The iconic movie character Quentin Tarantino can’t stand: “There is simply not much to play”
Having crafted several iconic movie characters from the ground up, Quentin Tarantino knows what it takes to create someone who becomes an indelible part of cinema history.
As simple as it sounds, all it takes is a screenplay and a performance. If the words and the writing are strong enough, and they’re matched by an equally impressive performance, then an actor stands a much better chance of committing something to the screen that’ll be remembered for generations to come.
Whether it’s Uma Thurman’s Beatrix Kiddo, Christoph Waltz’s Hans Landa, Pam Grier’s Jackie Brown, Samuel L Jackson’s Jules Winnfield, or any of his other memorable figures, the two-time Academy Award winner has shown a knack for hiring the best person to play his greatest characters.
Of course, it’s an entirely different matter when the iconic character in question is one that becomes recast, reheated, and rebooted several times over. For example, Marlon Brando played Vito Corleone and won an Oscar, providing what seemed to be impossible shoes to fill, until Robert De Niro played Vito Corleone two years later and also won an Oscar.
On the other hand, Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix both followed suit by claiming one of the industry’s most coveted prizes for embodying the Joker, but in between those two titanic turns in The Dark Knight and Joker, Jared Leto tried to muscle in on the act and completely shit the bed.
An iconic character doesn’t necessarily provide an easy route to an iconic performance, and as far as Tarantino is concerned, the chaotic clown’s arch-nemesis fits the bill. “Batman is not a very interesting character,” the filmmaker suggested. “For any actor. There is simply not much to play.”
On one hand, he’s right. Bruce Wayne is an orphaned billionaire who weaponizes his trauma to dress up in an armoured costume as a gigantic flying mammal, before utilising his wealth and gadgetry to put a stop to various criminal enterprises. That’s Batman in a nutshell, so there isn’t much wriggle room there.
Then again, Michael Keaton leaning into the crazy as Tim Burton’s ‘Dark Knight’ and Christian Bale drawing a distinct line between the suave, charming Wayne and his gravel-voiced alter ego exist on an entirely different plane of existence from whatever the fuck Val Kilmer and George Clooney were supposed to be doing.
It’s a case of the actor making the part, and not the part making the actor. On the page, there’s only so much any performer can do with a character as rigidly defined as Batman, but you’d much rather be a Keaton, Bale, or even a Robert Pattinson than a Kilmer, Clooney, or Ben Affleck, regardless of how much Tarantino thinks it’s a dead-end gig to begin with.
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