Quentin Tarantino has made some of the most influential movies of the last 30 years. From the bloody gun duels of Reservoir Dogs to the post-modern fantasia of Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, Tarantino is one of cinema’s distinctive voices. He’s also a very good film critic, and he’s usually pretty good at shining a light on an actor, writer, or director who has been misunderstood or just simply forgotten about.
He’s not perfect, though, and sometimes, he can say something that’s just plain, well, stupid. For instance, last year, he shared his less-than-favorable views on Alfred Hitchcock, whose impressive filmography never impressed Tarantino. In particular, he didn’t like the third acts of the Master of Suspense’s films, going on to criticize specific films like Suspicion and Rear Window.
A story twice told isn’t worth reading (or watching, in this case)
Whatever, Quentin. Recently, the director put his foot in his mouth again in an interview with American Psycho author Brett Easton Ellis’ self-titled podcast, where he was asked if he had seen Denis Villeneuve’s hit 2024 film Dune: Part Two. His response was surprising:
“I saw [David Lynch’s] Dune a couple of times. 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.”
It’s fine to be not a fan of something — I think Dune: Part Two is overrated myself — but to not even watch it because another filmmaker tackled the story before? That’s just wrong. And for those who have seen both versions, they know that Lynch’s and Villeneuve’s are completely different. They tell the same story, but the movies themselves are different experiences. Lynch’s bloated film is crazy and incoherent with its acid-trip visuals and zig-zaggy narrative while Villeneuve’s two movies have an intimate, epic approach that emphasizes author Frank Herbert’s original themes about the dangers of colonialism and deification of one’s leaders.
Ban all remakes? No way!
Tarantino didn’t stop there, though. His bias extends beyond the Dune movies and to remakes in general. According to QT, if a story has been filmed before, it’s not worth watching.
“It’s one after another of this remake, and that remake. People ask ‘Have you seen Ripley? Have you seen Shōgun?’ And I’m like ‘no, no, no, no.’ 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.”
Ooof. I don’t know how a self-professed cinephile can have a view like that, especially in this era. I get Tarantino’s overall point that there are too many remakes, but to combat that by not watching any of them is the wrong approach. After all, Hollywood has been churning out remakes ever since it first began.
The 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz is a remake. So is the 1941 detective mystery The Maltese Falcon. (In fact, that’s the second remake of the same story!) There’s more, of course, like the 1954 version of A Star is Born starring Judy Garland, the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, John Carpenter’s brilliant take on The Thing (which Tarantino is a fan of!), the 2007 redo of the Western 3:10 to Yuma with Christian Bale and Russell Crowe — the list goes on and on.
Some remakes are better than others, of course. I wouldn’t recommend the Keanu Reeves version of The Day The Earth Stood Still over the superb 1951 original. But that’s true for all movies: some work, others don’t. And remakes have value beyond telling the same story. They can showcase the differences between the directors who made them or how each of them reflect the culture and values that produced them. All four Invasion of the Body Snatchers movies — yes, even the awful 2007 Nicole Kidman one — have something interesting to say and should’ve absolutely been made even though they tell the same story of alien pod people quietly invading America.
There’s something about Ripley
And he’s missing out on Ripley. As a fan of Patricia Highsmith’s novel, all three versions — 1960’s Purple Noon, 1999’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, and the 2024 Netflix miniseries — offer wildly different interpretations of the same story, which results in each movie and show having a distinct look and feel from the others.
René Clément’s Purple Noon employed a leisurely pace, and Alain Delon’s stone-faced good looks, to showcase how the lifestyles of the bored and rich are just out of reach for the desperate and poor. Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley showcases sun-drenched Italian vistas as a way to seduce the viewer and make the character’s hidden gay subtext a major defining character trait (and something he ultimately, and tragically, denied). In contrast, Steve Zaillian’s Ripley drained all the color from the character’s world — literally, through Robert Elswit’s crisp black-and-white cinematography — to expose the character’s true nature: He’s a rat, an imposter, who’s all drive with no real purpose.
By making and remaking the same story, these directors found new ways to explore Highsmith’s characters and found unique conclusions that said something different than what came before. Can you imagine if we just got Purple Noon or the silent 1910 version of The Wizard of Oz that didn’t have Garland’s voice, the Technicolor glory of the Yellow Brick Road, or Over the Rainbow? If that’s the cinematic world QT wants to live in, he can have it. As for me, I may just watch Carpenter’s The Thing again and bask in its wondrous ice-cold nihilism.
