If you are like me and therefore chronically online, then you might have caught sight of an Austin Butler interview clip making the rounds all over social media. Going semi-viral, even, with everything Dune-related holding the current pop culture scene in a chokehold.
The clip comes from a longer TikTok video in which French basketball player and social media personality Étienne Ça—known on the Internet as daetienne—asks the members of the Dune: Part Two cast what their favorite movies were when they were kids. Timothée Chalamet says that it was Monsters Inc., while Léa Seydoux mentions a German-Czech film whose title was translated into English as Three Wishes for Cinderella.
And then there’s Austin Butler, who confidently says that his favorite movie as a kid was the iconic 1966 spaghetti western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, directed by Sergio Leone. It’s not even the first time Butler mentioned this classic as a longtime favorite—he did so in a February interview with Esquire, where he credited his father with showing him that particular movie along with other classics and shaping his taste in cinema.
But apparently, this short interview clip was enough to unleash the great machine of Discourse™.
Several replies were from people accusing Butler of being pretentious by mentioning such an old movie that is not exactly intended for children. Comments ranged from “just say you like an animated film and go” to “what could a kid even understand of such a complex movie?”
It’s not the first time a sentiment like this has popped up; it’s a frequent response after someone involved in the movie industry mentions films that aren’t necessarily considered popular. You’ll find comments like the one in response to Butler’s answer under pretty much all Letterboxd interviews asking this actor or that director what their famous four faves are.
And to be honest, this sentiment is kind of worrying. You might think it’s a stretch to mention anti-intellectualism in an article about a celeb interview, but it’s a trend that is definitely rising—a too-frequent reaction to celebrating anything that isn’t mainstream, or from a franchise, or made in the United States.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Star Wars as much as the next girl and I used to also really like the Marvel Cinematic Universe before it devolved into a pile of board meetings put to screen. (Not that Star Wars isn’t also that at times but I’m such a galaxy far, far away girl that I’ll always forgive it more easily than anything else.) But really loving a cinematic franchise shouldn’t mean never branching out into other genres or other movie industries or completely shutting off your curiosity so much so that anyone mentioning a movie that isn’t from some company under the great shadow of the Mouse is immediately accused of being snobbish.
Then there’s the issue of watching more complex movies as a child. Sure, a five-year-old kid is not probably going to get all there is to get about The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’s message and themes but they’re still going to enjoy the action scenes and the cool setting—and when they watch it again as an adult they’ll actually get those themes that they might not have completely understood when they were younger.
I watched dozens of movies that were not necessarily meant for children with my parents when I was growing up—I did not get all the technicalities of Sean Connery’s James Bond movies or the dark humor behind Gabriele Salvatores’s Mediterraneo or even the nuances of Titanic’s story back then, but I still enjoy them greatly and I still did when I returned to them after some years.
All this to say, let’s stop dunking on “old movies” and on those who like them just because. Sure, you don’t have to necessarily enjoy them and you can very much still consider yourself a fan of cinema—because I’m also not the greatest fan of the whole “you can’t call yourself a lover of movies if you don’t worship at the altar of X, Y and Z”. But is it not better to dislike something after you’ve actually given it a chance?
(featured image: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)
