Lucrecia Martel Never Saw ‘Black Widow’ After Turning It Down: Marvel Effects Are ‘Very Ugly’
Lucrecia Martel is calling out Marvel for what she feels is the films’ poor production quality.
The “Zama” director, who previously revealed she was approached by Marvel to helm “Black Widow,” told The Film Stage that she never ended up seeing the 2021 film directed by Cate Shortland.
“No, no, no. I didn’t see ‘Black Widow.’ I tried to,” Marvel said. “It turns out some of the Marvel films are available on planes so I’ve seen a few. I find the sound in them is absolutely in very poor taste, the visual effects, and the sound of the effects.”
She added, “It’s the selection of the sounds that they’re connecting to the effects, which is actually very ugly. And the way the music is used is actually horrible.”
Martel gave more details about her Marvel meetings back in 2018 about “Black Widow.”
“They contacted a great number of female directors,” Martel said. “I never would have imagined that Marvel could contact and bring together a pool of directors and I would be a part of it; I never thought that would be possible. I would have loved to make a film with them but I would have had to provide something that I would like to see in that world.”
The 2019 head of the Venice Film Festival jury previously revealed that her first Marvel meeting was part of the 10-year anniversary of the studio.
“What they told me in the meeting was ‘we need a female director because we need someone who is mostly concerned with the development of Scarlett Johansson’s character,'” Martel said at the time. “They also told me, ‘Don’t worry about the action scenes, we will take care of that.’ I was thinking, well I would love to meet Scarlett Johansson but also I would love to make the action sequences.”
She continued, “Companies are interested in female filmmakers but they still think action scenes are for male directors. The first thing I asked them was maybe if they could change the special effects because there’s so many laser lights. I find them horrible. Also the soundtrack of Marvel films is quite horrendous. Maybe we disagree on this but it’s really hard to watch a Marvel film. It’s painful to the ears to watch Marvel films.”