If director Quentin Tarantino remains determined to retire from filmmaking after his 10th feature film, whatever film the Oscar winner makes next will be his swan song off the screen. Christopher Nolan was a disappointment.
“I think it’s dangerous to get too specific about it,” Nolan recently told the Telegraph about Tarantino’s long-discussed retirement plan after 10 films. “I mean, Quentin has Quentin’s reasons, and I have a lot of respect for them. But I hope he doesn’t stay true to them…I consider every movie I make to be the last one I make, and one day I’ll get it right. So every time, I want to put everything into the project at hand. I never think, ‘Well, I’ll save this for the next one.’ I definitely don’t want to think about that. I want each movie to be everything. ”
Tarantino has long talked about his plans to retire after making 10 feature films (in his eyes, Kill Bill counts as one because it was developed and shot as one feature), saying he wanted to leave behind a consistently strong and well-chosen body of work.
“So do you believe him?” Nolan asked the “Reel Blend” podcast host in 2023 while promoting “Oppenheimer.”
“That’s always been Quentin’s point – and he’s never, ever, very politely, specific about the movies he’s talking about – but he looks at the work of late filmmakers and feels that if they can’t live up to their heyday, they shouldn’t exist,” Nolan explained at the time. “And I think that’s a very pure perspective. It’s the perspective of a movie fan who values film history.”
Nolan added, “I don’t know if I can trust my own sense of the absolute value of a work to decide whether it should have been released into the world.” “Like Quentin, I’m a big fan of the movie. It may not quite accomplish what it sets out to do, but there are some great things there, like performances or little structural things or scenes. So, yes, I get it. I think he wanted to maintain some sort of perfect reputation for something, but on the other hand, I think he didn’t want to take anything off the table.”
Filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson, a friend of Nolan and Tarantino, has been more outspoken in his criticism of Tarantino’s 10-film plan.
“I know Quentin[Tarantino]likes to say, ‘I’ve made 10 movies and I’m quitting,’ but I could never do that,” Anderson said in 2018. This is something I want to do as much as possible. I’ll do it as long as I can. I think things can get weird when you see directors not acting age-appropriate or trying to keep up with kids or trying to be trendy. That’s never a good view. ”
It remains to be seen what Tarantino has planned for his 10th and final film. There was a time when “The Film Critic” was being prepared as Tarantino’s swan song, but Tarantino later scrapped the script. Even if Tarantino retires, other artistic mediums exist where he can continue to publish new content. He has already written several books and a new play, The Popinjay Cavalier, is scheduled to open in London’s West End in 2027.
