Kevin Smith: Martin Scorsese directed 'the biggest superhero movie ever made' with 'Last Temptation of Christ'

Kevin Polowy
Updated

In the upcoming comedy Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, Jay (Jason Mewes), Silent Bob (Kevin Smith) and their buddy Brodie (Jason Lee) are slamming the reboot-happy ways of Hollywood (yes, it's all very meta) when the subject of Marvel films comes up.

"Hey man, those Marvel movies are triumph of cinema!," the otherwise cantankerous Brodie insists.

It's incredible timing, given Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is hitting theaters in the aftermath or ire-raising comments made by legendary director Martin Scorsese, who proclaimed that Marvel movies don't qualify as "cinema."

Smith, the writer-director-star-key holder of the Clerks/Mallrats/Jay and Silent Bob universe (aka the View Askiewniverse), is not about to slam Scorsese (Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York), a filmmaker Smith reveres as the GOAT in his craft. But Smith did make an interesting observation when asked for his reaction to Scorsese's comments.

"Martin Scorsese has made such wonderful movies. He's been doing the job since I was a kid. I'm not going to sit and be like, 'I know better than him.' That's his feelings," Smith told us. " I would say this, and I'm not countering Mr. Scorsese: Martin Scorsese made perhaps the biggest superhero movie ever made."

Smith is referring to The Last Temptation of Christ, Scorsese's controversial 1988 depiction of Jesus Christ starring Willem Dafoe.

"The Last Temptation of Christ is a superhero movie," Smith said. "And I'm not diminishing Jesus by any stretch of the imagination. But who is Jesus if not a superhero?"

As Scorsese told Empire Magazine in a recent interview promoting his new Netflix mob drama The Irishman, "I don’t see them. I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema. … Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”

While Marvel fixtures like Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Downey Jr. and James Gunn addressed those remarks, Smith, ever so diplomatically, said he understands where Scorsese is coming from: "Martin Scorsese probably doesn't have the emotional attachment to those movies that I do. When he sees those movies, he's like, 'That's a theme park.' When I see those movies, that is the closest I get to being with my dad at a movie theater again," said the filmmaker, who recounted weekly trips to as a child with his father to the cineplex, where they consumed the latest blockbusters.

"I respect his opinion, but I don't think he has the same emotional attachment that a lot of us have. It's the men and the women that we relate to in the movie, not the 'super' part."

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot opens Oct. 15. Watch the trailer:

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