Vin Diesel Defends ‘Popular Cinema’ as ‘Not a Lesser Form of Art’ in Passionate Essay About His History at Cannes

Not me getting teary eyed reading a Vin Diesel essay…

He spoke for me and my love of movies. My teenage self sitting in a theater. In my twenties often catching a matine by myself. I’ve watched so, so many movies of all genres, from all over the world.

I wrote papers in college about film as a cultural document.

I stream now, as I am no longer able to go to a theater, but I clearly remember that feeling of being in the dark, watching previews, waiting in anticipation and then staying through the credits letting the experience settle in.

Thank you for posting this OP.

In my personal and humble opinion. The way I call something ”Art” is when an artist attempt to represent an emotion, a message, a sound and by chance this work becomes valuable. Doing this equation backward doesn’t work for me. You can’t do something with profit in mind, take out all the factors of chance (focus group, studio inputs, notes, social pressures, people’s fragility) tell people what the message is and then call it art. But remember that a word can mean something different for everyone. Just find your equation or your filter and call it what ever the f&#k you want. Vin Diesel has his own view of things. The real equaliser is the ”Dineros” you don’t like it don’t see it. I have to accept that even tough I don’t like super hero movies that people pay for them and it keeps the cinemas alive.

I had just as much of a pleasurable experience at mortal kombat 2 as I did homuk. I experienced different emotions for sure but I came out of the experience just as satisfied with one as the other. And I understand that the mortal kombats or Superman’s pay for the infrastructure to experience hokum on a better screen and sound than home. I’ll see both. I’ll never knock others for only seeing the “marvels”

In my opinion, all movies are art. Art can be masterful, it can also be crap.

Arguing that popular films or b-movies aren’t “art” is as dopey as someone in the 1960s claiming that Warhol isn’t producing “art.”

I love films and when a film hits me right, it’s just as impactful as any “high art.”

Doesn’t matter if that film is Schindler’s List or Ticks, co-starring Clint Howard.