Leonardo DiCaprio on Hollywood's "Checkered Past" in Depictions of Native Americans: "We Need to Do More"
Scorsese added that the major studios, preferring easier-to-market popcorn movies that have franchise potential, no longer have interest in supporting “individual voices that express their personal feelings or their personal thoughts and personal ideas and feelings on a big budget. And what’s happened now is that they’ve pigeonholed it to what they call indies.”
The veteran Hollywood director insisted superhero popcorn movies that depend heavily on special effects, or what he referred to as “manufactured content,” no longer represent cinema. “It’s almost like AI making a film. And that doesn’t mean that you don’t have incredible directors and special effects people doing beautiful artwork. But what does it mean? What do these films, what will it give you? Aside from a kind of consummation of something and then eliminating it from your mind, your whole body, you know? So what is it giving you?” Scorsese said in the magazine interview.
The Hollywood director recalled wrestling with disgraced and now imprisoned film producer Harvey Weinstein over the length and budget for his 2002 passion project. “I realized that I couldn’t work if I had to make films that way ever again. If that was the only way that I was able to be allowed to make films, then I’d have to stop. Because the results weren’t satisfying. It was at times extremely difficult, and I wouldn’t survive it. I’d be dead.