The Forgiven director John Michael McDonagh suggests Marvel movies are to blame for his film’s bad reviews. McDonagh’s film stars Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain as a married couple traveling deep into the desert of Morocco to attend a friend’s lavish party. But their vacation takes a horrifying turn when their vehicle accidentally strikes and kills a young man peddling dinosaur bones in the road.
With a cast that also includes Matt Smith, Caleb Landry Jones, Abbey Lee and Saïd Taghmaoui, The Forgiven certainly boasts enough star power to satisfy any critic. Nevertheless, reviewers were largely lukewarm on McDonagh’s film, which currently holds just a 66% score on Rotten Tomatoes. The consensus among critics is that though many of the film’s performances are praise-worthy, the characters the actors are playing are simply too unlikeable and the film’s tone too harsh and cynical for comfort.
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Critics may indeed have had perfectly valid reasons for downgrading The Forgiven, despite its strong cast and at times intriguing atmosphere. But director McDonagh believes reviewers have missed the mark on his film, and he thinks he knows why they’ve lost their aim. Speaking to The Guardian, the filmmaker singled out Marvel movies as having a negative influence on critics and audiences’ ability to judge movies. “Has Marvel infantilized audiences?” McDonagh wondered aloud, going on to suggest that this “infantilization” makes American critics in particular incapable of appreciating psychological nuance:
"Once you’ve introduced a character who says obnoxious things, there can never be any fluctuation. It makes American film critics – maybe audiences – feel uncomfortable. They want a smooth journey. Whereas in real life, we all know that we change our minds the next day."
As for McDonagh’s own experience with Marvel movies, he did say he watches them “when I’m drunk on a plane on a small screen, to give them the level of attention they deserve.” Of course this is not the first time a filmmaker working in the realm of prestige drama has said dismissive things about Marvel movies. Martin Scorsese famously made big waves years back with his remarks about Marvel movies not being real cinema. Ridley Scott too has gotten on the bashing bandwagon, saying he’s been asked to direct a superhero movie many times over the years but always refused, because he “can't believe in the thin, gossamer tightrope of the non-reality” of the situations. Directors like David Cronenberg, Alejandro G. Iñárritu and Bong Joon-ho have also gone on record as being anti-superhero-film.
On the one hand it’s easy to dismiss McDonagh’s remarks as those of a director whose film did poorly in the eyes of critics and audiences and who is looking everywhere but inward for explanations. On the other hand, it’s true that the superhero journey depicted in many Marvel movies is often clean and predictable and that the characters can at times come off as lacking in psychological complexity. But there’s no question that Marvel movies have tremendous value as entertainment and that it’s unfairly dismissive to claim they’re only good for watching on planes while drunk. Unfortunately, Marvel movies suck up so much of the pop culture air at present that it’s sometimes hard for a smaller film like The Forgiven to receive any oxygen at all. And it’s certainly understandable that filmmakers like McDonagh, who work hard bringing their own non-superhero visions to life, might resent this fact.