Paul Thomas Anderson named the Oblivion video as one of his greatest influences

Haven't seen Prisoners and Sicario (which seem to be some of his worst-reviewed movies, although pretty successful at the box office) or anything he did before 2009, but between Polytechnique, Incendies, Enemy, Arrival and Blade Runner, I'd say he is consistently a pretty good, not great director and he's also getting less good over time. The ones he did in Canada in 2009-2013 (including Enemy, shot before Prisoners) were better than the more recent US ones. Arrival was still good but BR2049 is barely above mediocre, benefiting from exceeding low expectations of a decades-later sequel but still not bringing anything much to the table. I wouldn't say he's a visionary, he does ok with strong, focused scripts written by others. That makes adapting a diffuse project like Dune a challenge.

PTA isn't a director I like as much as some people, but he does have a distinct vision at least (not that it would be the right one for Dune, though). PTA has elements of Altman, Kubrick, Welles, Scorsese, even Tarantino, but over time he has developed his own style mixing his influences into something distinct. I can't say the same for Villeneuve. He is more of a hack, especially since 2013, each of his projects imitating one or two existing films in a very obvious way. Enemy is Cronenberg's Crash covered by Game and Fight Club-era Fincher. Arrival is Close Encounters covered by Inception and Interstellar-era Nolan. What will his Dune be? I hope it's something crazy like Malick's New World covered by Total Recall-era Verhoeven, but I can't say my expectations are high.

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