Criticizing the Marvel Cinematic Universe is one way to guarantee risking the wrath of the internet, and Dune director Denis Villenueve has joined Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Marc Maron on the sh*t list after his denigrating comments on the world’s most popular franchise quickly went viral.
Admittedly, you can understand the filmmaker’s perspective to a certain extent, when there are a large number of MCU blockbusters that adhere rigidly to the formula that’s served the superhero series so well over the last thirteen years, but painting them all with the same brush comes across as a touch elitist.
Just because you don’t enjoy the content that Kevin Feige’s outfit are creating, it doesn’t automatically mean that you have to blast it in a public forum. While some of the social media responses to Villenueve’s words have been vitriolic to say the least, Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson put forth a much more measured take, which you can see below.
Derrickson is right on the money; nobody sets out to make a bad movie on purpose, and there’s no real need to tear down the work of your peers. Hundreds of cast and crew members work incredibly hard on every major production regardless of how it turns out, and taste will always be entirely subjective. There’s no doubt plenty of big names in Hollywood that don’t care for the MCU, but they haven’t felt the need to shout it from the rooftops.