Here is a real thing that is happening: David Fincher is going to direct a sequel to Quentin Tarantino’s bloated puff piece of seventies filmmaking, Once Upon in Hollywood.
Don’t worry, I also thought it was an April Fools joke. So, as one of the few people that fall into the territory of loving David Fincher, liking (but not loving, and sometimes hating) Tarantino, and loathing Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, I have some thoughts.
Apart from Kill Bill, which was concieved as one story and counts as one film, Tarantino movies don’t get sequels. So why does Once Upon a Time in Hollywood get this special treatment? Not for artistic reasons – don’t kid yourselves, it’s because Brad Pitt won an Oscar for the first film. But, more importantly, he needs a hit as production costs for his F1 movie at Apple have made it impossible for that film to be anything other than a budgetary flop. There’s also the fact that Tarantino keeps pushing back or cancelling his tenth and purportedly final film, and he certainly doesn’t want it to be a sequel that could damage the reputation of the original. He’s done this before: giving scripts to Tony Scott and Oliver Stone and even though they made them into classic movies, Tarantino still criticizes them over thirty years later.
This puts David Fincher in a strange position. He’s no stranger to adaptations – Fight Club, Zodiac, The Social Network, and Gone Girl are all based on bestsellers – but apart from the worst experience of his creative life in Alien 3, he has never continued someone else’s story. I get why Pitt wants him (this may be all Brad Pitt’s fault) – after all, Fincher has given him three out of the five best roles of his career, and Fincher’s deal with Netflix (still trying to divest themselves of their starfucker reputation) means that the whole thing will be in production this year.
Put simply, Fincher is too good for this. He’s already skewered an earlier era of Hollywood with the criminally underrated Mank, and he’s dissected the culture of an American decade with Zodiac. But, despite that, the real issue is that David Fincher and Quentin Tarantino are completely different artists. Fincher is the expert snake oil salesman who makes taut thrillers and off-kilter period pieces, while smuggling in some of the most horrifying images and ideas in mainstream cinema. Tarantino…really likes movies, especially his own.
Okay, too harsh, but what is unavoidable is the interconnectedness of his work. It should be Tarantino or no one at all. You wouldn’t ask David Lynch or David Cronenberg to direct Star Wars (fun fact, they both said no to Return of the Jedi – meaning we were spared the mutant Ewok babies). If Pitt and Fincher screw this, up you better believe the whole world is going to hear that shitfit.
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By Kevin Boyle
Header Image: Youtube
No But Listen 