Lately, Martin Scorsese has been more in the news for his status as a legendary filmmaker, and his bone of contention with modern blockbusters, particularly the MCU, than the release of his latest film The Irishman. With the movie starting its awards season run, Scorsese revealed it may very well be his swan song.
“Obviously, we have been discussing this a lot, that theatres have been commandeered by superhero films – you know, just people flying around and banging and crashing, which is fine if you want to see it. It’s just that there’s no room for another kind of picture. I don’t know how many more I can make – maybe this is it. The last one. So the idea was to at least get it made and maybe show it for one day at the NFT, maybe one day at the Cinémathèque in Paris. I’m not kidding.”
Words that are sure to bring a feeling of dread to fans and critics alike. It is difficult to think of any other Hollywood director who enjoys as high a standing as Martin Scorsese, and with good reason. Although his filmography has declined somewhat in present times, Scorsese was one of the vanguards of the new ‘gritty’ cinema movement of the ’70s and ’80s, and his films came to embody a new kind of film hero, a morally questionable, flawed protagonist that audiences did not know whether to boo or cheer for.
Martin Scorsese’s collaborations with Robert De Niro gave Hollywood some of its greatest films of all time, from Taxi Driver to Raging Bull. With the turn of the century, Scorsese found a new muse in Leonardo Dicaprio, with a fresh spate of successful films from Gangs of New York to Wolf of Wall Street.
The Irishman is Scorsese’s latest film in the gangster genre that he elevated and perfected, and it brings together such screen legends as Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci. Despite rave reviews, the movie was only able to stay in theaters for a brief time before going to streaming on Netflix. It was this difficulty in finding theater distribution for his film because of the influx of big-budget superhero epics that led Scroses to publicly and repeatedly criticize the MCU model of filmmaking, drawing the ire of superhero movie fans.
But now that all is said and done, it seems the filmmaker still feels there is a significant drop in filmmaking freedom for artists such as himself, and as a result, does not want to make any more movies. If that does happen, The Irishman will be a near-perfect send-off for a director who has proven himself creatively to still be at the top of his game.
But don’t start mourning jus yet. Scorsese had previously revealed that he will start filming for his next movie, an adaptation of David Grann’s best-selling non-fiction Killers of the Flower Moon next year when he will be working with both Robert De Niro and Leonardo Dicaprio for the first time. So despite what he might say, it seems Scorsese still has the desire to make at least one more movie before calling it a day. This news arrives from CinemaBlend.
