How Quentin Tarantino plans to change cinema history in The Movie Critic

Details are emerging about the movie that might be Quentin Tarantino’s last, and thanks to quotes from Paul Schrader – and passages from the book Cinema Speculation – we now might know how the filmmaker plans to change cinematic history in The Movie Critic.

Quentin Tarantino loves to mess with the past. Movies like Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood changed real-world events. In the latter, he stuck Leonardo Di Caprio’s character in old movies and TV shows, with Rick Dalton even replacing Steve McQueen in The Great Escape.

The writer-director has claimed that his next film will be his last, and rumors are circulating that said movie will be about a movie critic, titled The Movie Critic.

Thanks to a new interview with screenwriter Paul Schrader, we know that the movie will feature films from the past, that Tarantino plans to have some fun with – including 1977 action classic Rolling Thunder.

How Quentin Tarantino plans to change cinema history in The Movie Critic

In an interview with Le Monde (via The Playlist), Schrader reveals that Tarantino approached him about shooting a portion of his original Rolling Thunder script, which was rewritten by Heywood Gould.

“Quentin will insert extracts from films from the 1970s,” explains Schrader. “And he will also make his own versions of films from that era. He asked my permission to shoot the ending [of Rolling Thunder], by [director] John Flynn, as I had written it in the original screenplay — before it was completely rewritten and watered down.”

Rolling Thunder revolves around Charles Rane (William Devane), a Vietnam veteran who returns home a hero, and receives a pile of silver dollars for his troubles. A gang of thieves then rob Rane of his reward, killing his wife and child in the process. Rolling Thunder then turns into a revenge movie, with Rane teaming up with an old war buddy called Johnny (Tommy Lee Jones), and heading to Mexico to kill the murderers.

Tarantino dedicates an entire chapter to the movie in his 2022 non-fiction tome Cinema Speculation, in which he writes “Rolling Thunder is a really rough film. It was a hard R in 1977! But Schrader’s script was even harder, more violent, more cynical, with a jaw-dropping turn of events at the climax that frankly is so f**king brilliant I’d still love to see it done in a movie.”

What Quentin Tarantino plans to change in Rolling Thunder

Tarantino adores Rolling Thunder and loves what Heywould Gould did with Paul Schrader’s script. But he also agrees that it was watered down.

That’s because Charlie Rane is a racist who hates Mexicans in the original screenplay. As Tarantino puts it, the robbery gives him “an excuse to go hunting for the objects of his disdain.”

“The producers had Heywood Gould change the killers from all Mexican to half of them Mexican,” Tarantino explains, calling the switch a “societal compromise.” So that change could factor into anything he does with the material.

But the ending is Tarantino’s big issue with the finished film. “In Schrader’s blood-soaked climax, when Charlie and Johnny track them down to a Mexican whorehouse and go on their killing spree… Schrader flips his genre script. Because Schrader has Charlie and Johnny wipe out everybody! Now in Flynn’s film, Charlie and Johnny end up killing many more than the four that came to his house, mostly because they take up arms against them. But not all.”

Never one to shy away from onscreen violence, Tarantino would therefore likely right that perceived wrong. While there’s one detail during the climax that he’ll definitely include:

“In an amazing touch – that I can’t f**king believe they didn’t include in the film – both Charlie and Johnny speak to each other in Vietnamese during the firefight. By the final page Schrader’s point is made clear. A point nobody at Fox wanted to make.

“So Schrader’s savage critique of fascist Revengeamatic flicks was turned by its makers into a savage fascist Revengeamatic.”

The epilogue that never was…

If Tarantino remakes aspects of Rolling Thunder, it might therefore include a racist protagonist, and will very probably feature a more violent finale – if that’s possible – with the American protagonists speaking to each other in Vietnamese.

One final addition could be an epilogue that was written – but never filmed – involving Charlie and Linda, the woman who joins him on his roaring rampage of revenge. Here’s how John Flynn described the scene to Tarantino, as per Cinema Speculation:

“Linda Forchet [is] sitting on a bench waiting for a bus to take her back to San Antone… And Charlie is parked in his big ass red Cadillac convertible about a half a block away out of her line of sight, silently observing her. Is he contemplating picking her up and taking her with him, or is he just making sure she gets home alright, or is he just taking one last look at the only woman who will ever love him? That’s up for the audience to decide.

“Then the bus arrives, she climbs aboard, and the bus heads for El Paso, while he turns the Cadillac around and drives deeper into Mexico… alone.”

Tarantino writes that he said to Flynn of the film’s present ending – in which Charlie and Johnny exit the blood-drenched brothel – is “one of my favorite closing shots in cinema history.” But should he reshoot that ending for The Movie Critic, don’t be surprised to see the epilogue that never was…

For more on The Movie Critic, head here.