Chadwick Boseman has weighed in on the ongoing controversy about Marvel movies as cinema.
The conversation has raged on for weeks after Martin Scorsese stated he doesn't believe the parade of superhero movies passes muster as art that moves people. Boseman, who plays Black Panther in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, said everyone should respect Scorsese's opinion on film since “he’s a genius at what he does,” but he did have some points of contention.
Speaking to BBC 5 Live, Boseman questioned Scorsese's rabble-rousing comments, given that the about-to-turn-77-year-old is releasing a high-profile drama that faces a steep climb to Oscar contention.
“You’ve got to think about when he’s saying it,” Boseman said. “He’s saying it when he’s possibly campaigning for an award. He’s saying it at a time when he’s making a Netflix movie, so that’s how eyes get on his film, and it’s not going to be in the cinemas—it’s not going to be seen the best way.”
He added that Scorsese's comments seemingly proved the director hadn't seen Black Panther, which Boseman believes carries the emotional weight the director is looking for.
“The mystery that Scorsese is talking about is in Black Panther. If he saw it, he didn’t get that there was this feeling of not knowing what was going to happen that black people felt. We thought, you know, ‘White people will kill us off, so it’s a possibility that we could be gone,’" he said. "We felt that angst. We felt that thing you would feel from cinema when we watched it. That’s cultural. Maybe it’s generational.”
