Quentin Tarantino is still set to retire from filmmaking with his upcoming 10th movie, but what said movie will now be is a mystery. Last week, it was revealed that Tarantino will no longer make The Movie Critic, which was based on a real-life “second-string critic” who, as the director described him, “used to write movie reviews for a porno rag” that were “a cross between early Howard Stern and what Travis Bickle might be if he were a film critic.” But apparently The Movie Critic also could have been used as a platform for him to get super meta with his past films, and there was even a Fablemans-like twist reportedly considered too.
In a lengthy article detailing the collapse of The Movie Critic, THR mentioned that while no specific story details ever emerged, Tarantino did play around with “a couple intriguing ideas.” First, The Movie Critic, which had set Brad Pitt as its leading man, could have functioned as “a Tarantino goodbye meta-verse” by having the filmmaker’s earlier movies “existing in the same era.” This would have allowed Tarantino to bring back various actors he’s worked with to either reprise their characters for “movie within a movie” moments or play fictional versions of themselves as the actors playing these characters we know so well.
The other idea Quentin Tarantino was reportedly batting around for The Movie Critic was including a theater where some of the characters would have interacted with “a budding future auteur.” In fact, it could have been none other than a teenaged Tarantino, as he worked at a Torrence porn theater during his youth. That plot point is reminiscent of The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg’s 2022 movie that was a semi-autobiographical account of his adolescence and becoming a filmmaker, albeit with different character names.
While I would have been game for Tarantino using The Movie Critic to get meta with his filmography, there’s something about the “meta-verse” information that’s confusing. While Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood could have easily been reimagined as ‘70s releases, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown and the Kill Bill movies are all set in the ‘90s or early 2000s.
There are enough elements from these flicks to cement them as contemporary stories, so would Tarantino have simply adjusted them so they could work with a ‘70s setting? Or would he just have kept them the same and pretended that the filmmakers who helmed these movies in The Movie Critic’s universe were just envisioning what the ‘90s and early 2000s would have looked like.
Maybe I’m just nitpicking, but in any case, we won’t get to see any of this on the big screen. So now, as we were doing for several years following Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s release, we have to wait to see what Quentin Tarantino chooses to take The Movie Critic’s place as his final movie. If you’re like CinemaBlend’s own Mick Joest, maybe you’re hoping Tarantino doesn’t revisit his R-rated Star Trek movie, but chances are whatever the filmmaker goes with will be another original story coming not based on existing IP.
Once The Movie Critic’s replacement is announced, we’ll let you know. Until then, use the 2024 release schedule to keep track of the movies coming out later this year.