2015: Spielberg plädiert für mehr Vielfalt im Kino

Spielberg prophezeit den Niedergang der Superhelden-Filme – oder auch nicht…

Während der Werbetour für seinen neuen Film Bridge of Spies wird Spielberg auf seine Vorhersage angesprochen, die Filmindustrie stehe kurz davor zu implodieren, da so viele Studios riesige Budgets in einzelne Filme stecken, speziell Comic-Verfilmungen. Spielberg antwortet:

“I still feel that way. We were around when the Western died and there will be a time when the superhero movie goes the way of the Western. It doesn’t mean there won’t be another occasion where the Western comes back and the superhero movie someday returns.”

Seine Feststellung führt zu heftigen Reaktionen in Hollywood und aus dem Fankreis des Superhelden-Genres. Marvel Studios-Präsident Kevin Feige gibt zu Protokoll:

“The Western lasted 40-50 years, and they still pop up occasionally. (…) It’s been, what, eight years since Iron Man 1 if we count that, which I do, as the beginning of our MCU? Maybe [the superhero genre] will only last another 42 years.”

Feige verteidigt die besonderen Qualitäten der Filme aus dem Marvel Cinematic Universe:

“Those are all very different movies. They all happen to be based on Marvel characters and Marvel comics, but from a genre and a cinematic perspective, they’re all very unique. Civil War may as well be a different genre from Age of Ultron.”

Spielberg hat daraufhin das Gefühl, er müsse seine Ansichten verdeutlichen und sagt in einem Interview mit collider.com:

“To clarify, I didn’t predict the implosion of the film industry at all, I simply predicted that a number of blockbusters in one summer—those big sort of tentpole superhero movies—there was going to come a time where two or three or four of them in a row didn’t work. That’s really all I said. I didn’t say the film industry was ever going to end because of it. I was simply saying that I felt that that particular genre doesn’t have the legs or longevity of the Western, which was around since the beginning of film and only started to wither and shrivel in the sixties.”

Er erläutert auch seine Sicht auf das wachsende Zuschauerinteresse gegenüber verschiedenen Genres:

“I was also trying to make the point that there was room for every kind of movie today because there seems to be an audience for everything. Even five years ago there wasn’t an audience for everything. But now, these little movies are just squeezing in and finding a berth next to these huge Queen Mary type movies and they’re able to find an audience, enough of an audience to encourage the distributor and the film companies to finance more of them. These are not just films like Bridge of Spies, it’s independent movies as well.“