Francis Ford Coppola has shared his thoughts on modern blockbuster films, saying they’re all based on the same “prototype”.
The director, known for films like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, criticized the similarities among big studio films in an interview with GQ. There used to be studio films,” Coppola said. “Now there are Marvel pictures. And what is a Marvel picture? A Marvel picture is one prototype movie that is made over and over and over again to look different.”
Coppola believes that even “good” studio films like Dune and No Time To Die share formulaic similarities. He added: “Even the talented people – you could take Dune, made by Denis Villeneuve, an extremely talented, gifted artist, and you could take No Time To Die, directed by… Cary Fukanaga – extremely gifted, talented, beautiful artists, and you could take both those movies, and you and I could go and pull the same sequence out of both of them and put them together.
The same sequence where the cars all crash into each other. They all have that stuff in it, and they almost have to have it, if they’re going to justify their budget. And that’s the good films and the talented filmmakers.” Coppola previously supported Martin Scorsese’s criticism of Marvel movies in 2019, where he similarly compared it to “seeing the same movie over and over again”.
He added: “I don’t know that anyone gets anything out of seeing the same movie over and over again. Martin was kind when he said it’s not cinema. He didn’t say it’s despicable, which I just say it is.”
