Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino states he is at war against Star Wars & Marvel. The veteran director is currently enjoying time in the spotlight, with his latest effort, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, having nabbed 10 Oscar nominations and won numerous awards.
For some it’s hard to believe almost 30 years have passed since Tarantino exploded onto the scene with Reservoir Dogs. At the same time, however, the highly regarded and awarded filmmaker’s work has never languished in obscurity, and every single film since Reservoir Dogs has been a high profile release. Through Oscars and a Palm d’Or win for Pulp Fiction that rendered some French cinephiles at the time irate, Tarantino has remained inimitably Tarantino, courting box office hits with an almost unfathomable degree of controversy. Whether facing accusations that his work glorified violence or outright refusing to give the media what they want, the public’s fascination with the 56-year-old filmmaker remains relevant even today. Perhaps this is why his talk of retirement once his directorial resume reaches 10 feature films remains such a widely discussed topic. Die-hard fans are aghast at the notion that they could very soon be losing arguably one of the most intriguing voices in contemporary cinema, while others are simply doubtful that yet another of the director’s numerous claims will actually come true. Either way, people are still talking about Tarantino after all these years.
The latest declaration from the decorated film vet comes courtesy of a recent interview with Deadline. During the discussion, which centers around all things Hollywood and Tarantino rumour-related, the Once Upon A Time director offers his view on the current state of filmmaking in Hollywood and why he feels that a “war for movies” took place in 2019. Tarantino’s opinion is likely to hit home with the likes of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, who made the past year the one where they told the world what they thought of big-budgeted comic book franchises. Said Tarantino:
TARANTINO: When you say, despite the sequels and the Avengers: Endgame and all of that, I actually think a war for movies got played out this last year.
DEADLINE: What do you mean?
TARANTINO: As far as I can see, the commercial product that is owned by the conglomerates, the projects everybody knows about and has in their DNA, whether it be the Marvel Comics, the Star Wars, Godzilla and James Bond, those films never had a better year than last year. It would have been the year that their world domination would have been complete. But it kind of wasn’t. Because of what you said, a lot of original movie comment came out and demanded to be seen, and demanded to be seen at the theaters. That ended up becoming a really, really strong year. I’m really proud to be nominated with the other films that just got nominated. I think when you sum up the year, it’s cinema that doesn’t fall into that blockbuster IP proof status, made its last stand this year.
DEADLINE: Hopefully not its last stand…
TARANTINO: If it hadn’t done it this year, it might have been the last stand for movies like that. This is a really groovy year. To combat something like Avengers: Endgame, which for the month before it came out and the month after, you couldn’t talk about anything else. They tried to do that with this last Star Wars and I don’t think it quite worked, but you couldn’t get on United Airlines without running into all the tie-ins, and even the safety commercial had a Star Wars scene.
While far from altogether condemning Marvel and comic book movies - as did Scorsese, Coppola and other iconic directors - Tarantino’s statements make it clear he feels original cinema has been struggling to keep its head above water. For quite some time now, the tentpole franchise films have dominated the box office and despite previous rumours that Tarantino himself was about to jump into the sea of big budgeted IP’s with a Star Trek film, he has remained dedicated to original content.
Of course, an argument could ostensibly be made that Tarantino has built an entire career on “borrowing” or outright stealing from classic cinema and TV, but overall it’s impossible to state outright that he’s ever been anything but original. And whether or not you agree with his assessment of the current state of cinema, Tarantino has done a great deal to play his part in regenerating interest in long dead genres such as Blaxploitation, grindhouse and the spaghetti western. That’s not something that occurs unless the filmmaker in question truly loves and cares about cinema as a whole.
Source: Deadline