“For him I am someone from a banana country.” Alejandro G. Iñárritu responds to Robert Downey Jr.’s reaction when he said that superhero movies are “cultural genocide”

Alejandro González Iñárritu does not like superhero movies and in 2014 claimed that these were a form of “cultural genocide” while promoting ‘Birdman‘, and I add: “I am not able to respond to those characters. They’ve been poison because the audience is so overexposed to the plot and the explosions and shit that it doesn’t mean anything about the experience of being human.”. Robert Downey Jr. replied to the comment of Iñárritu in 2015 during a interview with The Guardian to promote his role as Iron Man in ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron‘.

“If he were Danish or Irish he would find it philosophical.”

But the actor’s reply was somewhat controversial. Downey Jr. pointed out that he “respects a lot” Iñárritu, but also made fun of his Spanish roots of Iñárritu when saying:

“For a man whose native language is Spanish, being able to put together a phrase like ‘cultural genocide’ just speaks volumes about how brilliant he is.”

In a new interview with IndieWire after the world premiere at the Venice Film Festival of ‘Bardo’, Iñárritu reflected on Downey Jr’s response:

“It was like ‘Oh you people from your banana country.’ If I were from Denmark or Sweden, it could be seen as philosophical, but when you’re Mexican and you say things, you’re pretentious.”

Iñárritu said in his opening remarks that only the word “superhero” bothered him:

“What the hell does that mean? It’s a misconception, a misconception, the superhero. So the way they apply violence to it, it’s absolutely right wing. If you look at the mentality of most of those movies, it’s really about rich people, who have power, who will do good, who will kill the bad. Philosophically, I just don’t like them.”