Francis Ford Coppola has said big studio films including Dune and No Time to Die feel interchangeable to him, and suggested directorial talent is being wasted in today’s industry.
The Apocalypse Now director spoke critically about the nature of blockbusters today, and also expressed concern that great filmmakers are having their talents wasted.
“There used to be studio films,” he told GQ. “Now there are Marvel pictures. And what is a Marvel picture? A Marvel picture is one prototype movie that is made over and over and over and over and over again to look different.
“Even the talented people – you could take Dune made by Denis Villeneuve, an extremely talented, gifted artist, and you could take No Time to Die directed by… Cary Fukunaga – extremely gifted, talented, beautiful artists, and you could take both those movies, and you and I could go and pull the same sequence out of both of them and put them together.”
The 82-year-old continued: “They all have that stuff in it, and they almost have to have it, if they’re going to justify their budget.”
Speaking about his decision to step away from filmmaking after his 1997 film The Rainmaker, he said: “I always felt thatI didn’t leave the movie business. The movie business left me. It went another direction.”
The Godfather filmmaker said that as the movie business changed, “it was less interesting to me”.
Coppola’s comments come over a year after he attracted widespread backlash for calling Marvel superhero movies “despicable”.
His remarks came in the context of defending fellow director Martin Scorsese who said Marvel films are not cinema.
Coppola said: “Martin was kind when he said it’s not cinema. He didn’t say it’s despicable, which I just say it is.”
