After Birdman's Oscars win, Guardians of the Galaxy director leads defence of superhero movies
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Version 0 of 1. Birdman’s triumph at the 2015 Oscars, where Alejandro González Iñárritu’s black comedy took four prizes including best picture, has been described as Hollywood’s atonement for the slew of superhero movies to have hit multiplexes in recent years. Now the director of 2014’s highest-grossing comic book movie, Guardians of the Galaxy’s James Gunn, has spoken out in defence of the increasingly divisive genre.Gunn took to Facebook after a groundswell of critical snootiness towards superhero fare appeared to coalesce in the final days of the 2014-2015 awards season. Jack Black suggested superheroes were a blight on Hollywood during the Oscars’ opening number on Sunday night, singing: “Opening with lots of zeroes, all we get are superheroes: Spider-Man, Superman, Batman, Jedi Man, Sequel Man, Prequel Man, formulaic scripts!” And Nightcrawler’s Dan Gilroy railed against the “tsunami of superhero movies that have swept over this industry” while picking up the prize for best first feature at the Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday. Birdman stars former Batman Michael Keaton as a washed up former veteran of superhero movies vying to find acceptance as a true artist.Citing the comments by Black and Gilroy, Gunn argued that comic book movies should be judged on the same criteria as more celebrated art house fare.“Whatever the case, the truth is, popular fare in any medium has always been snubbed by the self-appointed elite,” he wrote. “I’ve already won more awards than I ever expected for Guardians. What bothers me slightly is that many people assume because you make big films that you put less love, care, and thought into them then people do who make independent films or who make what are considered more serious Hollywood films.”Gunn said he had directed “B-movies, independent films, children’s movies, horror films, and gigantic spectacles”, and suggested he had found both charlatans and genuine artists working in each of these fields. “I find there are plenty of people everywhere making movies for a buck or to feed their own vanity,” he wrote. “And then there are people who do what they do because they love story-telling, they love cinema, and they want to add back to the world some of the same magic they’ve taken from the works of others. In all honesty, I do not find a strikingly different percentage of those with integrity and those without working within any of these fields of film. “If you think people who make superhero movies are dumb, come out and say we’re dumb. But if you, as an independent film-maker or a ‘serious’ film-maker, think you put more love into your characters than the Russo Brothers do Captain America, or Joss Whedon does the Hulk, or I do a talking raccoon, you are simply mistaken.” The Wrap, meanwhile, pointed out that nine of the 20 acting nominees for the 2015 Oscars were due to or had already featured in comic book movies. They were named as Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange), Michael Keaton (Tim Burton’s Batman films), Edward Norton (The Incredible Hulk), Bradley Cooper (Guardians of the Galaxy), Mark Ruffalo (The Avengers), Marion Cotillard (The Dark Knight Rises) JK Simmons (Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films) and Emma Stone and Felicity Jones (Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man movies). http://www.thewrap.com/superhero-movies-dissed-at-oscars-despite-9-acting-nominees-with-comic-book-roles/ |