Martin Scorsese Says He Doesn’t Feel the Need to Watch Joker: ‘I Saw Clips of It’
Martin Scorsese wasn’t one of the many people who helped Joker gross over $1 billion at the box office.
In an interview with The New York Times published on Tuesday, the Academy Award-winning director, 77, said that he didn’t feel the need to see the movie in full.
“I saw clips of it,” he told the outlet. “I know it. So it’s like, why do I need to? I get it. It’s fine.”
As the outlet noted, Scorsese had previously declined an opportunity to be involved with the film, although Emma Tillinger Koskoff, who is the president of his production company, did help produce the comic book movie alongside the film’s writer and director Todd Phillips, as well as actor Bradley Cooper.
In a November interview with the BBC, Scorsese previously revealed that he had chosen not to be involved with the project after ultimately deciding “it’s just not for me.”
“I know the film very well,” he said. “I thought about it a lot over the last four years and I decided I did not have the time for it. It was personal reasons why I didn’t get involved.”
The director went on to speak about the arc of the film, which follows Joaquin Phoenix‘s Arthur Fleck as he descends into madness and becomes the Joker.
“For me, ultimately, I don’t know if I make the next step into this character developing into a comic book character,” Scorsese explained. “He develops into an abstraction. It doesn’t mean it’s bad art, it’s just not for me…The superhero films, as I’ve said, are another art form. They are not easy to make. There’s a lot of very talented people doing good work and a lot of young people really, really enjoy them.”
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Scorsese’s recent comments came several months after The Irishman director shared some controversial opinions about Marvel’s record-breaking comic book films.
“I tried, you know?” Scorsese told The Guardian of attempting to watch a superhero film released by the studio. “But that’s not cinema.”
Scorsese went on to elaborate on his comments in an opinion piece written for The New York Times, in which he explained that he grew up in a different era of movie-making.
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“Many of the elements that define cinema as I know it are there in Marvel pictures,” he wrote of what excites him about movies. “What’s not there is revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk. The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes.”
He continued, “They are sequels in name but they are remakes in spirit, and everything in them is officially sanctioned because it can’t really be any other way. That’s the nature of modern film franchises: market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, revetted and remodified until they’re ready for consumption.”
Scorsese’s The Irishman is competing against Joker for the best picture award at the Golden Globes, which air Sunday on NBC.
