The Russo Brothers' Joe Russo got candid about why he thinks big-budget, popular movies are getting snubbed at the Academy Awards despite their box office successes. He blames the trend that Harvey Weinstein allegedly started in the mid-'90s.
During a sit-down interview with UK's Sunday Times, published on March 15, 2025, Avengers director Joe Russo lamented over how Weinstein allegedly "mudslinging campaigns" against mainstream movies, saying:
"This trend was started by Harvey Weinstein. He vilified mainstream movies to champion the art films he pushed for Oscar campaigns. Popular films were winning Oscars before the mid-Nineties, then Weinstein started mudslinging campaigns."
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Joe Russo claimed that Weinstein's campaigns affected how people view the Oscars as "they've not seen most of the movies" being nominated for the Academy. He further said:
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"Thing we should all enjoying collectively we instead punch each other in the face over."
Speaking of the gap between popular movies and films in contention for an Academy Award, a 2022 Wall Street Journal poll showed that over half of all people surveyed hadn't seen any of the ten movies nominated for Best Picture that year. Meanwhile, 40% of them said that they didn't believe that Oscar winners reflected reflected public opinion.
Joe Russo thinks Marvel movies have been "keeping cinemas open," contrary to others opinions
Marvel Cinematic Universe has been dominating Hollywood for a while, with the franchise now spanning more than 30 films and over a dozen TV shows. However, many filmmakers and actors have condemned the MCU and the craze behind it.
For one, German filmmaker Roland Emmerich, the director for Independence Day, once accused films from Marvel, DC, and Star Wars of "ruining" the film industry a little bit in a 2022 interview, per The Independent UK. However, Avengers director Joe Russo took offense. He thinks it's the opposite, saying that Marvel movies have kept movie theaters open for a while now. He said in the Sunday Times interview:
"Like this argument that Marvel movies were killing cinema. Well, Marvel movies seemed to be keeping cinemas open for quite a long time."
It was the same thing Chris Hemsworth, who starred in a couple of Marvel films, notably playing the titular role in Thor movies, said in an interview with The London Times in May 2024. Hemsworth took offense over Martin Scorsese's comments during a 2019 Empire magazine interview where he said that Marvel movies were "not cinema."
Hemsworth said at the time that "superhero films actually kept people in the cinemas," adding that actors playing in such films "deserve a little more appreciation."
That said, Emmerich and Scorsese weren't the only ones to have commented about Marvel films that sparked controversy among MCU fans. Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola echoed Scorsese's opinions during the Lumiere Festival in 2019 but said that the other director was being "kind," further saying that MCU movies were "despicable."
Quentin Tarantino also condemned the "Marvel-isation of Hollywood," saying that Marvel heroes are not movie stars during a 2022 podcast interview with Tom Segura. Meanwhile, Scotting actor Brian Cox from HBO's Succession said during the Edinburgh International Film Festival in August 2024 that he thinks cinema is "in a very bad way" and that "it's lost its place" and Marvel films, as well as DC, are to blame.
Along with his brother and partner, Anthony Russo, Joe Russo has been behind some of the highest-grossing films in the 21st century, including Avengers: Infinity War, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and more.
