Thursday, May 22, 2008

A Question for Quentin Tarantino

With the release of the new Indiana Jones movie (not that I plan to see it), I thought again of my favorite moment in Raiders of the Lost Ark -- the scene when Indy shoots the swordsman instead of dueling him. I love that because it so spectacularly and humorously deflates the generic convention that you never fight an enemy with weapons unlike in kind or power.

I also thought of that scene during the interminable sequence in Kill Bill Volume One when Uma Thurman fights Lucy Liu and her two zillion henchmen. Why doesn't any of them (including Liu, who's watching most of the time as her minions get mowed down) just pull out a gun and shoot her? I was baffled. Post-Raiders, the concept of the sequence makes little sense. Because I honestly think that Spielberg and Lucas didn't simply deflate that particular convention; they killed it. The convention isn't available any more. You would think that a Movie Fan Supreme such as Tarantino would get that.

1 comment:

Tony Ventresca said...

It's a very good point you make. Quentin is waaaay to self-involved and waaaaay to busy masturbating to see anything that obvious.