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Quentin Tarantino Almost Made a 'Luke Cage' Movie, Says the Netflix Series Does Him W…
Throughout film history, there are the movies that might have been. These days, a lot of those are superhero movies that were almost made by other directors. In fact, there ought to be a new version of Marvel’s comic book What If devoted to comic book movies. One of the issues would have to be devoted to Quentin Tarantino’s Luke Cage.
Last year, Tarantino told Yahoo Movies that he’s a big fan of the Marvel character and had considered doing a Luke Cage movie following Reservoir Dogs. “But I ended up doing Pulp Fiction instead,” he says in the interview. “So I think I might have made the right choice.”
At the time, he hadn’t seen Netflix’s Luke Cage series, which just debuted over the weekend, but Tarantino knew it wasn’t going to be anything like his own take. Here’s why:
“I love the way the character was presented so much in the ’70s. I’m not really that open to a rethinking on who he was. I just think that first issue, that origin issue … was so good, and it was really Marvel’s attempt to try to do a blacksploitation movie vibe as one of their superhero comics. And I thought they nailed it. Absolutely nailed it. So, just take that Issue 1 and put it in script form and do that.”
He stresses: “The Luke Cage: Hero for Hire era, that’s the era.” Netflix’s version is, of course, a rethinking by comparison. It’s set in modern day, partly because it fits into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, specifically to the Defenders-based sub-universe on the small screen. Here’s the original interview:
Back in 2012, Tarantino told Playboy about another superhero movie that might have been, under his direction. “They did get in touch with me in the very early, early, early, early stages of Green Lantern, and a couple of other things,” he says. Try to picture that one, if you can.
Should we be disappointed he never did and surely never will make a superhero movie — not one he doesn’t invent himself, anyway? At least there are the parodies, like this one for Quentin Tarantino’s Suicide Squad:
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