There is much debate over what Quentin Tarantino’s tenth and final film will entail, who will star, and whether it really will be his last film. A few years ago, Tarantino stated that he will be done with the film industry after ten films, and he counts the two Kill Bill films as one because they were shot as one. In early July of 2019, he reminded fans of his plan to make only ten films. Many question whether he will actually go through with this plan because he is a critically-acclaimed director and he would be missing out on a lot of money, but many close to the director say that he is very serious about his plan. It makes sense that he does not want the opportunity to dilute his amazing line of films by continuing to make movies until his later years in life, possibly ruining his reputation of consistently good films. He would be going out on the top of his game, unlike some legendary athletes, who retire after somewhat tainting their illustrious career. However, the people close to him believe he will never stop writing, and that he will write novels and write scripts for television shows because he always wants to create. I will be discussing the theories and rumors to the plot of his tenth and final film.

A Horror Film

During an interview with The Independent, Tarantino said, “If I come up with a terrific horror film story, I will do that as my tenth film. I love horror movies. I would love to do a horror film.” This would be his first time anywhere near a horror film, besides a horror/thriller-like sequence during Once Upon a Time in Hollywood where Brad Pitt’s character is at the Manson family’s ranch. The tension is straight out of a thriller film. I can see Tarantino making a film like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or something in that type of realm. My favorite director, Wes Anderson, has also rumored that he is interested in making a horror film.

An R-Rated Star Trek film

This was near confirmed at one point when he read a script that he wanted to add his Tarantino-ness to and during press for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, he said that after the press tour, he would return to the possibility. More recently however, Tarantino said in early 2020 that he is probably not going to direct the film, but it may have a Tarantino script or may be produced by him. He might want his last outing as a director to be fully original.

A Sequel to One of His Nine films

There is talks of a Kill Bill Vol. 3, a Django Unchained 2, a spinoff to Inglourious Basterds, a revisit to Reservoir Dogs, a prequel to Pulp Fiction, or another adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel like Jackie Brown. I feel the least confident in these being possibilities because if it turns out bad, they could possibly ruin the continuity of the other films. In my opinion, the ones he will not go near are a revisit to Reservoir Dogs or a prequel to Pulp Fiction, since these are his two most classic and revered films.

Once Upon A Time in Hollywood… follows 1950s television actor, Rick Dalton, portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio, as he begins to realize that his career is coming to an end in this new age of Hollywood, that of the 1960s. Dalton has a stunt double, Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth, who acts as his chauffeur because Dalton has been out of work recently. Their next-door neighbors are the infamous Sharon Tate and Roman Palanski, budding female actress and critically acclaimed director, respectively. Dalton wants to befriend them, in order to give a boost to his declining career. There is a background threat of Charles Manson, leader of the Manson family, a group of people who murdered Sharon Tate and several others.

This film is the quintessential Tarantino film, dubbed by him as his magnum opus. He always wanted the project to be called Once Upon A Time in Hollywood…, but it was originally supposed to be a novel for the first five years of writing. The opening scene was originally written as a one-act play. He was considering it as a screenplay, but this process made him create a much richer atmosphere to live in because it gave more background than a typical screenplay. He began writing the film after meeting an actor who had the same stunt double for 20 years, and so he began with the character of Cliff Booth, giving him an extensive background. This amount of development is what led to Brad Pitt’s oscar-winning performance. After writing this massive background behind a supporting character, he decided they should be next-door neighbors to Sharon Tate, and the first portion of the actual story that he wrote was the ending. Tarantino actually wrote five full episodes of the fictional television series, Bounty Law, that Dalton had been a star of earlier in his career and he is considering turning these into a television miniseries.

Some of you may know, Tarantino has a long history with Harvey Weinstien and the Weinstein Company, as they are the ones who discovered Tarantino and gave the budget for his first feature-film. Every single Tarantino film had been funded by The Weinstein Company, but as the sexual assault allegations came out, Tarantino dropped Harvey and the Weinstein company and found another distributor for his film. Samuel L. Jackson, a frequent collaborator, was in talks for a major role, along with Tom Cruise, but neither actor appeared in the film. The movie is the quintessential Tarantino film because it is a fairy tale set in 1960s Hollywood, the age in which Tarantino draws upon for most of his film techniques and the music he puts in his films. This era of Hollywood is his favorite, and most people attribute the murders of Sharon Tate to why the golden era of Hollywood ended and brought in the gritty era of Hollywood. When he alters history with his story, this era of Hollywood lives on, creating the alternate universe in which Tarantino films live in.

In the Wild West, the bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren, portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson, hitches a ride with fellow bounty John Ruth, who has a fugitive handcuffed to him. Warren is transporting three dead bounties and Ruth, portrayed by Kurt Russel, has the female fugitive Daisy Domergue. On their way to the town of Red Rock, they encounter the new sheriff of Red Rock, who asks for a ride to town. However, an extreme blizzard causes them to seek refuge in Minnie’s Haberdashery. They are met by Señor Bob, Oswaldo Mobray, Joe Gage, and Sanford Smithers. Ruth disarms everyone but Warren because he is suspicious of them all. They are the hateful eight, stuck in a haberdashery during a blizzard.

The Hateful Eight began as a sequel to Quentin Tarantino’s previous work, Django Unchained. In November of 2013, Tarantino began writing it as a novel, titled Django in White Hell, but later realized it should stand alone and called it, The Hateful Eight. The production of the film was delayed because the script had leaked online and he once again considered rewriting it as a novel, now that the script had been released. Tarantino alleges he had given the script to only a few, including Bruce Dern, Tim Roth, and Michael Madsen, all frequent collaborators and friends of Tarantino. As a result, he rewrote the script with two more alternate endings. During the filming of a scene where Kurt Russel’s character destroys a guitar, a prop guitar was supposed to have replaces the antique 1870s guitar that was lent to the production by a museum, and instead it remained on set and was accidentally destroyed by Kurt Russel. Everyone but Kurt Russel knew that it was the real guitar, so everyone’s reaction in the scene is genuine. The museum no longer lends props to film productions.

Tarantino had his frequent cinematographer, Robert Richardson, shoot it in 65 mm film and eventually convert it to 70 mm film and release it in select cities on Christmas Day in 2015. The film would release everywhere else the following week. The use of 70 mm film creates a very wide aspect ratio, which is reminiscent of the westerns that Tarantino wanted to pay homage to. This is also the first Tarantino film to have it’s own original score, because he usually uses old film scores in his films, but he hired Ennio Morricone, a famous composer for classic Western films.

 

In 1858, a group of shackled slaves are being transported on foot, when Dr. King Schultz, portrayed by Christoph Waltz, stops the group and attempts to buy Django from the group of slaves. Django, portrayed by Jamie Foxx, had already been separated from his wife Broomhilda von Shaft, who is a house slave that can speak English and German. Schultz is a German dentist who turned into a bounty hunter. He buys Django because Django has information on three of his bounties and Schultz has no interest in owning a slave, it was merely to free Django in order to get help from him. The brothers overseeing the slaves denies Schultz’ request to buy Django, so he kills one and injures the other before letting all of the slaves free, who brutally beat the injured brother. Django and Schultz quickly find and kill the three Brittle Brothers, who were the bounties Schultz was after. Django becomes Schultz apprentice and Schultz promises him they will find Django’s wife, Broomhilda, who is owned by Calvin J. Candie, owner of the Candyland Plantation.

This film is reminiscent of a spaghetti western, which were westerns made by Italian directors in the 1960s and 1970s. Quentin Tarantino was writing a book about Sergio Corbucci, famous Italian director of spaghetti westerns, when he realized Corbucci made westerns, but incorporated anti-fascist sentiments as themes; Tarantino wanted to blend the exposé of America’s dark racial past with his favorite genre, spaghetti westerns. The film was completed in 2011 and was originally supposed to have a cross over with RZA’s The Man with the Iron Fists, which was pitched by Tarantino to RZA, a member of the rap group Wu-Tang Clan and frequent collaborator of Tarantino. Will Smith had been considered for the role of Django, but turned it down because he said it was not the lead of the film. Jonah Hill and Sacha Baron Cohen were offered minor roles, but they both had scheduling conflicts, but Hill ended up having a cameo as a Ku Klux Klan member in the film.

As always, Tarantino has many inspirations and influences that haunt his mind as he develops a film. Corbucci, the director Tarantino wrote a book on, had a film titled Django, which served as the inspiration for the characters name. Two other films inspired the “unchained” portion of Django Unchained, which were Hercules Unchained and Angel Unchained. The actor from Sergio Corbucci’s Django had a cameo in Django Unchained.

Inglourious Basterds is the sixth feature-film from Quentin Tarantino. It is one of his several films that provide an alternate history for major historical events and this story follows World War II and the Holocaust. There are five chapters in Inglourious Basterds, which are “Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France”, “Inglorious Basterds”, “German Night in Paris”, “Operation Kino”, and “Revenge of the Giant Face”. In the first chapter, “Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France”, actor Christoph Waltz portrays SS-Standartenführer Hans Landa, who interrogates a French farmer about whether he is hiding a Jewish family in his house. In one of the best scenes that I have ever seen, the farmer admits that he is hiding a jewish family in order to protect his own family from the Nazis. Landa orders his soldiers to shoot through the floorboards, killing every member of the Jewish family except for one girl, who Landa lets run away. In the remaining chapters, Lieutenant Aldo Raine recruits a group of Jewish-American soldiers for a paramilitary group called The Basterds, which instills fear among the German soldiers by killing and scalping them. The Jewish daughter who ran away ends up owning a cinema under a different name and identity. She meets Frederick Zoller, a war hero and actor, and he convinces Joseph Goebbels to have the premiere for a new Nazi propraganda film at her cinema. Of course, the head of security is Hans Landa, the officer who ordered her entire family to be murdered. I won’t spoil the rest of the film.

Tarantino spent over a decade writing the script for Inglourious Basterds because he became obsessed with the story and wanted to perfect it; he also could not determine the right ending for the film. In 2002, he decided to film Kill Bill instead of Inglourious Basterds because there were many World War II films being produced at the time. He continued to write the screenplay and even at one point thought he would make it into a mini-series, but ultimately chose to cut down the screenplay in order to make it into a feature-film. As always, Tarantino has influences and inspirations from other films that he works into his films. The title is inspired by the English version of the Italian film The Inglourious Bastards. He originally wanted Leonardo DiCaprio for Hans Landa, but decided to go with a native German speaker, Christoph Waltz.

Three friends, Arlene, Shanna and Julia travel to a bar in Austin, Texas. Julia is a DJ and she made an announcement on her radio show that whoever comes up to Arlene will get a lap dance if they call her “Butterfly”, recite a portion of a poem, and buy her a drink. A sociopathic killer stuntman, played by Kurt Russell, with a death-proof car, claims the lap dance, after following the women from their house to the bar. 

Death Proof is a part of the double feature called Grindhouse, by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodiguez. Robert Rodriguez’s film in the double feature is called Planet Terror and they are both an homage to the “grindhouse” cinemas. Grindhouse refers to rundown theaters that would often play B movies, like horror or exploitation films, and would play back to back like Death Proof and Planet Terror. The double feature has fake movie trailers, theater announcements, and regular advertisements. Two of the fake movie trailers have been made into actual feature films, Machete and Hobo with a Shotgun. Machete is made by Rodriguez and it has a sequel as well, and Hobo with a Shotgun was made by an independent third party. The film is purposefully damaged so that it skips around and suddenly cuts throughout the film.

Tarantino thought of the idea of the movie because he wanted to make a slasher film, but he wanted it to be unique so he thought about the idea of a stuntman killing women with his death-proof car. Tarantino hadn’t seen a good car chase in a film since Terminator 2: Judgement Day, so he decided to make his cinematography debut in Death Proof. Tarantino decided to cast Kurt Russel in the film because he had not been in a major role since Tarantino was young and he epitomized the aging stuntman. When the films are put together, Death Proof is about 45 minutes shorter, so he cut out most of the dialogue heavy scenes that he is known for and kept the violent and gory scenes.

Kill Bill follows The Bride after she wakes up from a four-year coma that was inflicted upon her when fellow assassins murdered everyone at her wedding and assumed her to be dead. After she wakes up, she tracks down the all of the assassins and the leader of the assassins, Bill. She was pregnant, at the time of her wedding, and when she wakes up, she realizes that her baby has been killed as well. Having had a relationship with the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad leader Bill, the baby was his, and she left the group, resulting in their attack at her wedding.

Quentin Tarantino began to develop the idea of The Bride during the filming of Pulp Fiction, Uma Thurman’s first collaboration with Tarantino before playing The Bride in Kill Bill. Pulp Fiction was released in 1994, but Tarantino did not begin writing the screenplay until 2000 and it took a year and a half to write, the longest it took to write a screenplay. The character of The Bride was rewritten after Uma Thurman aged seven years and had a newborn baby. The aspect of a more mature woman and a especially a mother, influenced the new direction of the character. If you read both of my blogs from this week, you will notice that the character of Bill is portrayed by David Carradine, who was the white actor that Warner Brothers picked to play a Shaolin monk over Bruce Lee. After being casted in this role, he learned martial arts and became very famous, which led to Tarantino choosing David Carradine to play Bill.

Tarantino always has several influences and inspirations that he pays homage to in his films. It was inspired by grindhouse cinema, which is cheaply made, low budget action films from the 1970s, like Kung Fu movies, blaxploitation films, and spaghetti westerns, all of which inspired other movies of his as well. The Bride’s iconic yellow jumpsuit is an homage to Bruce Lee’s jumpsuit in Game of Death, and the film features an anime backstory for one of its characters. Two films have very similar plots and serve as inspiration for the idea of Kill Bill and those are the French film The Bride Wore Black and Japanese film Lady Snowblood, both of which are about a bride enacted revenge on a gang. At one point in the film, one of the assassins is whistling an eerie tune, which is from the 1968 film Twisted Nerve. This whistle has become so iconic that it has been featured in many things, such as episodes of American Horror Story and it was sampled in the 2015 rap song, Chill Bill by Rob $tone.

In Quentin Tarantino’s third film Jackie Brown, a flight attendant named Jackie Brown, of course, makes extra money by smuggling cash from Mexico into the United States for Ordell Robbie, a black market gun dealer played by Samuel L. Jackson. Ordell has been under close watch by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) and they have arrested one of Ordell’s couriers. From the information he gives the ATF, the ATF intercept Jackie Brown returning from Mexico. Ordell gets money from bondsman Max Cherry in order to pay her bail before the ATF can get any information, but Max Cherry becomes attracted to Jackie, which begins a circuitous plan to double cross the ATF and Ordell.

Tarantino, known as an excellent director but an even more creative screenwriter, has only ever had one adapted screenplay and that is Jackie Brown. Jackie Brown is based on Rum Punch, a book by Elmore Leonard. Tarantino and frequent collaborator Roger Avary, after completing Pulp Fiction, bought the films rights to three of Leonard’s books, Rum Punch, Freaky Deaky, and Killshot. Originally, Tarantino wanted to film either Freaky Deaky or Killshot, but he reread Rum Punch and realized it was the much better of the three. Although it is adapted, Tarantino still incorporated some of his trademark humor and pacing. Tarantino changed some portions of the story and it has some inspirations from blaxploitation films, but Tarantino says it is not a blaxploitation film itself. Pam Grier, the actress who plays Jackie Brown, was known for her roles in blaxploitation films, and this film reinvigorated her career.

Jackie Brown often gets forgotten when someone recounts all of Tarantino’s films, but some regard it as one of his best. The dialogue of Jackie Brown is quite different when compared to the other films by Tarantino, as it is more realistic and less Tarantino-esque. It might be often forgotten as a Tarantino film because it feels the least like a Tarantino film out of all of his filmography, which is nuanced. Besides Samuel L. Jackson, the cast of this film has none of Tarantino’s frequent collaborators, which may make it feel out of place. Jackie Brown also does not follow Tarantino’s usual non-linear storytelling and his technique of splitting the film into chapters. I believe that Jackie Brown is a great film, but it always gets forgotten in Tarantino’s discography because it is so unlike his other films.

Pulp Fiction revolves around three different stories that find themselves interconnected by the end of the film and is the second film directed by Quentin Tarantino. The film is not fully in chronological order because it jumps around to each story until they connect. The first story has hitman Vincent Vega, portrayed by John Travolta, as the protagonist, the second story has boxer Butch Coolidge, portrayed by Bruce Willis, as the protagonist, and the third story has fellow hitman Jules Winnfeld, portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson, as the protagonist. There are a total of seven narrative sequences in the film, as its opening scene shows a diner being robbed by a couple before it flashes back to the rest of the movie and the film ends with the continuation of the robbery in the diner. However, I will share no spoilers, go watch the movie.

Tarantino wrote the film from 1992-1993 and incorporated scenes he had written for True Romance in 1993 that were not in the final version of the film. The title gets its name from the pulp magazines from the 1950s, which were known for their graphic violence and punchy dialogue, like all of Tarantino’s films, but especially this one. The cover of this film also looks like a pulp magazine cover. TriStar Pictures was offered to produce the film, but they said it was too demented with all of its violence, so Miramax co-chairman Harvery Weinstein decided this was going to be the first fully funded Miramax production. Yes, that Harvey Weinstein, wait until my last post on Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood to hear about Harvey Weinstein and the MeToo movement.  Tarantino originally wanted Mr. Blonde actor Michael Madsen to play John Travolta’s character, but he had been cast in another movie. Tarantino wrote the role of Jules Winnfeld with Samuel L. Jackson in mind, so when he auditioned it was a done deal. The final protagonist of the film is Bruce Willis as Butch Coolidge, who was written for the role because he had the look of a 1950s movie star. 

Some of you who have seen the movie may be wondering why I haven’t mentioned the famous briefcase. The contents of the mysterious briefcase will forever be unknown, but the mysterious briefcase MacGuffin (a macguffin is a central object that a plot revolves around and the term was popularized by Alfred Hitchcock) was inspired by the 1955-film Kiss Me Deadly, which also had a mysterious briefcaser. However, in that film, the content of the briefcase was revealed to be nuclear material. In Pulp Fiction, the briefcase was originally going to have diamonds, but it was thought to be too boring. Like the reference to Reservoir Dogs in Marvel’s Captain Marvel, Pulp Fiction was also referenced in Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Samuel L. Jackson’s character Nick Fury fakes his death and on his gravestone reads “The Path of the Righteous Man” which is the bible verse his character recites in Pulp Fiction.

Reservoir Dogs, the first feature-film fr0m Quentin Tarantino, takes place in Los Angeles and revolves around a group of men who were hired to perform a heist at a local diamond jewelry shop. The men are all given aliases, so that they do not know each other’s real names, except for the mob boss and his son who use their real names. There is Mr. White, Mr. Orange, Mr. Blonde, Mr. Pink, Mr. Blue, and Mr. Brown, played by Quentin Tarantino himself.

Quentin Tarantino, at the time of writing the script for Reservoir Dogs, was working at a video store in California. After wiritng the script in only three weeks and having no notoriety as a director yet, Tarantino planned to shoot the film with his friends and with a $30,000 budget, which is surprisingly a lot of money for a self-budgeted film, so he must have thought it had the potential to go very popular. People who have seen the movie often wonder why the title is Reservoir Dogs because it is not mentioned in the film and it quite mysterious. Tarantino actually named the film Reservoir Dogs because he was talking to a customer in the video store and recommended a French film, Au Revoir Les Enfants, and the customer replied, “I don’t want to see no ‘Reservoir Dogs'”. Tarantino gave the script to his friend, Lawrence Bender, who gave it to his acting coach, who gave it to his wife, who gave it to Harvey Keitel, a very famous actor from critically acclaimed films. Keitel agreed to be a co-producer and an actor in the film, and with the notoriety of Harvey Keitel, brought more actors to the film. It also raised the budget from $30,000 to $1.5 million, but actors still used their own clothes and actor Michael Madson used his own car in the film.

Tarantino had several inspirations for this film. Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing, from 1956, and Kansas City Confidential, from 1952, inspired Tarantino to make his very own version of a heist film and he added several homages from these films into Reservoir Dogs. He was also inspired by The Big Combo, from 1955, and Django, from 1966, which both heavily inspired the scene when Mr. Blonde tortures the kidnapped cop. The scene’s violence was so realistic, that 15 people walked out of the first screening of the film. One of the people who walked out was the famous director, Wes Craven, who directed The Nightmare on Elm Street. Later, Wes Craven said that it was a compliment to walk out because it meant that the violence was so realistic. The 1966 film, Django, has inspired four of Tarantino’s films such as, this film, the 2012 film Django Unchained (Obviously!), the 2015 film The Hateful Eight, and the 2019 film Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood. Django was a Spaghetti Western, a genre that came about when Italians began to produce westerns in excessive amounts during the 1960s. Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight are both western films so that makes sense, but Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood actually is somewhat about the beginning of spaghetti westerns and their eventual downfall. This film will go down as one of the most influential independent films ever to be made, sparking the career of the critically acclaimed director and writer, Quentin Tarantino.