The Martin Scorsese movie that failed to win Bill Paxton over: “Didn’t engage me”
There’s nothing quite like the disappointment of a film you’ve waited so long for. Maybe you’ve been holding your damn breath for years for your favourite director to release their latest creation, patiently anticipating a new piece of art, only to be bitterly let down.
That’s how Bill Paxton felt when he got all excited to watch a Martin Scorsese film that proved to be a far cry from what he was expecting. With someone as big as Scorsese, you usually have faith that you’re in for a good time, but Paxton walked away from a certain film wondering how this was made by the same man who created classics like Taxi Driver and Goodfellas.
Following the release of the acclaimed psychological thriller Shutter Island in 2010, Scorsese didn’t hang about, and he got straight to work on a much more family-friendly movie. Hugo came the following year, with British actor Asa Butterfield playing a boy who, for some reason, lives in a Parisian railway. It’s a love letter to cinema, particularly the early days of the medium when pioneering director Georges Méliès was making films that would go on to inspire every filmmaker in his wake.
It’s slightly sentimental and a sharp contrast to Scorsese’s gangster flicks and gritty New York dramas, with a predominantly British cast and a French setting. Some loved it, others, like Paxton, just couldn’t get on board with Scorsese’s attempt at a wholesome dedication to cinema. Talking to Screen Anarchy, the Apollo 13 star revealed, “The movie I anticipated the most to see this year is one I found to be a bit disappointing, and that was Hugo. I was a nut on Méliès – I went to France years ago, I tried to find if there was anything left.”
Feeling a close connection to the innovative filmmaker, Paxton clearly found the depiction of Méliès precious ground to tread, and he didn’t think that Scorsese pulled it off successfully: “Then I watch the movie, and… I’m willing to give a movie ten, 15, 20 minutes; you’ve got to get a world going, it takes the first act to give them a break. I kept waiting and wanting to get pulled in, and that movie to me…if a movie doesn’t pull an audience in emotionally, then I don’t care how many bells and whistles it’s got going off. Hugo just didn’t engage me emotionally.”
If a film doesn’t make you feel something emotionally, that’s pretty much it. You can’t love a film if you don’t feel a connection to the characters and the story, and even though Paxton was a self-confessed “nut” about Méliès, played by Ben Kingsley in Hugo, Scorsese was unable to craft a film that resonated with him.
He couldn’t help but point out some inaccuracies in the film, too, especially the film historian character. “OK, now look. There were no film historians at the time. This idea of film history, and film preservation, it’s a modern conceit,” Paxton complained.
Hugo certainly isn’t one of Scorsese’s greatest films, although it did earn considerable praise from critics and even a ‘Best Picture’ nomination from the Academy Awards. Marking a huge diversion from the kinds of films Scorsese usually made, he followed it with explicit, drug-fuelled drama The Wolf of Wall Street, which certainly got him back to his usual exploits. Perhaps Paxton preferred that one.
