Chris Hemsworth Fires Back at Martin Scorsese Over Superhero Remarks
Hemsworth fired back at Scorsese and fellow director Francis Ford Coppola over their public lamenting of the superhero genre, calling the remarks "harsh."
During a new interview with The Times of London (via Variety), Chris Hemsworth rebuked Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola for lambasting superhero movies. The actor, who is doing press for his villainous turn in George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road prequel, Furiosa, said the directors’ opinions were “an eye-roll for me.”
Scorsese originally came out against superhero movies in 2019, comparing the genre to “theme parks.” Scorsese continued: “That’s not cinema…It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”
Coppola backed his pal in a 2022 interview with GQ. “A Marvel picture is one prototype movie that is made over and over and over and over and over again to look different,” the Godfather director said.
Now, Thor himself has weighed in on the controversy. Speaking to The Times, Hemsworth lamented that the two directors felt it necessary to punch down on the genre.
“It felt harsh, and it bothers me, especially from heroes,” Hemsworth reflected. “It was an eye-roll for me, people bashing the superhero space. Those guys had films that didn’t work, too—we all have. When they talked about what was wrong with superheroes, I thought, ‘Cool, tell that to the billions who watch them.’ Were they all wrong?”
He continued: “Cinema-going did not change because of superheroes, but because of smartphones and social media. Superhero films actually kept people in the cinemas during that transition and now people are coming back. So, they deserve a little more appreciation.”
Though Hemsworth has made remarks in the past implying that his MCU tenure was “suffering without a purpose,” he took a lighter stance in this new interview.
“If I ever went back to [play Thor], I’d wonder how we could change it again. But there is a superhero curse in the sense you get pigeonholed, and I’ve felt a little hamstrung with what I could do, so [I] desperately wanted something to scare the s--tout of me. And Furiosa did.”
Hemsworth previously called Furiosa “a real departure” for himself creatively, “just to dirty it up and to be messy and ugly and violent and chaotic, rather than being in the somewhat predictable box of the hero in a superhero space."
Furiosa hits cinemas on May 24.