Quentin Tarantino: “This is the Worst Time For Movies Ever,” Blames Political Correctness

In a recent episode of his and Roger Avary’s The Video Archives Podcast, Quentin Tarantino took aim at the films of today, as well as those from the 1980s.

“Even though the ‘80s was the time that I probably saw more movies in my life than ever – at least as far as going out to the movies was concerned – I do feel that ‘80s cinema is, along with the ‘50s, the worst era in Hollywood history,” Tarantino recently said on his “The Video Archives Podcast” (via NME). “Matched only by now, matched only by the current era!” 

Tarantino compared today’s lacklustre cinema to the political correctness and set of rules of the ‘50s and ‘80s; The restriction of creativity and cinematic innovation, the requirement to stick to the status quo prevented the most important filmmakers from the 1950s from properly flourishing in the industry. 

“In the ‘80s, it was self-censorship. It was just the rise of political correctness after the 70s where everything was just ‘go as far as you can,’ then all of a sudden everything got watered down. Everything was cynical, then all of a sudden in the ‘80s all that was washed away and the most important thing about a character was that they were likeable…Every character had to be likeable and the audience had to like everybody”.

In a podcast interview with Joe Rogan, he elaborated further on why movies are so dire today:

“There has become a thing that’s gone on [today], especially in this last year, where ideology is more important than art. Ideology trumps art. Ideology trumps individual effort. Ideology trumps good. Ideology trumps entertaining.”

Yes, the blatant and explicit politicizing of movies has become the norm. There’s a sense that films, and studios, are starting to talk down to the viewer with forced-upon political lessons. Some movies are being used as platforms to promote personal political views, almost veering into borderline indoctrination.

There’s also now a certain way to make a movie, a set of unwritten rules that have to conform to social justice. If you break any of those rules then your movie will be called out on social media for various reasons such as racism, sexism, homophobia, but, really, just any kind of discrimination that can be nitpicked from within the film.