The movies Quentin Tarantino refuses to watch: “No, no, no, no”
When you consider that Quentin Tarantino is one of the more original filmmakers of his generation, it is perhaps no surprise that there are a few movies he does not need to see again. The famed director behind the game-changing movies Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained has often been a fierce critic of what makes a good picture, and in an interview, he revealed that he has no interest in seeing remakes of movies that have already been released.
Tarantino’s position as a true original is backed up not only by his filmography but also by those who work with him. Jamie Foxx, who starred in Django Unchained, famously called the filmmaker “hip-hop” in an attempt to heap praise on his unquantifiable uniqueness. Elsewhere, Tarantino’s idiosyncratic style has been laboriously studied and revelled in at film schools across the world. It would seem that originality is wholly important to him.
With that in mind, the idea of a cinematic reboot is not something that sits well with Tarantino. Though the director has rarely been afraid to pay direct homage to the movies he has loved over the years within his own films, often making those references painstakingly obvious, he has never taken on an old story and made it his own. Tarantino is a writer as well as a director, and his belief in the sanctity of storytelling has made him what he is today.
This notion does not align too well with the money-making machine of rebooting classic stories that Hollywood seems to be obsessed with right now. Studios across Tinseltown are using their long-held IPs and trying to create new movies from the same story. It has seen countless reboots in the last decade with A Star is Born, The Great Gatsby, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, True Grit, and It all being remade in the last ten years.
During a conversation with Bret Easton Ellis, the author behind American Psycho Tarantino shared his issues with perhaps one of the most notable reboots in recent years: Dune. “I saw [David Lynch’s original adaptation of] Dune a couple of times,” recalled the director. “I don’t need to see that story again. I don’t need to see spice worms. I don’t need to see a movie that says the word ‘spice’ so dramatically.”
Lynch’s 1984 adaptation is largely considered to be one of the director’s worst movies and didn’t come close to capturing the sheer scope of the story at hand. With this, the most recent version, made by Denis Villeneuve, has been largely heralded as a worthwhile remake. But, for Tarantino, it isn’t just the story he doesn’t need to see again, but the very fact that it exists as a retelling of the same narrative in the first place.
“It’s one after another of this remake, and that remake,” he said. “People ask ‘Have you seen Dune?’ ‘Have you seen Ripley?’ ‘Have you seen Shōgun? And I’m like, ‘No, no, no, no.’” Tarantino continued to jibe at the Andrew Scott-led retelling of The Talented Mr Ripley released on Netflix. “There’s six or seven Ripley books: If you do one again, why are you doing the same one that they’ve done twice already? I’ve seen that story twice before, and I didn’t really like it in either version, so I’m not really interested in seeing it a third time. If you did another story, that would be interesting enough to give it a shot anyway.”
There isn’t much Quentin Tarantino won’t sit down to watch. The director is a manic consumer of all things media, and cinema is his preferred poison. Horror, rom-coms, action or otherwise, Tarantino will take his time to watch and give you an appraisal, but don’t, whatever you do, give him a story he’s already seen.
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