The Movie Critic may have been Tarantino’s most meta movie ever before it was scrapped.
Last week, movie fans were stunned when it was reported that Quentin Tarantino was no longer moving forward with The Movie Critic, the film that was set to be the director’s final film. Now, more information is emerging about the scrapped project, particularly about how the film could have referenced Tarantino’s previous movies and more.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, there were various ideas for The Movie Critic that would have connected to Tarantino’s earlier work. Per the report, one idea was that the film — which was to be set in Hollywood in the 1970s — would have seen the director’s earlier movies existing in the same era as The Movie Critic. This would have potentially seen the film bring back stars of those movie as fictional versions of themselves or for “movie within a movie” situations. There was also the idea that The Movie Critic could potentially include something even more meta, such a movie theater where characters would interact with a future filmmaker, possibly even a teenage Tarantino himself.
What Was The Movie Critic Going to Be About?
There weren’t a lot of concrete details about The Movie Critic, but here’s what we did know. The film was to be set in 1977 and would have followed a cynical movie critic, based on a real-life critic whose work Tarantino read growing up. There were reports that Brad Pitt was set to have a lead role in the film as well as reports that changes to the script would have seen Pitt’s character from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Cliff Booth, appear in the film. In 2023, Tarantino spoke about what he planned for the story generally.
“[It is] based on a guy who really lived, but was never really famous, and he used to write movie reviews for a porno rag.” Tarantino explained in the interview. “He wrote about mainstream movies and he was the second-string critic. I think he was a very good critic. He was as cynical as hell. His reviews were a cross between early Howard Stern and what Travis Bickle [from Taxi Driver] might be if he were a film critic … Think about Travis’s diary entries. But the porno rag critic was very, very funny. He was very rude, you know. He cursed. He used racial slurs. But his sh-t was really funny. He was as rude as hell.”
Tarantino Is Still Planning to Make One Last Movie
While Tarantino is no longer going forward with The Movie Critic, the filmmaker is still planning to make one last movie. Over the years, Tarantino has been clear that he wants his filmography to end with just ten films (or eleven if you consider Kill Bill to be two separate films or just one). Tarantino has even previously spoken about the significance of stopping after just ten films.
“If you think about the idea of all the movies telling one story and each film is like a train boxcar connected to each other, this one would sort of be the big show-stopping climax of it all,” Tarantino explained in a 2019 interview. “And I could imagine that the 10th one would be a little more epilogue-y.”
