Suicide Squad star Viola Davis has issued a rebuttal against claims made by influential directors Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola.
Those directors, and other prominent filmmakers, have recently taken a stance against superhero movies as not having cinematic value. While speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Viola Davis explained that she does not agree with this line of criticism, noting that she sees superhero movies as just as valid a creative exercise as “serious” films. (Viola Davis did also not pick sides between Marvel or DC, in spite of her involvement with the Suicide Squad franchise.)
Suicide Squad star Viola Davis explained that she respectfully disagrees with Martin Scorsese in the following quote:
“I do like a good Marvel movie. I do like a good DC Comics movie… I think [Martin Scorsese] was voicing his opinion. I think it’s valid. Everyone had a place, an opinion. But I like a good Marvel movie.”
Viola Davis went into greater detail on why she thinks that keeping an open mind is important and why escapist entertainment is beneficial for audiences, using said explanations to justify why superhero movies are just as valid as an art form as any other piece of popular media:
“Albert Einstein said that imagination is more valuable than knowledge. If I did not have my imagination, I would still be poor [Viola Davis] living in Central Falls, Rhode Island, who is not considered attractive or whatever. My imagination defined me. I could escape into a world that’s infinite, a world that I could create on my own, a world where I could redefine myself. That’s where art lives. Art lives in that world of imagination. It’s a playground there. It’s God’s playground. It’s not up to anyone to say what deserves to be there and what doesn’t deserve to be there. It’s anything that you want to be in that place can live there. And that is why we have some of the greatest painters, some of the greatest actors, some of the greatest writers, and that’s why we live. So I do believe that there’s a place for all of it.”
While Viola Davis’s big superhero movie, Suicide Squad, was lambasted by critics for a number of reasons (such as the film’s infamous editing style), her defenses of a newer, popular genre hitting it big isn’t really that different from the kinds of criticisms that Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola faced when they made several successful gangster films. It generally seems like there’s always going to be some sort of generation gap when it comes to the changing face of popular entertainment, which itself is reflected by Suicide Squad — younger audiences seemed to embrace the film more than older audiences did. Viola Davis is set to return for The Suicide Squad, which will take a different approach to the franchise while utilizing some of the same characters — and the sequel should hopefully be more well-received than the initial outing.
David Ayer’s Suicide Squad followed a team of supervillains who were recruited by the government for a dangerous black ops mission in exchange for reduced sentences. The sequel will see the return of four cast members from that film: Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Viola Davis as Amanda Waller, Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang, and Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag.
James Gunn is expected to deliver on the fresh take on the supervillain team in his upcoming movie, with Idris Elba playing a new character on the team, David Dastmalchian starring as Polka-Dot Man, Daniela Melchior as Ratcatcher, and Steve Agee voicing King Shark. Other cast members confirmed for the ensemble picture include John Cena, Storm Reid, Flula Borg, Nathan Fillion, Taika Waititi, Peter Capaldi, Michael Rooker, Sean Gunn, Mayling Ng, Jennifer Holland, Pete Davidson, Juan Diego Botto, Alice Braga, Tinashe Kajese, Julio Ruiz, and Joaquín Cosío.
James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad will be released in theaters on August 6, 2021. Stay tuned to us for the latest news regarding Viola Davis and The Suicide Squad.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
