Actress Lupita Nyong’o offers her opinion on the contentious issue of Marvel films and their impact on the standard of the film industry.
According to her, a piece of media should be acknowledged as substantial if it reaches a large portion of the audience.
“It becomes a philosophical question about what is art and what is its purpose. I believe that art plays a role in moving the people that experience it, and a lot of people are moved by Marvel. Is you being moved by this thing less important than me being moved by Picasso?
“I think to be culturally prosperous, to be artistically prosperous as a people, is to have options. In Kenya, sugar was sugar, it was brown or it was white. You come to the [United States], and a whole section in the supermarket is dedicated to sugars. So many different sugars. That is a symbol of prosperity, when you have options. So I personally love a good Marvel movie, but it doesn’t take me away from really wanting the little character-driven film. I believe in the fight for those things to be kept alive because the one thing we always want, the ultimate privilege, is choice.”
The celebrity initially started her career in production, working on shows like The Constant Gardner.
Nyong’o received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress shortly after landing her breakout role as the slave Patsey in Steve McQueen’s epic 12 Years a Slave. She later appeared in hit films including Black Panther, Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, and Queen of Katwe. In Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Nyong’o will make a comeback to the Marvel Cinematic Universe the following month.
Members of the film industry have argued the art of these enormous tent pole films and how they influence the quality of cinema since the MCU gained major success with The Avengers.
Legendary director Martin Scorsese claimed that superhero movies were not true cinema and compared them to theme park rides after the release of Avengers: Endgame, the MCU’s highest-grossing entry. Later, the director corrected his remarks, but the harm had already been done because the controversy immediately gained media attention.
