Tarantino’s Scrapped Final Project Reportedly Planned to Resurrect Iconic Characters from Past Films

Throughout his career, visionary auteur Quentin Tarantino has made incredible cinematic masterpieces. Tarantino believes in quality over quantity, so he made it clear that he would end his filmmaking career after his tenth film. In fact, Tarantino was also all set with his final project, The Movie Critic, but he called off the idea of making the film. 

Ever since the filmmaker announced his tenth and last film, the hype began around the anticipation of the film. Unfortunately, it never came to fruition. 

The Movie Critic, which was supposed to be his final project, was a ‘70s-set movie about a fictional film reviewer working for a sleazy porn magazine. The project was all set to commence. Even the cast was kind of finalized, as it was reported that Brad Pitt would take the lead role. But Tarantino abruptly reversed course and canceled what would have been his cinematic swan song.

If Quentin Tarantino’s final project had been made, what would it have been like?

Though Quentin Tarantino flushed out his plan for his final film by himself, it was for the good. 

If The Movie Critic were made, it would have reportedly brought back iconic characters from his previous movies. The filmmaker was playing with two different ideas to bring back characters from previous films for the movie. According to The Hollywood Reporter, one idea for Quentin Tarantino’s final project involved creating a universe where his previous films exist within the same reality as the new movie. This would have let the filmmaker restore his iconic characters for “film within a film” scenes or bring back popular actors to play fictionalized versions of themselves. Another idea that Tarantino wanted to imply in his final feature was even more fantastical than the other, as it would have seen figures from the director’s films interacting with a character based on a young Tarantino.

Tarantino’s inclination toward the 1970s cinematic era is often depicted in his films, so it’s no surprise that he planned to revisit that era for his final movie. However, no matter how great it sounds that he wanted to bring all the iconic characters into his film, when we look at the wider picture, populating the film with multiple characters would have seemed more problematic and self-indulgent. 

If we go by the narrative as reported, it would have given the impression of a self-centered spectacle than a creative film. So it’s good that Tarantino decided to move away from the project, as his final project should be as great as his directorial journey has been.