specific with superhero movies. Back in the day, the blockbuster commerce came in all shapes, sizes and genres — there wasn’t one type of movie that could be held up as the cause of all of cinema’s problems. Or maybe there was. In the 1980s and 90’s, critics were pointing at the amount of sequels that were being made and complaining that the franchises were ruining cinema. Sound familiar?

The Future Is Here 2 Stay

Now, the streaming behemoth needs binge-able content, which is why TV shows, franchise sequels and superhero movies are perfect. All the things that perhaps do not qualify as cinema are what make perfect content for streaming platforms. Accessibility, putting movies into our hands, and the need to keep 24-hour streaming content fresh and binge-worthy, is the real reason why cinema feels at risk today. And there isn’t much you can do about something that’s the result of decades of technological “progress,” can you?

Let’s face it, we’re not about to ditch streaming, and superheroes are still going to be starring in the world’s most popular movie TV show for at least a few more seasons. Both technology and the general public’s preference toward today’s brand of distracting entertainment are very clearly the result of decades of evolution. But history also shows us that popular trends come and go, while cinema has been the one constant.

Now’s a good time to point out that while the superheroes may have a firm grip on the box office, it’s not exactly a barren wasteland for cinema either in the theaters or on the streaming platforms. Indie outlets like A24, Magnolia, Oscilloscope, Film4, IFC and Annapurna Pictures and still releasing a variety of ambitious personal films every year. In fact, I’d say A24 is in position to take the crown as the new Mirimax (but without all the sex crimes), with THE LIGHTHOUSE, HIGH LIFE, THE SOUVENIR, MIDSOMMAR, THE FAREWELL, UNCUT GEMS and LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO having dropped in 2019 alone. 

But cinema isn’t just American indie movies. There are exciting talents worldwide, Maren Ade and Christian Petzold in Germany, Agneiszka Holland and Pawel Pawlikowski in Poland, Andrey Zvyagintsev in Russia, Hirokazu Kore-eda in Japan, and those are just the ones sitting at the top of my head. There are also the usual cinematic havens of France, Korea, Italy and China, and by all accounts there is an especially vibrant and politically engaged scene going on right now in Brazil.

There is, perhaps, more concern to be had for bigger-budget middlebrow cinema. Maybe this is the particular brand of cinema that people like Scorsese and Coppola are so concerned about. Sure, David Fincher, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve are out there doing their thing -- but what about the kind of films that aren’t driven by big set pieces? Where’s today’s KLUTE, ORDINARY PEOPLE, TERMS OF ENDEARMENT or KRAMER VS KRAMER (or even AMERICAN BEAUTY)? Are these, the modestly budgeted movies driven by dialog, characters and emotions, the ones that have lost a home?

Indeed, you’ve likely asked yourself what really “deserves” or “needs” to be seen on the big screen. There’s a popularly held belief that talky movies about relationships are just fine for viewing at home. But again, what this is really about is accessibility and technology, which doesn’t move backwards.

Cinema: Coming to an App Near You

Scorsese believes that people aren’t going to see cinema because the studios are only offering these roller coaster ride movies. But that’s also what movie theaters have become geared for. When you walk into a multiplex, you might as well be walking into a theme park. You can immediately recognize that this is the place to watch a superhero movie, not a thoughtful, personal film.

Most movie theaters have made their commitment to being a giant, impersonal setting for watching giant, impersonal movies. It’s hard to argue with this capital-minded move, but it’s also hard to want to go into this den of consumerism to see a work of art. Should there be more personal, independently-run theaters that care more about offering the best screenings possible than getting you to spend more on garbage? Yes. Of course. And I’m sure works of pure cinema do better business in places where these small cinemas still exist, such as throughout Europe! In a perfect world, every town would have their own indie kino, where cinema and cinephiliacs feel more respected and less like dollars and cents, but this isn’t the case.

I’m assuming most filmmakers still want to see their work projected within the four walls of a movie theater, and maybe that’s one of the reasons film festivals are still important these days. But it seems to me there’s a reason the streaming platforms are the ones releasing today’s versions of TERMS OF ENDEARMENT. Over the past couple of years, Netflix has released Tamara Jenkins’ PRIVATE LIFE and Nicole Holofcener’s THE LAND OF STEADY HABITS, two brilliant films that I wouldn’t necessarily want to see at the multiplex, with people tweeting, devouring overpriced junk food, while having to sit through 30 minutes of trailers for the next month’s superhero movies. 

The ultimate upside here is that because they were Netflix releases, more people likely watched PRIVATE LIFE and THE LAND OF STEADY HABITS than any of the directors’ previous films. These are a good example of movies that simply aren’t suited to a chain theater. And yet, if you don’t live in a city or college town, chain theaters are what you’re forced to deal with. That is, until now. Most people in the world didn’t have a chance to watch Holofcener’s amazing 1996 debut WALKING AND TALKING when it originally came out -- but THE LAND OF STEADY HABITS has an audience of over 130 million subscribers in 190 countries.

Plus, there are streaming platforms like the Criterion Channel and MUBI that are catering directly to cinephiles with smartly curated content, director retrospectives and enlightening double-features. Sure, all cinema-loving people want a perfect world where it’s the 60s again, when theaters were crowded with movies like THE GODFATHER, BONNIE AND CLYDE and M*A*S*H*. But it’s a fantasy. If studios in the mid-60s had the technology and wherewithal to make IRON-MAN, they would have, and it would have been huge. It’s the equivalent of saying, “Make cinema great again,” as if there wasn’t a lot of popular garbage back then as well, and as if we could ignore the fact the we’ve invented all this technology to make blockbuster movies that people love.

We could try to compare the ratio of cinema to non-cinema in 1970’s with how it stands in 2020, but that not only sounds impossible it clouds the fact that there’s still a lot of great cinema being made today. While that great cinema may not be playing at a theater near you (depending on where you live), it more accessible than ever before thanks to the internet.

Netflix 3.0: A New Hope

As it has happened time and again, once the cinematic experience gets reduced and made more accessible, new avenues open up. Sometimes this has good side-effects for cinema, like DVD commentary tracks, and sometimes it just diminishes the brand and reinforces the idea that movies are just a popular form of entertainment.

A funny thing happened when watching THE IRISHMAN, the new Martin Scorsese film, on Netflix. When it was over and the credits began to roll, the credits continued to roll. As I’m sure you know, Netflix tends to have an allergic reaction to credits. Within seconds of the scroll an algorithm kicks in wherein your movie gets minimized and taken over by a suggestion for the next thing to watch. 

If you were to take this aversion to credits as a fuck you to cinema, I wouldn’t disagree. I don’t always sit in the theater for the entirety of the scroll (lord knows they can go on for ages these days), but I like having having the decision of when or if to interrupt the credits be in my hands. 

So, when the credits for THE IRISHMAN proceeded uninterrupted, my curiosity was aroused. Was it just out of respect? Was it written into Scorsese’s deal with Netflix? Was there going to be a post-credits stinger featuring Jimmy Hoffa’s vengeful ghost? No, it was all leading up to a short documentary about THE IRISHMAN, with Marty, Bobby, Al and Joe sitting around a table, chatting about the movie.

I know this isn’t the first doc (or supplementary material, if you will) to accompany a Netflix movie, but it felt rather special. There was even a whole “Spotlight” section on Netflix offering short videos about THE IRISHMAN. This, I thought, was a step in the right direction that I could only hope might mark a turning point for streaming platforms to begin treating movies less like content and more like cinema.

Imagine, Netflix or Amazon allowing you a chance to reflect on what you just saw rather than immediately trying to jam the next thing down your viewing gullet. Amazing, right? It’s almost enough to give one hope that even the biggest of streaming behemoths might begin to consider the desires of cinephiliacs and not just the binge-watchers.

Ever since streaming and downloading began to replace DVDs I’ve been wondering why it’s seemingly impossible for a streaming movie to offer a commentary track. Is it a region problem, like some dubbing and subtitle issues seem to be? How hard is it to simply offer an alternative audio track to a streaming movie? And how huge an improvement would it be to cinephiles if Netflix began to offer this feature? In my estimation, it would go a long way to telling subscribers that the company does consider movies to be more than just content -- that Netflix could be a place to appreciate movies and not just binge watch them.

Defining Cinema in 2020

For the most part, I agree with Scorsese about what defines cinema. It needs to be personal, it needs to  but I’m against putting things in black and white. Superhero movies can of course be cinema, and I think Marvel could be an amazing cinematic factory as long as it resists the temptation to be an assembly line factory. Naturally, this is difficult to do if you come to think that you’ve found a foolproof way to create massive hits.

If kung fu movies had become the dominant genre for the past ten years, people would be complaining that these movies aren’t cinema for the same reasons: there’s a limited amount of themes and they tend to stick to a very well-defined set of aesthetics. Indeed, you could look at the history of kung-fu movies and see a lot of them as being made in a cookie-cutter fashion, but throughout there’s been a lot of exciting creativity, innovation and cinema to be found in the genre and there’s no reason the same couldn’t be said for superhero movies.

Imagine if Marvel began to treat its movies like it does its comic book titles and allow singular voices to take over a title for one, two or three movies. If writers and directors are allowed to play as they wish in the Marvel sandbox, there’s no reason they can’t make cinema. If they’re only allowed to color within the lines, it’s just going to be product. That product may be better than a lot of the other entertainment-only content out there, but as long as it isn’t striving to be singular and taking risks, there will be a time in the near future when it stops becoming exciting, even for today’s most die hard fans.

Scorsese was right when he said cinema needs to be personal, take risks and strive for some sort of revelation. MAD MAX: FURY ROAD feels like pure cinema because it clearly comes from the one and only psyche of George Miller and grapples with the best and worst impulses of humanity. There was little in the way of plot, or even dialog, and yet the story was told by using the tools of cinema in such creatively audacious ways. It felt risky, yet it was also pure blockbuster excitement and part of a decades-old franchise. There’s nothing stopping superhero movies from achieving the same cinematic heights of FURY ROAD, so long as they shake the desire to play it safe and impersonal.

Just as Scorcese and Coppola elevated the crime and gangster pictures to high art, those growing up with caped crusader pictures will become the filmmakers who open up new possibilities for the genre. Because no one, even fans of superhero movies, aren’t going to want to watch the same movies for another ten years. This will be the test of the genre. If it really is cinema then it’s going to evolve and be pushed forward with innovation. If it doesn’t, it will die like any other temporary trend at the box office. In other words, their movies are going to have to stop being TV. Even the best series wear out their welcome after a decade.