The 2016 movie “too wild” for Quentin Tarantino to even consider directing: “I couldn’t imagine”
If Quentin Tarantino had directed even a tenth of the movies that he’d planned to before abandoning them, then his impending retirement wouldn’t even be a topic of conversation.
Take your pick from a third volume of Kill Bill, Double V Vega, Forty Lashes Less One, Casino Royale, his Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! remake, Killer Crow, or any of the other potential projects he’s touted over the years, and he’d have sailed past the ten-picture barrier a long time ago.
Instead, Tarantino has got it into his head that old guys can’t still be decent filmmakers, and because he doesn’t want to besmirch his legacy by churning out substandard flicks in his dotage, he’s repeatedly made it clear that his next feature will be his last, and then he’s washing his hands of the big screen.
Regardless of their profession, it’s never a wise idea for anyone to obsess over how they want to be remembered by future generations, but the two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter remains convinced that the best way to safeguard his cinematic legacy is to give it a finite ending point.
It’s probably emboldened him that he keeps telling anyone who’ll listen that we’re currently living through the worst era for movies that he can remember, and one of its most prominent scourges is the comic book adaptation. As a kid, Tarantino loved comic books, but in the 21st century, he’s one of many big-name auteurs who’ve blasted the stranglehold they’ve exerted on the mainstream.
He’s flirted with a few of them himself, revealing that he’d been offered Green Lantern at one stage, turned down Men in Black, pitched an adaptation of Silver Surfer in the 1990s, spent a while wrestling with whether or not to helm David Webb Peoples’ Sgt Rock script, and seriously considered making a Luke Cage film with Laurence Fishburne in the lead.
For someone who ostensibly hates modern-day superhero cinema, he’s been linked with a few of them. However, there was one long-gestating title that passed through the hands of several names before finally making it to cinemas in 2016 that Tarantino admitted he wouldn’t have dared to tackle.
“I was really into Sgt Fury and his Howling Commandos, the Marvel version of Sgt Rock,” he offered. “I imagined doing a movie version when I was a kid, and I do a shot at Sgt Fury in True Romance. I was always attracted to comic books that read more like movies, as opposed to the more fantastical comics.”
As a result, “I couldn’t imagine making a movie out of Doctor Strange,” he pointed out. “That was too wild.” Wes Craven disagreed, as did Guillermo del Toro, both of whom signed on before dropping out when it was trying to escape development hell. Eventually, Scott Derrickson brought Marvel’s resident sorcerer to the screen, with Sam Raimi directing the sequel, and thanks to their shared background in horror, they didn’t find the title character “too wild” for the big screen, unlike Tarantino.
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