What does Quentin Tarantino plan to say about us?

As you would have heard if you've been following movie news this week, it's come out that Quentin Tarantino is planning to start filming on his tenth and final film this autumn. The script, whose plot details are under wraps, is called The Movie Critic.

While I can't necessarily see that title sticking, it did fill me with a sudden sinking feeling.

"Oh no," I thought. "Quentin Tarantino is about to tear the entire profession of film criticism a new one."

Then immediately I thought "Wait no he won't. Quentin Tarantino likes film critics, or at least he should anyway. Because they love him."

If Michael Bay were making a movie called The Movie Critic, I'd get it. Jon Favreau clearly has some issues to work out toward critics, as seen in Chef.

But Tarantino? He's a critical darling.

So what is he going to say about us?

It has also been revealed that the protagonist is female and that it is set in the late 1970s. So what is this, a Pauline Kael biopic?

I checked quickly to see if Kael might have had anything bad to say about Tarantino, but she retired from The New Yorker a year before Reservoir Dogs. That probably rules out some sort of fevered revenge fantasy against Kael. Even if she had dropped some attitude toward him in retirement, I suspect he'd be over it by now.

But there's some sort of revenge fantasy in almost every Tarantino movie, so I don't know why I should expect The Movie Critic to be any different. Will the titular character be the avenger, the avenged, or the one who knows his name is the Lord, when vengeance is laid upon her? Because we don't even know if the lead is the same as the character referenced in the title.  

With someone like Tarantino, speculation likely gets us nowhere. He'll purposefully zig when we expect him to zag. Whatever the movie is, it will feel like it came from the brain of Quentin Tarantino even if we never ultimately could have guessed what it was about. Maybe that's the mark of a great auteur -- you always know they made the film, but that doesn't mean you predicted how it was going to unfurl.

If it shoots this fall, I'm guessing maybe it'll unfurl at the end of 2024. 

Tarantino's whole "ten movies and then I'm done" thing is admirable, in a way, and I suppose if anyone would stick to such a pledge, it would be him.

But I'm sure we won't be done with him yet when he leaves -- audiences and critics alike.