You either love Quentin Tarantino or you think there’s something wrong with him, and there is a lot of grey area in-between since plenty of people like his movies but can’t stand the man for their own reasons. Throughout the years it’s been difficult if not impossible to deny that he’s given audiences what they want to see even if there are plenty of detractors in the wings, especially those that question his need to show so much violence, language, and disturbing content in his movies. His defense for a long time has been that it’s what people want to see and he’s not entirely wrong since people come to the movies to see a story and stories with an intense amount of drama and conflict tend to sell better than those without. It’s very true that Tarantino’s movies have been awash in buckets of fake blood from time to time but there’s also been a story to go along with the red river so as to balance things out just a bit. Whether he’s a genius or not is kind of subjective since some people laud the man as a visionary that has some type of vision that others just can’t see while others can pick out just where he’s getting his scenes from and how he’s setting things up.
He’s a student of pop culture, there’s no getting away from that and there’s no denying it since much of what he’s done with his movies is an amalgamation of pop culture as its existed throughout different decades, as well as the rewriting of history to serve his purposes. Kirstin Fawcett of Mental Floss can give you more on this. There’s nothing wrong with this since he’s telling a story and he is entertaining the people in his own way. Calling him a genius is a bit of a stretch and rolling things back to make sure that he’s not down to just one more movie before retirement sounds like a rather cheap move, but all in all he’s still a skilled and very talented filmmaker with a lot of skill for telling a tall tale. How many people can honestly admit that they didn’t look up WWII facts after Inglorious Basterds? How many people looked into the history of the old west after Django? Try as you might you’ll find that history is going to contradict just about every filmmaker out there since the story often deviates from reality in a big, big way, but during the telling of the story it doesn’t matter.
You can idolize Tarantino or you can despise the man but the truth is that he does tell a story that people want to hear and he does tell it in a convincing enough way that people tend to flock to each one of his movies to see what else he has to offer. V. Renee of No Film School has something further to say on this matter. His name has become one of the most popular in the theaters in the past couple of decades that simply uttering the idea that another Tarantino movie could be coming out is enough to loosen wallets and get hearts racing as theaters anticipate the rush to come. He has managed to create a couple of very iconic movies that are still a part of the public consciousness while several of his other movies are cult classics that a lot of people will defend until they’re blue in the face. There’s something about the quality of his storytelling that sucks people in and makes them believe that he’s a guru of some type that is showing them a different side of pop culture that they haven’t seen before, when in truth he’s a very skilled entertainer that knows how to capture people’s attention with a good fable. That’s what any good director or writer can do, gain your attention and, if they’re good enough, keep it by feeding those willing to listen one story after another. It’s easy to give the man credit for this since he’s done a good deal of it with his own talent and his own grit. Where he came from wasn’t the biggest deal after a while, it’s the fact that he was able to keep up the intensity and keep people coming back. Some of his movie might not have been seen as great as others, but they’ve still helped to cement his legacy thus far since at this time there’s no way that he won’t go down as one of the greatest directors in history.
There might still be people that will argue with this and it’d be a surprise if there weren’t. He’s been a rather off-putting individual throughout a good deal of his career and despite his talent he does come off as something of a jerk now and then depending on how he’s being presented. But like it or not that skill has managed to put him as close to the top of the business as he can be, and that’s where people are going to remember him.
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