Martin Scorsese has no love lost for the MCU, and he wants everyone to know it. The award-winning director recently added another page to the burn book he started in honor of comic book movies.

Scorsese previously confessed his feelings regarding films of the Marvel variety at a recent press day. As he boldly claimed, “That’s not cinema.” In doing so, he unintentionally created a sense of resentment in James Gunn, who tweeted his feelings last week.

Scorsese Rages On

If you thought that’d be enough to get Scorsese to rethink his firmly held MCU beliefs, think again. He repeated his comments at the BFI London Film Festival, and added an earnest plea:

The value of a film that’s like a theme park film, for example, the Marvel type pictures where the theaters become amusement parks, that’s a different experience. As I was saying earlier, it’s not cinema, it’s something else. Whether you go for that or not, it is something else and we shouldn’t be invaded by it. And so that’s a big issue, and we need the theater owners to step up for that to allow theaters to show films that are narrative films.

Scorsese was there promoting his upcoming film, The Irishman, which is no doubt one of the “narrative films” he recommends. But while his words sound harsh, there is a point to be made there. Not that MCU films, or any other superhero fare, aren’t quality narratives – that’s totally subject. But’s it’s objectively true that big-budget productions focused on action tend to take the biggest piece of the cinema pie.

Perhaps cinemas could indeed leave more space for independent films. Moviegoers nowadays tend to choose between driving 20 miles to an arthouse theater and just catching something on Netflix. Or perhaps it’s smaller studios that need to come up with splashier marketing to compete with the MCU (and Disney in general) juggernaut.

Do you agree with Scorsese about the state of film? Let us know in the comments below, and check That Hashtag Show for the latest news on your favorite films. Which probably belong to the MCU, let’s be honest.