Quentin Tarantino blasts The Hunger Games: “They just pillaged Battle Royale!”
‘But damn! It’s just “Battle Royale” for teens!”
He has always liked to share his opinions on cinema, on the films he likes, and those he likes less.
Quentin Tarantino even made a TOP 20 list of the best films of the 21st century, for Bret Easton Ellis’ podcast. The filmmaker revealed his choices ranked from 20th to 11th place: we find the West Side Story by Steven Spielberg (#20), Cabin Fever by Eli Roth (#19), The Passion of Christ by Mel Gibson (#15), Rock Academy by Richard Linklater (#14)… and in 11th position, Battle Royale (#11), the dystopian shocker by Kinji Fukasaku.
A choice that will surprise no one: Tarantino regularly quotes Battle Royale as one of his cult films. Based on the novel by Koushun Takami, this 2000 classic follows a class of middle school students forced to kill each other by a totalitarian Japanese government. And inevitably, the parallel with Hunger Games returns to the table. So much so that for Quentin Tarantino, the saga of Suzanne Collins simply pumped Battle Royale shamelessly.
“I don’t understand how the Japanese writer didn’t sue Suzanne Collins for absolutely everything she owns!” Tarantino blurts out. “They just pillaged the damn book! The book critics, too stupid or too snobby to watch a Japanese movie called ‘Battle Royale,’ never rated it. They talked about it like it was the most original idea they’d ever read. And as soon as the movie critics saw the movie, they were like, ‘What the hell! It’s just ‘Battle Royale’ for teens!'”
Tarantino also talks about how he discovered Battle Royale before everyone: he was in Japan for the location scouting of Kill Bill when Fukasaku, to whom he was close, invites him to a private screening.
“I had no idea what I was going to see. And holy shit… I didn’t even know how to describe this thing. It was crazy.”
A few months later, at the Seattle festival, he attended the first American screening of the film, a midnight screening of which he has burning memories.
“I was waiting for the session knowing exactly what they were going to do. They weren’t ready. And having that knowledge was power.”
The saga Hunger Games debuted in cinema 12 years later. And it continues today, since a new film will soon be released on our screens.
