IN SCORSESE AND COPPOLA, MARVEL MEETS FORMIDABLE FOES

It’s not exactly the stuff of“Stop the presses!”that some of the greatest filmmakers in the world have misgivings about the rise of the superhero film and its outsized place in our film culture.

And yet recent critical comments by Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola have been greeted like entreaties to a prizefight, a battle royale.“In this corner, the box-office champion of the wooooorld, Marvel‘The Incredible Hulk’ Studios! And in this corner, the 76-year-old maker of anguished Catholic epics and crime-movie classics, Martin‘The-Raging-Bull’Scorsese!”

Plenty of rumbling has followed since Scorsese, in a magazine interview earlier this month, suggested Marvel movies aren’t cinema but“something else”— theme park rides uninterested in“trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”Coppola doubled down over the weekend, telling journalists