Francis Ford Coppola Buries Marvel For Repeating Plots

Francis Ford Coppola has five Academy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Palmes d’Or, and a British Academy Film Award to his name. Coppola’s reputation as a filmmaker was solidified with the release of The Godfather (1972), which revolutionized gangster filmmaking. Coppola recently blasted Marvel.

According to Consequence, in a new interview with GQ, Francis Ford Coppola didn’t hold back when it came to naming his pet peeves in modern cinema, revealing that he finds Marvel movies to be formulaic and repetitive.

“There used to be studio films,” the Godfather mastermind said. “Now there are Marvel pictures. And what is a Marvel picture? A Marvel picture is one prototype movie that is made over and over and over and over and over again to look different.” Coppola has been dissatisfied with some non-Marvel blockbusters, particularly Dune and No Time to Die (ironically, Dune director Denis Villeneuve has also voiced his frustrations with the science of Marvel).

“You could take both those movies, and you and I could go and pull the same sequence out of both of them and put them together. The same sequence where the cars all crash into each other. They all have that stuff in it, and they almost have to have it, if they’re going to justify their budget. And that’s the good films and the talented filmmakers.”

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Coppola’s remarks echo those of another legend, Martin Scorsese, who stated in 2019 that he does not consider Marvel films to be “cinema.” The filmmaker told Empire that the movies are more like “theme parks” because they lack the “emotional, psychological experiences” of real cinema before urging theatre owners to “step up” so that we aren’t “invaded by” superhero blockbusters instead of narrative films.

Coppola, on the other hand, has some encouraging words for aspiring filmmakers: “I always tell my kids, like Sofia — ‘Let your films be personal,'” he says.

“Always make it as personal as you can because you are a miracle, that you’re even alive. Then your art will be a miracle because it reflects stuff from someone who there is no other one like that.’”

Coppola is expected to return to directing soon with Megalopolis, an ambitious “love storey” he’s had in the works for more than 40 years. He explained that it’s about a woman who is “divided between loyalties to two men” — her traditional father and a forward-thinking love interest — and that it will cost around $120 million to make. That’s a superhero’s budget.

Coppola should have nice things to say about Francis and the Godfather, a forthcoming biopic about the making of his 1972 masterpiece. To get the latest updates, keep an eye on Thirsty.

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