Who still needs to weigh in on the Mar­vel vs Auteurs debate?

It’s been a testy week in Tin­sel­town, as a mount­ing num­ber of major film­mak­ers have spo­ken out against the cul­tur­al­ly dom­i­nant forces of the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse. Mar­tin Scors­ese com­pared the super­hero tent­poles to theme parks, while Ken Loach likened them to ham­burg­ers – both gen­er­al­ly under­stood as pleas­ant things enjoyed by most peo­ple, and yet this was cause for great uproar among the diehard fan set.

Fer­nan­do Meirelles (​“I tried to watch Dead­pool 2 on a plane. I watched, like, half an hour and gave up”) and Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la (​“despi­ca­ble”) have also chimed in with their opin­ions, leav­ing the head­line-starved pub­lic won­der­ing: who’s left? Here at LWLies, we’ve assem­bled a cur­so­ry line­up of the heavy­weight film­mak­ers who are yet to give their opin­ions about com­ic book movies, and whether they rep­re­sent the end of art as we know it. This press cycle can­not end until they have all been heard from.

The mas­ter made a rare appear­ance at Cannes ear­li­er this year to show off his lat­est fea­ture A Hid­den Life, but main­tains a noto­ri­ous­ly press-shy lifestyle. Which brave soul will hike to the seclud­ed moun­tain sanc­tu­ary in which he spends all his free time med­i­tat­ing while hov­er­ing two feet above the ground, and find out whether he thinks his paeans to the fick­le mer­cy of an invis­i­ble-yet-present God pos­sess an artis­tic worth rough­ly equiv­a­lent to that of Cap­tain Amer­i­ca: The Win­ter Sol­dier?

The one­time Palme d’Or win­ner is more plugged-in than most, post­ing his Cali vaca­tion pho­tos to Twit­ter like a flower-crowned Coachel­la attendee. Sure­ly some intre­pid reporter can get his take on the links between Ant-Man and his mys­ti­cal, ele­men­tal expres­sions of the com­mu­nion join­ing civ­i­liza­tion with nature. Or at least Ant-Man and the Wasp. After all, what is the Pym par­ti­cle if not anoth­er spark gen­er­at­ed from the unend­ing fric­tion between human­i­ty and the organ­ic poten­tials we try in vain to harness?

Portugal’s slow cin­e­ma pio­neer reap­peared on the scene ear­li­er this year with Vitali­na Varela, his lat­est test of the film form’s ten­sile strength. His rig­or­ous exper­i­men­ta­tion with time, rhythm, absence, and min­i­mal­ist aes­thet­ics has com­plete­ly reori­ent­ed a gen­er­a­tion of cin­e­ma schol­ar­ship, per­haps even cre­at­ed a new school of artis­tic thought entire­ly; did he pre­fer Guardians of the Galaxy or Guardian of the Galaxy Vol 2? We must know. The pub­lic deserves to know.

The Tai­wanese great has grown less pro­lif­ic over the past decade, gift­ing his ded­i­cat­ed devo­tees only one fea­ture with 2015’s The Assas­sin. He’s got­ten scarcer and scarcer in pub­lic life, and yet the influ­ence of his canon – the ele­gant way it inter­weaves the vicis­si­tudes of his­to­ry through the inti­mate lives of ordi­nary peo­ple, his fear­less long takes strip­ping actors down to the essen­tials of their per­for­mances – per­sists even as he with­draws. What did he make of Cap­tain Mar­vel? Does he agree that punch­ing lit­tle old ladies in the face is wrong, even if they’re shapeshift­ing aliens in dis­guise? Mil­len­ni­um Mam­bo and Three Times were both pret­ty good, but they left this ques­tion tan­ta­lis­ing­ly un-answered.

One of the most esteemed tal­ents in the his­to­ry of French mov­ing pic­tures shuf­fled off her mor­tal coil back in the spring­time, leav­ing behind an incal­cu­la­ble lega­cy on the art form and the way we under­stand it. If a mor­tal being could tran­scend the divides between this plane and the next, per­haps they could check in with her about how she – in her infi­nite posthu­mous wis­dom – liked Avengers: Endgame. ​“Quoi?” she might say, and you’d respond, ​“The fourth one. Well, the sequel to the third one. The sec­ond half of the third one, tech­ni­cal­ly, which is to say both a sequel and a con­tin­u­a­tion of a sequel. And it also cor­re­sponds to Spi­der-Man, I think,” and then she’ll pre­tend to be get­ting a heav­en-call on her heaven-cell-phone.