Tim Blake Nelson has hailed the Marvel Cinematic Universe for “keeping cinema alive.”

The 60-year-old actor will make his return as Samuel Sterns in the upcoming movie Captain America: Brave New World and hit back at critics such as Martin Scorsese – who branded the superhero blockbusters as “theme parks” and “not cinema.”

Speaking to TheWrap at San Diego Comic-Con, Nelson said: “Marvel has become this phenomenon that’s unprecedented in the history of cinema.”

“These scores of movies with characters moving in and out of one another’s storylines, coming together, going back apart, fighting against one another in a single universe; it’s never happened before in movies … When people attack these movies as, ‘Well, it’s not real cinema’ or, ‘It’s the death of cinema,’ I actually think it’s keeping cinema alive, and I really mean that.”

READ MORE: Every Marvel Movie Ranked From Worst to Best

The forthcoming flick marks Nelson’s first MCU appearance since he featured in 2008’s The Incredible Hulk and he confessed that he had “given up” on making a return to superhero tentpoles.

The Minority Report star said: “I have to say that I had given up on coming back as well, and not without a tremendous amount of despair. But I’m glad it took this long because the character I (play) actually, I think demands my own life experiences over the past 18 years. Because there’s a real depth and rage and pathos to this guy, and I needed 18 more years of life experience to try and pull that off.”

Nelson added that he reprised the part on the basis that his alter ego would transform into the villainous Leader.

He told Entertainment Weekly: “I had only one request, which was that we realise the character practically and they were willing to do that.

“Of course, if they’d said no, I still would have done it. But I wanted to really have the look and the weight of the character and look in the mirror and see the deformation of the character and have the other actors experience that.”

Captain America: Brave New World is scheduled to open in theaters on February 14, 2025.