Quentin Tarantino reportedly decides The Movie Critic isn’t good enough to be his final movie
Tarantino supposedly "simply changed his mind" about making The Movie Critic as his 10th and final film
Aux News Quentin Tarantino
Hype has, both steadily, and inevitably, been building up for Quentin Tarantino’s The Movie Critic for a while now. It’s only natural: Not only is Tarantino coming off of one of the best films of his career, in the form of 2019's Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood, but he’s also applied a huge amount of self-directed pressure on the movie by stating that it’ll be his 10th and final film.
Now, that pressure has reportedly reached a breaking point, as Deadline reports that, after at least one serious re-write, Tarantino is dropping the movie entirely in favor of… something else. In the words of the report, “He simply changed his mind.”
Now, we need to caution that this is all pretty firmly in “Sources say” territory, which means—especially since what’s being reported on is, at the end of the day, the creative mindset of one man, who has canceled, and then un-canceled, movies in the past—the info is kind of inherently unreliable. The Movie Critic was actually supposed to start filming last year, but was delayed by the SAG-AFTRA strikes; Tarantino received a tax credit to shoot the movie in California in September of 2023, and was expected to start filming on it pretty shortly. The film was rumored to star Brad Pitt—possibly, per The Hollywood Reporter, reprising his role as Cliff Booth from Hollywood, although the sheer ambiguity of that info speaks to the confusion around this whole project—along with a host of past Tarantino collaborators.
And now… Not so much. It’s a pretty wild revelation, and hard not to see in terms of Tarantino setting himself up for an intense level of scrutiny with his own statements around the project. It was, after all, only positioned as “the final film by Quentin Tarantino” because he said it was, since fans would almost certainly continue to flock to his movies for the next several decades. (The guy’s only 61, in a field that’s kinder than most to its older practitioners.) Regardless, though: Whatever Tarantino’s final film is going to be… The Movie Critic apparently isn’t it.
61 Comments
You can just make as many films as you want, you know.
The 10 films thing could possibly be related to how Beethoven wrote 10 symphonies (not completing the 10th), so some artists think they should only make 9 or 10 “great works” in homage to Beethoven or something.
It’s pretentious but it’s a thing.
I think it becomes mildly unbearable when you announce it ahead of time. If someone wants to just keep count in their head and stop after ten and maybe not try to compare themselves to Beethoven that’s different.
The idea that Tarantino films will still be regularly screened 200 years from now, like works of Beethoven are performed now, is a bit funny though.
It really is.
i’m sure the dialogue in PULP FICTION and RESERVOIR DOGS will hold up JUST FINE in the next 200…100…20…2 years.No worries there!-a big QT fan
It’s always funny to think that whenever my nostalgia leads me to rewatch pulp fiction, I also realize that my nostalgia goggles leads me to forget entirely about his cameo. If we could just erase his lines from the movie, that’d be great. Or at least cgi tig notaro in – she’d be a perfect replacement!
I’ve read IVs with him on this topic over the years and his reasoning/thinking has changed. At the start it was a typical “i cant imaging being in rock and roll in my 60s” POV that a lot of young artists have, but lately it’s “the movie industry as I love it is going extinct, and i dont want to be a part of it when it dies”. These are not direct quotes obviously just my summary of how the basis for his 10 films limit has evolved.
Mildly? You’re a kind soul.
That’s hella stupid. Has anyone told them that’s stupid?
I’m sure his list of influences for the 10-movie limit is lengthy, but it was also probably a lot easier to say when he’d only made a little more than half that at the time. Now it’s staring him down.
Pretension? In the arts, of all industries? Pshaw!
And if you want to advertise something as your “final” film just pull a Miyazaki and just do it anyways and then make another few movies
There’s some room to play with “final.” It may be the last film that is a “Quentin Tarantino movie” from start to finish. I don’t think for-hire directing gigs would be totally off the table for him. One of the big studios would back a Brinks truck up big enough for QT to make a tentpole movie.
Make a dozen films Quentin. Dozen sounds way cooler than ten.Then make TV.
How about he just makes this one anyway and we all agree to stop counting Death Proof?
Or how about we count Kill Bill as two films and just say he’s done
It’s kinda funny that he counts the thing that was half a movie (ticket wise, at least) and doesn’t count Kill Bill as two.
Lol, I watched that last year. It had been years since I saw it and my God that movie is fucking terrible.
Just the final chase scene rescues Death Proof. Honestly, IMO a top 3 or 5 chase scene all time. Zoe Bell was amazing!
Now, we need to caution that this is all pretty firmly in “Sources say” territory, You mean a rumor? which means—especially since what’s being reported on is, at the end of the day, the creative mindset of one man, who has canceled, and then un-canceled, movies in the past—the info is kind of inherently unreliable.You mean like how all rumors are unreliable?
He probably watched The Critic and realized this story has been told already.
And meanwhile, Ridley Scott, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg are all determined to die on set.
In one magnificent and bloody shootout. Coppola will later claim he was invited but couldn’t find a ride.
I mean, if they are looking for a guy to direct a magnificent and bloody shootout, QT may be willing to make one more picture.
…in a shootout with director/actor/lich Clint Eastwood.
Coppola could have done with stopping at ten movies. Then we’d have avoided Godfather III and Jack.
We wouldn’t have got his Dracula though, so maybe they were a price worth paying.
They have to do it “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” Mexican Standoff-style, of course. My money’s on Scorsese.
Love to see the three of them trying to separate their guns from the holsters and using both hands to (unsuccessfully) pull back the hammer. Eventually Scott wins by beating the other two over the head.
I know it won’t happen, but I really wish he’d return to the idea of doing a Star Trek. Just let him do whatever he wants and call it an alternate timeline.
The funny thing is, he said that if he did Star Trek, that wouldn’t count as his last movie, it would stand apart from his official body of work. I guess because it’s an adaptation, but so was Jackie Brown, so, I don’t know.
His whole idea for a Star Trek movie was one of those time-travel Chicago gangster things they used to do in TOS. Basically just his crime-flick schtick bookended with some timey shenanigans. I’d like to see a Tarantino Star Trek movie, just not that one.
Aren’t the John Wick movies already basically the gangster planet from Star Trek?
Yeah that’s how I feel too. When I read that I thought “why does that even have to be a Star Trek movie?” But just like this one apparently evolved to be about Cliff Booth, who knows what he would have ended up with.I think you could probably mix his “events shown out of order” thing with actual time travel pretty well.
Please no.
Star Trek fan or Tarantino?
Tarantino.
Maybe we’ll get to see The Wacky Detective and/or The Dog Catcher!
The whole ten movie thing was exactly the kind of dumbass comment you’d hear a video store clerk self-consciously holler out in front of a Friday night crowd.
Tarantino changing his mind about only doing 10 films while filming his 10th film (an arbitrary restrictions put on himself) is the least surprising thing I’ve ever heard. I could have told you this was going to happen years ago. Dude loves making movies.
Where in the article exactly did you read this? Did you read the article?
Tarantino has a ton of ideas that he has backed off from – there’s an entire Wikipedia article about unproduced ideas of his. Maybe it is the pressure of making his final movie but it could also just be that the idea he had wasn’t working.
I tend to support this view (the latter). It’s very easy to develop and write something and all along to be saying “I know there’s that issue in the second act and I have to resolve that dramatic cul de sac in act three, but I’ll make those work…” So you keep moving forward, casting, etc., but then one morning you’re reading it and just have to admit that those problems may be baked in too deep and that there’s no “fixing” them. QT has the luxury to work that way, and because he’s QT, we hear about the project as it goes along. But it happens all the time. Spielberg is famous for this deep-development-and-then-bail-out way of getting to what he wants to make. His development and decision-making just isn’t as public as QT’s.
“since fans would almost certainly continue to flock to his movies for the next several decades”Several? How long do you think he’s gonna live?
Eastwood’s still directing at 93.
Even assuming Tarantino works that long, three decades isn’t “several.” It’s a few.
I think several is anything more than a couple, but not a lot. So could be synonymous with “a few”.
Nah. A couple is 2. More than a couple is 3, which is a few. Several is at least 5.
According to Miriam Webster:“more than two but fewer than many”
Britannica:
“ more than two but not very many”
Oxford:
“more than two but not many.”
I don’t think “at least five” lines up exactly with those. Not wrong, but not exclusively right either.
Merriam-Webster, first of all, not Miriam. Second of all: “Verdict: in common use, several is often more than a couple and a few though it is sometimes the same as both and occasionally more than a few.” Note *sometimes*, which is less than “in common use.”https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/couple-few-several-useThird of all: “1. Being of a number more than two or three but not many: several miles away.” American Heritage Dictionary.Fourth, that’s not the OED, so it’s not entirely honest to call it “Oxford” as if it were. That’s from something called an Oxford Learner’s Dictionary. I’m at work so I don’t have my OED in front of me, but the online version says there are 41 different definitions, so you’d need to start at least there. That said, the fact that English people might (*might*) use it as meaning just more than two is not going to be dispositive because there are lots of words that British English uses differently from American English, such as “quite.” That’s why I’d be more inclined to go with the American Heritage Dictionary, which is the definitive source on American English, rather than Oxford or Britannica, and it’s not surprising that your sources are British.All that said, no one is using “several” to refer to three of anything, unless they are hyperbolizing on purpose to the point of outright falsity. If I said someone had “several cats” no one would picture three cats.
If you’re one to get comfortably bogged down with all that semantics then maybe you shouldn’t bother yourself with Tarantino. Maybe even forget cinema altogether :/
I don’t bother myself with Tarantino. I’ve seen enough of his movies to know that I don’t like his movies. I’m not sure why knowing the meanings of words would disqualify me from being able to enjoy movies in general, nor do I know how noting one thing qualifies as being “bogged down,” but you’re allowed to have your opinion on that certainly. By that logic I guess if you don’t care about the meanings of words, maybe you should forget reading altogether.
Autism?
Nope.
Just take the L, dumbass.
Wrong again, Miriam Webster is my very intelligent neighbor. She told me her definition over several cups of tea (we each had three).
That sounds like something a Miriam would do.
For most of my childhood I failed to grasp that “a couple” means two. Someone would ask me for “a couple screws” and I’d bring three or four. To me it just meant “some small number” until my dad explained it to me like “a married couple.” I remember I tried to argue with him and then was just like “huh, he’s right.”That is all.
Sometimes I think Tarantino fans are as full of themselves as Tarantino is of himself.
I’d be fine if he stopped at 9 at this point.