as eccentric an ever, but they’re not so much cult favorites anymore—they’re blockbusters. And while it’d be nice to chalk up Tarantino’s acclaim to an evolving, maturing palate of the movie-going populace, it’s really more of the opposite: Audiences haven’t grown to like Tarantino as much as Tarantino’s grown to resemble what audiences like. How did this happen? Looking back at Tarantino’s earlier work, it’s clear they were ahead of their time. His first major film, Reservoir Dogs, is a bloody gangster film with a bleak world view and bad men at its center. Violent films have always always a staple of the entertainment industry, but there was an unapologetic glee in the director’s early work that was unprecedented. I would like to think Tarantino had a big hand in ushering in the new age of ultra-violent, selfaware films, but he of course wasn’t the main factor. He was more of a product of the
times. With his films, it’s easy to tell how much he’s been influenced by the past. The old, classic directors were great because they blazed their own paths. The 70’s brought the first wave of independent filmmakers that worked to develop their own flourishes and style. Out of this era came Spielberg, Scorsese, Kubrick, etc. They weren’t influenced by anything other than their own artistic vision. More modern directors are different.
They all grew up watching those
iconic old-school directors, and as a
result, contemporary filmmakers got
to jumpstart their careers off their predecessors’ shoulders. All the great directors now are ones that were film
fanatics growing up and turned their passion into their own styles of art. Christopher Nolan, Alejandro González
Iñárritu, Wes Anderson and of course Quentin Tarantino are film loversturned-film makers. There’s such a
strong sense of admiration for the past
in all of their films, but it’s executed in extremely creative ways. We want see
these directors’ movies because they’ve proven time and again that their style
works. And perhaps more than any other director, Tarantino’s name carries a tremendous amount of weight. We seem inclined to see anything with Tarantino’s name on it because he gives us what we really want: Some sort of crime, original characters, quick-witted dialogue and (usually) a big, bloody finale. He’s violent, but somehow he makes us not only condone the violence, but root for it. I can still see the crowd going wild after Jaime Fox shot and killed Miss Laura with his pistol at the end Django Unchained. That a lone bullet somehow sent her flying back into another room in a completely exaggerated fashion only upped the audience enjoyment. And I remember how amped up I was after watching Brad Pitt’s Basterds burn down a movie theater full of Nazis and riddle Hitler’s face with bullets until it was a gooey mess.