Quentin Tarantino Names a Director He Believes Is Overrated

Quentin Tarantino is a filmmaker who built his career on a massive foundation of movie knowledge, ranging from old Hollywood hits to weird, forgotten B-movies. You can see this mix of styles in everything he makes, as he jumps from gritty crime stories to martial arts action and westerns.

Even though he takes a lot from the directors he loves, he has a very specific style that you can recognize almost immediately. Back in the early 2010s, he showed just how much he loves westerns by making Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight one after the other.

He even named the first one after a 1966 movie by Sergio Corbucci and brought in the original star, Franco Nero, for a quick cameo. Tarantino hasn’t been shy about listing his favorites in the genre either, noting that his top three choices are Rio Bravo, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and One-Eyed Jacks.

While he clearly worships directors like Sergio Leone, there is one legendary filmmaker he absolutely cannot stand. Most people would assume he likes John Ford, the man behind classics like The Searchers and Stagecoach, but that is definitely not the case.

In an old interview with Henry Louis Gates, Tarantino made it clear that he finds Ford’s work to be highly overrated and went as far as to say, To say the least, I hate him. His anger toward Ford comes from how the director portrayed Native Americans and the messages his movies sent about humanity.

Tarantino criticized the way Ford’s films treated certain groups like faceless Indians, whom he killed like zombies. He argued that these old movies pushed a very specific, narrow idea of whose lives actually mattered. He even went after Ford’s famous visual style, saying that Ford’s photography has always been overrated in my estimation.

As of this year, the director is keeping fans on their toes after his surprising decision to scrap his tenth movie, The Movie Critic. While that project is officially dead, he has shifted his focus to a massive new production titled The Adventures of Cliff Booth.

Written by Tarantino and directed by David Fincher, the film is a high-budget period drama for Netflix that serves as a sequel to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Brad Pitt is back to play the title character, and the movie wrapped filming in January for a release later this year.

Beyond the big screen, Tarantino is also preparing to make his debut in London’s West End. He recently moved his family to the UK to begin rehearsals for his first-ever stage play, which he wrote and plans to oversee personally throughout the year.

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