Highlights
- Avenger: Endgame director Joe Russo took a jab at Martin Scorsese, alluding to the difference in box office success between the MCU and Scorsese's work.
- The backlash to Russo's shade was quick and evident on social media, with many industry insiders and fans criticizing him.
- Scorsese's criticism of the franchise and Russo's response has sparked a discussion about the intersection of box office success and creative merit in the film industry.
Avengers: Endgame director Joe Russo has come under fire from industry contemporaries for making a snide response to a viral TikTok from legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese after the latter made negative comments about the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
While the Avengers movies were all commercial blockbusters and collectively raked in billions, filmmaking legend Scorsese expressed his dislike for the Marvel franchise and the whole genre in strongly worded statements regarding the state of film. While the sentiment was shared by many, James Gunn fired back against Scorsese's Marvel hate at the time, and he wasn't the only one.
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More recently, the director of the record-breaking climax Avengers: Endgame, Joe Russo, took to his Instagram page to take a shot at Scorsese, stitching a viral TikTok featuring the filmmaker and his dog Oscar with one of himself and a dog he referred to as Box Office. This was a not-so-subtle dig at the disparity between the MCU film’s massive box office draws and the more modest intake for Scorsese's Oscar-winning work. However, the backlash to Russo's shade was quick and plain to see on social media, with the official account for BeyondFest tweeting, “Let’s just be honest, Joe Russo is a rich asshole hack who won the lottery when [Marvel Studios president Kevin] Feige plucked him from obscurity and let him tagalong.”
The jab from Russo seemingly references Scorcese's latest film, Flowers of the Killer Moon, which has seen little box office success despite almost universal critical acclaim. “Joe Russo took hundreds of millions from Netflix to make whatever he wanted, and came up with…’The Grey Man,'” Warner Bros. Discovery's SVP of action and anime series Jason DeMarco said in his social media post. “Marty got hundreds of millions from Netflix and Apple, and made ‘The Irishman’ and ‘Killers of The Flower Moon.’ I know which movies ppl will talk about in 20 years…” Film writer Louis Peitzman also chimed in with a short and sweet message reading, “In 50 years, no one will know who Joe Russo is.”
Scorsese has always been quick to give an honest opinion on other filmmakers and their work for better or worse, such as when he admitted he was a fan of Ti West's Pearl when it was released. While his criticism of Russo is not a universally held notion, defending creative work by alluding to the box office earnings of franchise films with a large pre-existing audience did not sit well with a large swath of the film industry or even more in-the-know fans of the medium.
Whether or not Scorsese's remarks or the criticism leveled at Russo after his little stunt hit the mark, there is some issue at Marvel Studios, with a significant rework being brought on by top boss Kevin Feige, such as appointing the MCU's first showrunner for Daredevil: Born Again in an attempt to align more with traditional series production. Whether the new changes will appeal to those who disdain the franchise like Scorsese remains to be seen.
Avengers: Endgame is currently available for streaming on Disney Plus.
Source: Variety
