Quentin Tarantino recently dismissed Denis Villeneuve's Dune movies, arguing that he didn't need to see it because he's already watched the 1984 version. Now, Villeneuve has responded, clarifying that his films aren't remakes of the previous film.
"I don't care," Villeneuve said during a talk at Concordia University on November 1 [via Montreal Gazette]. "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. But we are very different human beings."
While Villeneuve is correct, it doesn't resolve Tarantino's issue with the film. Tarantino previously said, "I don't need to see that story again. I don't need to see spice worms. I don't need to see a movie that says the word 'spice' so dramatically."
Tarantino took similar exception with the new version of Ripley. He said, "There's six or seven Ripley books, if you do one again, why are you doing the same one that they've done twice already? I've seen that story twice before, and I didn't really like it in either version, so I'm not really interested in seeing it a third time. If you did another story, that would be interesting enough to give it a shot anyway."
Perhaps Tarantino will be more interested in Villeneuve's upcoming third Dune movie, since that adapts a different book: Frank Herbert's sequel Dune Messiah.