The movie Taika Waititi will always be jealous of: “It’s such a smart idea”
Artists have always been envious of the output of their fellow creatives, history is littered with examples of it, from The Beatles and The Beach Boys to Warhol influencing Picasso, it often spurs them on to achieve their best work. And in the case of New Zealand director Taika Waititi, he is green with envy at one of the finest horror movies in modern history.
Waititi had a five-year period during which he was one of the most feted and in-demand directors in Hollywood, having created some of the finest independent films around from 2014’s vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows to The Hunt for the Wilderpeople two years later, both of which he wrote and directed.
Those were hugely critically acclaimed and led to his being hired to take charge of a major movie for the first time with Thor: Ragnarok, a wildly inventive step forward for superhero films that grossed almost a billion dollars at the box office and featured genuine comedy mashed together with colorfully retro-inspired special effects. He then showed his range by pivoting to a film with a very different feel, 2019’s Jojo Rabbit, which he also wrote and directed.
The black comedy set in WW2 and starring Scarlett Johansson was a big hit with critics and earned six Oscar nominations, winning Waititi one for ‘Best Screenplay’. He was also drafted in to direct episodes of The Mandalorian for Disney around the same time that fellow director Jordan Peele voiced a character in Toy Story 4 for the animation giant, and it’s Peele who created the film that Waititi believes is the best in the last decade.
He told NPR: “My favourite film of the last 10 years was (Peele’s groundbreaking horror) Get Out. As a filmmaker, I’m very jealous because it’s such a smart idea.”
He continued: “And often, the films these days, there’s no really good idea behind them. It’s just like, I’m going to do a character study, and I’m going to do a film with a divorce. I’m going to do a film about a kid who doesn’t know his dad – which is all my films – but, you know, to have, like, a concept that, oh, these people are body snatching African Americans, and this guy has been, like, basically catfished into this community is just really cool.”
Something of a word-of-mouth hit when first released in 2017, Get Out now regularly tops critics’ polls of the best films made this century, and won Peele his own Oscar for ‘Best Screenplay’ at the following year’s Academy Awards.
A twisting, psychological thriller starring British actor Daniel Kaluuya and Girls actor Allison Williams, it brought in $250m against a budget of just $4m and led to Peele becoming one of the most respected directors in Hollywood, going on to make the equally terrifying Us and the sci-fi Nope, again starring Kaluuya.
After a disappointing reaction in 2022 to the Thor follow up Love and Thunder (although it still did insane numbers at the box office), Waititi has been working as an Executive Producer on the TV adaptation of What we did in the Shadows as well as writing as yet untitled movies for both Star Wars and Flash Gordon.
He’s also completed filming a lead role on an upcoming fantasy called Fing! which tells the story of a pair of librarians trying to assuage their daughter who wants to search for the creature in her favourite books.
