Keanu Reeves Made Quentin Tarantino Paranoid About Kill Bill 2 For An Unfortunate Reason
How could Keanu make someone paranoid?
Of the things you expect to hear Keanu Reeves made people feel, “paranoid” isn’t very high on the list. The John Wick star has maintained a reputation for being Hollywood’s nicest nice guy for years; so much so that when he made a movie spawning an entire series of violent films about a professional killer who comes out of retirement to mow down just about anyone who gets in his way, including ultimately having an entire world’s worth of assassins on his trail, and does it all over the death of a puppy, the whole movie-loving Earth collectively said, “yeah, okay, that tracks.” Yet somehow, the Point Break star managed to make maverick writer/director Quentin Tarantino scared about the future of film just by sitting in the same room as Tarantino and watching a movie.
While speaking to Empire back in 2003, Tarantino said he was treating Keanu Reeves and The Fifth Element director Luc Besson to an early screening of Kill Bill: Vol. 1 when he suddenly felt very worried about the future of the follow-up Kill Bill: Vol. 2 as well as about the future of cinema itself. Seeing Reeves apparently reminded Tarantino of the Matrix films, which in turn made him think of the growing prevalence of CGI in the film industry. Tarantino recalled to Empire, “I watched Keanu watching [Kill Bill] and I suddenly felt it. You know, my guys are all real. There’s no computer f—-ng around. I’m sick to death of all that s–t… If i’d wanted all that computer game bull—t, I’d have gone home and stuck my d—k in my Nintendo.” Tarantino went on to warn that CGI was the “death knell of cinema.” He predicted that cinema would “officially be killed” within ten years. Well, it’s been 19 years since he said it, and according to the swimming pools worth of cash Warner Bros. executives are doing backstrokes in after the release of The Batman, it’s likely we can put that prediction in the “didn’t pan out” category.
It’s possible that Tarantino’s paranoia, worry, or whatever you want to call it, was being influenced by his own cinematic taste more than anything else. The film that is arguably the most iconic of Keanu Reeves’ career — 1999’s The Matrix — holds a special, heartbroken place in the filmmaker’s regard. In 2009, Tarantino made a video in which he listed his favorite films released between 1992 and 2009. The Matrix, he said, had once occupied the #2 spot after Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale. However, the sequels The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions “ruined the mythology” for the director, knocking the original out of its near-top spot. “It didn’t obliterate it entirely,” Tarantino said. “It still has to be in my top 20.” It’d be interesting to see where the movie stands now with the release of The Matrix Resurrections.
Keanu Reeves won’t be “all real” for his next film, at least not “all real” the way Tarantino meant in the 2003 interview, but to be fair that’s because the film will be animated. Reeves will voice the Dark Knight himself, Batman, in this year’s animated feature DC League of Super-Pets. Originally slated to come out this May, the film was pushed back to July 29. Sadly, it isn’t the only Reeves movie getting nudged back a bit. The next entry in the actor’s amazing action thriller franchise, John Wick: Chapter 4, was supposed to hit theaters this year, but it’s since been delayed to March 24, 2023.
