Tarantino Claims West Side Story Beats Every Scorsese Film This Century

Quentin Tarantino has never met a hot take he didn’t want to marry. But this one—this one lands differently.

While unveiling his 20 best films of the 21st century on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, Tarantino dropped a comparison that’s been rattling around film circles ever since: Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story is more exciting than anything Martin Scorsese has made this century. Not a specific Scorsese film. Anything. The entire 25-year catalogue dismissed in a single sentence.

What Tarantino Actually Said About West Side Story vs Scorsese

The full context matters here. Tarantino praised Spielberg’s 2021 remake as the film that “re-energized” the director, calling it proof that “Steven shows he still has it.” Fair enough—late-career revitalization is a legitimate discussion. But then came the haymaker: “I don’t think Scorsese has made a film this exciting [this century].”

Exciting. That word choice is doing a lot of heavy lifting, and I suspect Tarantino knows it.

He acknowledged that most of Spielberg’s output over the last 25 years didn’t work for him. Munich got mentioned as a possible contender—Bret Easton Ellis called it a “masterpiece”—but the broader implication stands: Tarantino sees West Side Story as a singular achievement that overshadows one of cinema’s most decorated living directors.

The list itself veers wildly from highbrow to lowbrow, including everything from Jackass: The Movie to Cabin Fever to The Passion of the Christ. Only one film per director was allowed. Numbers 11-20 dropped earlier this week, with the rest of the list set to debut on the podcast.

The Problem With the Tarantino Scorsese Comparison

I’ll confess something: I genuinely love parts of Spielberg’s West Side Story. The opening drone shot across Lincoln Center. The “America” sequence. Rachel Zegler‘s voice, pure as cathedral bells echoing through a nearly empty theater during a Tuesday matinee screening I still remember—the velvet seats, the stale popcorn smell, the strange sadness of watching a musical mostly alone.

But here’s where the Tarantino claim falls apart for me, and maybe for a lot of people: Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler have zero chemistry. None. The film simply cannot work if its central romance feels like two actors who met that morning and are still reading off cue cards emotionally. Beautiful shots and staging cannot carry a love story that doesn’t generate heat.

And against that, we’re supposed to believe The Wolf of Wall Street doesn’t exist? The Departed? Hell, even Killers of the Flower Moon, which runs three and a half hours and still manages more electricity than most action films? The suggestion that Scorsese’s entire 21st-century output—Gangs of New York, Hugo, Silence, The Irishman—gets eclipsed by a well-mounted musical remake feels less like criticism and more like provocation for its own sake.

Why Tarantino’s West Side Story Take Reveals His Blind Spots

There’s a version of this argument I can almost understand. Tarantino has been championing Spielberg’s West Side Story for years, saying it “should have won the Oscar” for Best Picture. He sees something in the pure filmmaking craft—the camera movement, the staging, the technical ambition—that registers as more viscerally exciting than Scorsese’s increasingly meditative late work.

But here’s where I argue with myself: is Tarantino using “exciting” as a proxy for something else entirely? Scorsese’s 21st-century films trend older, slower, more interested in mortality and regret than in kinetic thrills. The Irishman is a three-and-a-half-hour elegy about men who wasted their lives on violence. Silence is a grueling meditation on faith under persecution. These aren’t meant to be exciting in the way a musical number is exciting.

So maybe Tarantino isn’t wrong so much as he’s judging apples against oranges and declaring the apple inferior because it’s not sweet enough.

Or maybe he’s just trolling. He does that. The man put Jackass: The Movie on a best-of-century list. He knows exactly what he’s doing.

The Spielberg Films Tarantino Overlooked

The narrow focus on West Side Story also raises questions about Spielberg’s own filmography. Munich got a mention, but what about A.I. Artificial Intelligence—Kubrick’s unfinished dream filtered through Spielberg’s sentiment? Minority Report, which plays like Philip K. Dick by way of Hitchcock? Catch Me If You Can, light as air and twice as entertaining?

Bridge of Spies remains criminally underrated. And the first two-thirds of War of the Worlds—before the ending collapses—is as exciting as anything Spielberg has made in decades. Tom Cruise running through alien-devastated landscapes, the sound design alone rattling your bones.

If Tarantino wanted to argue Spielberg over Scorsese this century, he had options. That he chose the one with the chemistry problem says something about what he values: pure cinema over narrative cohesion, formal execution over emotional truth.

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Look, Tarantino’s lists are designed to start arguments. That’s the point. The man operates like a film professor who knows exactly which statements will generate the most heated office-hours debates.

But dismissing Scorsese’s entire 21st-century catalogue—work that includes multiple films regularly cited as modern masterpieces—for a remake that couldn’t sell its central romance? That’s not iconoclasm. That’s just wrong. Beautifully wrong, perhaps. Confidently wrong. But wrong nonetheless.

Then again, I’m the same person who thinks Minority Report outclasses most of Spielberg’s recent output, so maybe all our blind spots are just differently shaped. If nothing else, Tarantino keeps us honest about our own assumptions—even when we spend the whole argument shaking our heads.

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Why This Debate Matters for Film Criticism

• Tarantino prioritizes visceral excitement over emotional depth. His focus on West Side Story‘s formal craft while ignoring its chemistry problems reveals a critic who values pure cinema technique above narrative cohesion.
• Scorsese’s late-period films resist easy excitement. Works like Silence and The Irishman prioritize reflection over kinetic energy—making Tarantino’s comparison potentially category error rather than legitimate critique.
• Spielberg’s century has more contenders than acknowledged. Munich, Minority Report, and War of the Worlds all offer stronger cases for “exciting” Spielberg filmmaking than a romance that couldn’t generate heat.
• Hot takes fuel the discourse machine. Whether sincere or strategic, Tarantino’s Scorsese dismissal generates exactly the arguments that keep film criticism alive and contentious.

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