It seems Quentin Tarantino has no interest in watching Denis Villeneuve's Dune movie.
The Oscar winner was recently asked The Bret Easton Ellis podcast if he considered Duna: second part one of the best films of the year, as it was raved about by critics. However, he couldn't answer the question as he hasn't seen the films and doesn't plan to.
“I saw [David Lynch’s] Dune a couple of times. I don't need to see that story again,” Tarantino confessed. “I don't need to see spice worms. I don't need to see a movie that says the word 'spice' so dramatically.”
Tarantino's opinion has nothing to do with Villeneuve personally, he is just tired of Hollywood remakes and wants to watch films with original material.
“It's back-to-back of this remake and that remake,” the Once upon a time in Hollywood explained the director. “People ask if you saw it Dune? Have you seen? Ripley? Have you seen? Shogun? And I say no, no, no, no. There are six or seven Ripley books. If you do one again, why are you doing the same thing they've already done twice? I've already seen that story twice and didn't like it much in either version, so I'm not very interested in seeing it a third time. If I did another story, it would be interesting enough to try anyway.”
He continued: “I saw Shogun in the 80s. I watched all 13 hours. I am fine. I don't need to revisit that story, 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 saw the story.
But it seems like Tarantino is going against the status quo, as he also shared on the podcast that he liked another movie this year: Todd Phillips'. Joker: Folie a Deux. However, the Joker the sequel was a disaster at the box office and among critics.
“I really liked it, I really did. Very. Truly, tremendously, and I went to see it expecting to be impressed by the making of the film. But I thought it would be an intellectual exercise at a distance, that in the end I wouldn't think it worked as a film, but that I would appreciate it for what it is,” he said of the film. “And I'm nihilistic enough to enjoy a movie that doesn't work as a movie. To some extent it's like a big, giant mess. And I didn't find it an intellectual exercise. I was really involved in it. I really liked the musical sequences. I'm really into it. I thought the more banal the songs, the better.”