Alejandro González Iñárritu, the director of Birdman and The Revenant, created a lot of uproar in 2014 when he spoke out against Superhero Movies, claiming that superhero movies are a “cultural genocide” and that they should be avoided.
In conclusion, the filmmaker claims that everyone who watches them is a child who is not an adult since superheroes, in his perspective, are only appropriate for a young audience.
James Gunn, Paul Thomas Anderson, and many other members of the Hollywood elite, including Robert Downey Jr., disagreed with Iñárritu’s assertions during the Avengers: Age of Ultron promotional tour in 2015.
The Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe mocked Iñárritu’s Spanish heritage while expressing appreciation for him as a director, saying, “For a man whose native tongue is Spanish to be able to piece together a sentence like ‘cultural genocide’ proves how smart it is.”
Iñárritu discussed Robert Downey Jr.’s response to criticism in an interview with IndieWire about his new Netflix film, Bardo, and said he was slightly concerned by the actor’s remarks at the time:
“It’s like I said, ‘Oh, you guys from your banana-producing country.’ If I were from Denmark or Sweden, I would be seen as a philosopher, but when you are Mexican and say certain things, you sound pretentious. “
Iñárritu said he was tired of merely hearing the phrase “superhero” in his earliest critiques of fine comics since it, in his opinion, is founded on a “misleading” and generally right-wing idea:
There’s nothing terrible about being obsessed with superheroes when you’re seven. Still, it’s a weakness when you’re grown up, almost as if you don’t want to grow up.
The problem is when they pretend to have some kind of depth. It’s poison. The public is now overexposed to stories, explosions, and shit of this kind that have nothing to do with the existence of a human being. “
“What the fuck does ‘superhero’ mean then? That of the superhero is a false and misleading conception. Also, the way violence is applied to it is absolutely right. If you look at the mentality of most of those movies, it’s about wealthy people who have power, who will do good, and who will kill evil. Philosophically speaking, I don’t like them. “
