Golden Globe Awards host Ricky Gervais is Team Martin Scorsese, but he still managed to make a joke about the director during his opening monologue.
Gervais riffed on the state of Hollywood, nothing the industry has put many of its talented actors into superhero films rather than allowing them to shine in dramatic roles.
“They wear masks and capes and really tight costumes. Their job isn’t acting anymore — it’s going to the gym twice a day and taking steroids,” Gervais said, before moving on to Scorsese’s previous comments about Marvel Studios films, in which the Irishman director equated them to theme park rides.
“Martin Scorsese — the greatest living director — made the news for his comments about Marvel,” said Gervais. “I agree. Although I don’t know what he’s doing hanging around theme parks. He’s not big enough to go on the rides. He’s tiny.”
Scorsese inadvertently sparked a debate that has raged for months when in October he made remarks about Marvel Studios’ films. “It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being,” Scorsese told Empire. Scorsese further explained his comments in a New York Times op-ed published Nov. 4. In the ensuing months, Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige, Avengers: Endgame filmmakers Joe and Anthony Russo, and other Marvel defenders have weighed in, as have Marvel detractors such as Francis Ford Coppola.
“I think it’s unfortunate,” Feige told The Hollywood Reporter in November when asked about the notion that superhero movies are a negative for cinema. “I think myself and everyone who works on these movies loves cinema, loves movies, loves going to the movies, loves to watch a communal experience in a movie theater full of people.”
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