Quentin Tarantino is one of the most beloved film directors of our time, especially for Pulp Fiction (which recently turned 30). The filmmaker is also well known for having strong takes about popular movies lately, such as saying he’d never see more Toy Story movies after the third one and saying he “really, really liked” Joker 2. Tarantino also revealed recently that he’ll never watch Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies, and the director has now responded.
When Quentin Tarantino was on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast last week, the filmmaker shared that he’d yet to see either Dune movies helmed by Villeneuve and wasn’t planning on it because he’d already seen David Lynch’s version from 1984. Tarantino said he “didn’t need to see any more spice worms” and in a broader sense is not interested in remakes. Here’s how Villeneuve reacted:
I don’t care. It’s true. I agree with him that I don’t like this idea of recycling and bringing back old ideas. But where I disagree is that what I did was not a remake. It’s an adaptation of the book. I see this as an original.
The Dune director, who has also made acclaimed films like Arrival, Sicario and Blade Runner 2049 was asked about Quentin Tarantino’s comments while speaking to film students at Concordia University in Montreal (via The Gazette). Villeneuve also said this:
But we are very different human beings.
Villeneuve was respectful toward Quentin Tarantino’s point of view, sharing that he agrees that he’s tired of recycling old ideas, but from his perspective, his Dune movies are not a remake of David Lynch’s Dune film. If Tarantino watched the three movies together, surely he would notice the stark differences between Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s material and Lynch’s. But at the end of the day, Villeneuve doesn’t care what the fellow director thinks, probably because of all the love his versions of the story has provided to audiences and himself as an artist already.
Tarantino’s recent comments also had the director calling out Hulu’s Shōgun and Netflix’s Ripley for being remakes that he’s not interested in either. He shared his point further by saying he doesn’t care “how they do it” or, in Shōgun’s case “take me and put me in ancient Japan in a time machine,” because he’s already seen a version of the story told in one way he’s happy to skip them. Clearly Tarantino is a purist when it comes to original stories, and if he and Villeneuve ever meet, surely there’d be an interesting conversation to be had about their differing beliefs.
The most recent Dune movie, Dune: Part Two, is one of the most critically acclaimed movies of the year and one of its best crowd-pleasers. Even though it was released in March, it remains No. 4 of 2024’s highest-grossing movies at $714 million in box office sales worldwide. Villenueve is currently writing Dune 3 following this success. Despite Quentin Tarantino’s thoughts on the Dune movies, the recent second film is still being hailed as one of the best 2024 movies so far.