While he’s an encyclopedia of television and cinema of the past, Tarantino has a limit to how many times he can watch an IP.
Quentin Tarantino recently appeared on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, where he is sharing his hot takes on some of the more recent projects that have been released. He praised Joaquin Phoenix’s performance from Joker: Folie à Deux, saying that he gave “one of the best performances I’ve ever seen in my life.” He also said, “I really, really liked it, really. A lot. Like, tremendously, and I went to see it expecting to be impressed by the filmmaking. But I thought it was going to be an arms-length, intellectual exercise that ultimately I wouldn’t think worked like a movie, but that I would appreciate it for what it is.”
World of Reel now reports on Tarantino’s firm stance on watching movies and TV shows that have been remade from past works, including Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune films. The Pulp Fiction director explains, “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.”
He, then, continues in a rant about other works that are remade into modern projects, “It’s one after another of this remake, and that remake. People ask ‘Have you seen Dune?’ ‘Have you seen ‘Ripley?’ ‘Have you seen Shogun?’ 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.”
As for Shōgun, which was an Emmy darling this year, Tarantino expounded, “I saw Shōgun in the ‘80s. I watched all 13 hours. I’m good. I don’t need to see that story again, I don’t care how they do it. I don’t care if they take me and put me in ancient Japan in a time machine. I don’t care, I’ve seen the story.”