James Gunn On Martin Scorsese Bashing MCU: He Doesn't Know What My Movie Is, It Was Irritating

The Suicide Squad director James Gunn recently opened up about defending Marvel and DCEU films from criticism from filmmakers like Jodie Foster and Martin Scorsese. While on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Gun said, "a little exhausting sometimes to be the guy like... 'I love you, Marty, but hear me out here?'"

Calling Martin Scorsese cynical, he added, "I just think, you know... he just seems awful cynical -- that he, you know, he would keep coming out against Marvel and then that's the only thing that would get him press for his movie."

"So then he just kept coming out against Marvel so that he could get press for his movie. So he's creating his movie in the shadow of the Marvel films, and so he uses that to get attention for something that he wasn't getting as much attention as he wanted for it." Gunn added.

In 2019 while talking with Empire magazine, Scorsese compared Marvel films to "theme parks," followed by calling them "not cinema, it's something else" at the BFI London Film Festival.

Agreeing with the veteran filmmaker, Gunn added, "There are a lot of heartless, soulless, you know, spectacle films out there that don't reflect what should be happening." He revealed that a lot of times directors start the project with, "Hey, we're in this together. Let's do something different with these big movies. Let's make them something different than everything that's come before 'em.' And then see them just go and just cater to every single studio whim or what's thought of, and just be grossed out, frankly."

Gunn concluded, "So... a lot of what he said was good. And then also, like he hasn't seen my movie. He doesn't know what my movie is, so you know it was... it was irritating."