Stellan Skarsgrd Hit the Nail on the Head When It Comes to the State of the Film Industry

(a video is embedded in the link. it starts at 28:30 where Skarsgard talks about the state of the industry)

https://gizmodo.com/stellan-skarsgard-hit-the-nail-on-the-head-when-it-come-1847760941

While he’s about to debut as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune adaptation, Stellan Skarsgård’s words from a film festival last year have been making the rounds and reminding us of some great points when it comes to money and the film industry.

Every few weeks or so, the denizens of film Twitter (and presumably other social media circles) whip themselves into curious frenzies over what beloved directors of classic films widely regarded as “proper” cinema have to say about present-day Hollywood’s obsession with superhero franchises. Though little ever comes from this cyclical pattern of mild outrage followed by a return to hype for the Next Big Studio Release, it’s always an interesting reminder of how those who claim to love film the most will always be enraged by it. For those invested in the idea that studios like Marvel and Warner Bros. are “ruining” the film industry by flooding it with stories ripped from comic books, directors like Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and David Cronenberg have become heroic figures rallying against the machine with both their art and their outright criticisms of studios.

But what often gets lost in the rush to celebrate this position—especially in response to Scorsese adopting it—is the reality of how the bulk of the films we spend time discussing and thinking about are the products of studios, which are businesses who are chiefly focused on making money. This point is something Stellan Skarsgård tried to hammer home during an interview at last year’s Götenberg Film Festival where he shared some thoughts in response to a piece by Scorsese in the New York Times which claimed that Marvel movies aren’t really art. Skarsgård’s comments have been making the rounds online lately in the wake of his director on Dune, Villeneuve, accusing Marvel movies of turning audiences into “zombies.” But what he said back then is still more than worth considering in a larger, industry-wide context. The real problem, Skarsgård reasoned, isn’t Marvel specifically, or relative upstarts like Netflix, but rather “the fault is that we have for decades believed that the market should rule everything. And the rich get richer, and that is the root of it all.”

more at link