In un articolo sul New York Times ha chiarito e spiegato il giudizio che aveva già espresso sbrigativamente («Non sono cinema»)

In un’intervista rilasciata lo scorso ottobre al magazine Empire Martin Scorsese affermò che i film del Marvel Cinematic Universe non sono cinema, e che gli ricordavano un parco a tema:

I don’t see them. I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema,” Scorsese told Empire. “Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being

Ora, in un pezzo sul New York Times (link alternativo), Scorsese elabora più a fondo il suo pensiero andando oltre i film Marvel e criticando una porzione molto più ampia dell’industria cinematografica. Scorsese prima di tutto chiarisce che le sue affermazioni nell’intervista precedente non volevano insultare nessuno, né erano prova del suo odio nei confronti della Marvel:

Some people seem to have seized on the last part of my answer as insulting, or as evidence of hatred for Marvel on my part. If anyone is intent on characterizing my words in that light, there’s nothing I can do to stand in the way.

Many franchise films are made by people of considerable talent and artistry. You can see it on the screen. The fact that the films themselves don’t interest me is a matter of personal taste and temperament. I know that if I were younger, if I’d come of age at a later time, I might have been excited by these pictures and maybe even wanted to make one myself. But I grew up when I did and I developed a sense of movies — of what they were and what they could be — that was as far from the Marvel universe as we on Earth are from Alpha Centauri.

Scorsese poi chiarisce la sua idea di cinema, come una scoperta a livello estetico, emotivo e spirituale. Il cinema è in sostanza una forma d’arte:

[…] cinema was about revelation — aesthetic, emotional and spiritual revelation. It was about characters — the complexity of people and their contradictory and sometimes paradoxical natures, the way they can hurt one another and love one another and suddenly come face to face with themselves.

It was about confronting the unexpected on the screen and in the life it dramatized and interpreted, and enlarging the sense of what was possible in the art form.