Check out the above video where Robert Downey Jr. and the cast of Avengers 2 respond to criticisms made by the director of Birdman, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.
If you are not familiar with Inarritu’s comments, the director stated superhero films are “cultural genocide” and “right wing.” Here’s the blub from the Deadline interview:
I sometimes enjoy them because they are basic and simple and go well with popcorn. The problem is that sometimes they purport to be profound, based on some Greek mythological kind of thing. And they are honestly very right wing. I always see them as killing people because they do not believe in what you believe, or they are not being who you want them to be. I hate that, and don’t respond to those characters. They have been poison, this cultural genocide, because the audience is so overexposed to plot and explosions and sh-t that doesn’t mean nothing about the experience of being human.
That’s what I am saying. Superheroes…just the word hero bothers me. What the f— does that mean? It’s a false, misleading conception, the superhero. Then, the way they apply violence to it, it’s absolutely right wing. If you observe the mentality of most of those films, it’s really about people who are rich, who have power, who will do the good, who will kill the bad. Philosophically, I just don’t like them.
“The Avengers 2” hits May 1st.