Quentin Tarantino recap: the story so far

No. 01 · 1992 · Film

Reservoir Dogs recap

Six criminals who know each other only by colour code names, Mr. White, Mr. Orange, Mr. Blonde, Mr. Pink, Mr. Blue and Mr. Brown, are hired by the gangster Joe Cabot and his son Nice Guy Eddie to rob a diamond wholesaler. The robbery is never shown. The film opens after it has gone wrong, with the police waiting for them. White brings the badly wounded Orange to a warehouse meeting point, and Pink arrives, sure there is a rat. Blonde turns up with a kidnapped police officer and tortures him, cutting off his ear, until Orange shoots Blonde. Flashbacks show how each man got involved, and reveal that Orange is an undercover cop.

How Reservoir Dogs ends

Joe arrives and accuses Orange of being the informer, and White, who trusts Orange, refuses to let him be killed. Joe, Eddie and White shoot each other. Pink grabs the diamonds and runs, and is caught outside. Orange confesses to the dying White, who shoots him as the police storm in.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 02 · 1993 · Film · optional

True Romance recap

True Romance (1993) follows a Detroit comic shop clerk who marries a call girl after one night and flees to California with a suitcase of the mob's cocaine. Elvis-obsessed Clarence Worley (Christian Slater) meets Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette) at a kung fu triple bill; she admits she was hired as his birthday present and has fallen for him. Urged on by a vision of Elvis (Val Kilmer), Clarence kills her pimp, Drexl Spivey (Gary Oldman), and grabs a bag that turns out to hold stolen drugs. The couple head to Los Angeles to sell it through his actor friend Dick Ritchie to a film producer. Behind them, mob consigliere Vincenzo Coccotti (Christopher Walken) questions Clarence's father Clifford (Dennis Hopper) and sends his enforcer Virgil (James Gandolfini) west. Brad Pitt plays a stoned roommate. Tony Scott directs from Tarantino's script, which Tarantino sold to fund Reservoir Dogs. It follows that debut on the Written by Tarantino rail.

How True Romance ends

True Romance ends with Clarence and Alabama alive on a beach in Mexico with a son named Elvis. The drug sale at the producer's hotel suite turns into a three-way shootout between the producer's bodyguards, police who wired the go-between, and Coccotti's mobsters; nearly everyone dies, and the drugs are shot to pieces. Clarence is wounded but escapes with Alabama and the money. Tarantino's script ended with Clarence killed and Alabama leaving alone; Scott changed it to the happier ending.

Post-credits scenes

No. True Romance has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 03 · 1994 · Film

Pulp Fiction recap

Pulp Fiction (1994) weaves together stories of Los Angeles hitmen, a boxer and a gangster's wife, told out of chronological order. Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta) recover a briefcase for their boss Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames), survive a hail of bullets that somehow misses them, and need the fixer Winston Wolfe (Harvey Keitel) after Vincent accidentally shoots a man in their car. Vincent takes Marsellus's wife Mia (Uma Thurman) to a 1950s-themed restaurant and has to save her from an overdose. Boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) is paid to throw a fight, wins it instead, and goes back for his father's gold watch. Pumpkin and Honey Bunny (Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer) bookend the film with a diner robbery. Tarantino wrote it from a story conceived with Roger Avary, and it won the Palme d'Or and the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. As his second feature, it follows Reservoir Dogs.

How Pulp Fiction ends

Pulp Fiction ends at the diner, which in story time comes before Vincent's death. Pumpkin and Honey Bunny rob the room, and Jules, having decided the missed bullets were divine intervention, talks them down and lets them leave with his own cash while keeping the briefcase. Earlier in the film but later in time, Butch kills Vincent at his apartment, then rescues Marsellus from the pawnshop basement, and Marsellus lets him leave town. Jules walks away from the life, and Vincent, who stays, is the one who dies.

Post-credits scenes

No. Pulp Fiction has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 04 · 1994 · Film · optional

Natural Born Killers recap

Natural Born Killers (1994) follows a young couple on a murder spree across the Southwest whom the news media turns into celebrities. Mickey Knox (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory Knox (Juliette Lewis) kill everyone but one witness in a New Mexico diner, then flash back to how they met: Mickey delivered meat to Mallory's abusive family home, and together they murdered her parents. They claim 52 victims across three states. Detective Jack Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore), himself a killer, hunts them, and the tabloid host Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.) makes them stars on his show American Maniacs. After they kill a Navajo man who sheltered them, both are bitten by snakes and captured at a drugstore. A year later Gale arranges a live prison interview, while Warden Dwight McClusky (Tommy Lee Jones) plots their deaths. Oliver Stone directs; his rewrite left Tarantino with a story credit, and Tarantino disowned it. It follows True Romance on the Written by Tarantino rail.

How Natural Born Killers ends

Natural Born Killers ends with Mickey and Mallory free and raising a family. Mickey's live interview sparks a riot; he takes Gale and guards hostage, reaches Mallory, and she kills Scagnetti. They escape with Gale, who has started shooting guards himself, and in the woods they tell him his camera will be the witness they leave behind, then kill him. Years later they drive an RV while a pregnant Mallory watches their two children.

Post-credits scenes

No. Natural Born Killers has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 05 · 1996 · Film · optional

From Dusk Till Dawn recap

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) follows two bank robber brothers who take a family hostage to reach Mexico, then get trapped in a bar full of vampires. Seth Gecko (George Clooney) and his unstable brother Richie (Quentin Tarantino) leave dead bodies across Texas before kidnapping Jacob Fuller (Harvey Keitel), a pastor who has lost his faith, and his teenage children Kate (Juliette Lewis) and Scott (Ernest Liu). They use the family's motor home to cross the border and wait until dawn for their contact at the Titty Twister, a rowdy strip bar. After the dancer Santánico Pandemonium (Salma Hayek) performs, the staff reveal themselves as vampires and feed on the customers. The survivors, including a biker called Sex Machine (Tom Savini) and a veteran named Frost (Fred Williamson), barricade themselves inside. Robert Rodriguez directs from Tarantino's script, based on a story by Robert Kurtzman. It follows Natural Born Killers on the Written by Tarantino rail.

How From Dusk Till Dawn ends

From Dusk Till Dawn ends with only Seth and Kate alive as sunlight floods the bar. Richie is bitten and Seth has to stake him; Jacob turns and Scott kills him, then is overwhelmed and begs Kate to shoot him. At dawn, beams of light through bullet holes hold the vampires back, and the gangsters' contact blows open the door. Seth pays his way into the hideout town, gives Kate some money and refuses to let her come with him. The camera pulls back to reveal the bar sits on top of an Aztec temple. Two direct-to-video sequels and a TV series followed.

Post-credits scenes

No. From Dusk Till Dawn has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 06 · 1997 · Film

Jackie Brown recap

Jackie Brown (1997) follows a flight attendant caught smuggling cash who plays the police and an arms dealer against each other for half a million dollars. Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) carries money from Mexico for Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson). When ATF agent Ray Nicolette (Michael Keaton) arrests her with cash and cocaine, Ordell has bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster) get her out, meaning to kill her before she talks. Jackie pulls a gun and proposes a deal: she will pretend to help the police while bringing in Ordell's last $550,000. She brings Max in on her own plan to take the money for herself. Ordell's newly released partner Louis Gara (Robert De Niro) and his stoned girlfriend Melanie Ralston (Bridget Fonda) circle the deal. Tarantino adapts Elmore Leonard's novel Rum Punch, the only one of his features drawn from another work. His third feature, it follows Pulp Fiction.

How Jackie Brown ends

Jackie Brown ends with Ordell dead, Jackie free and leaving for Madrid. At a mall dressing room she switches bags so that most of the cash goes to Max and blames Melanie for the theft. Louis shoots Melanie in the parking lot, and Ordell kills Louis when he realises the money is gone. Max tells Ordell that Jackie is waiting at his office, and when she shouts that Ordell has a gun, Nicolette shoots him. Jackie asks Max to come with her; he declines, and they kiss goodbye.

Post-credits scenes

No. Jackie Brown has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 07 · 2003 · Film

Kill Bill: Volume 1 recap

Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) follows a former assassin who wakes from a four-year coma and sets out to kill the squad that gunned down her wedding rehearsal. The Bride (Uma Thurman) was shot in the head by her former lover Bill (David Carradine) while pregnant, after his Deadly Viper Assassination Squad massacred the chapel in El Paso. Waking in hospital without her baby, she draws up a death list. She kills Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox) in her suburban kitchen, then travels to Okinawa, where retired swordsmith Hattori Hanzō (Sonny Chiba) forges her a sword. In Tokyo she goes after O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), now head of the city's yakuza, whose childhood revenge is told in an anime sequence. The chapters run out of order and borrow from kung fu, samurai and exploitation films. Tarantino wrote and directed it as his fourth feature, after Jackie Brown, and split it into two volumes. Volume 2 continues the story.

How Kill Bill: Volume 1 ends

Kill Bill: Volume 1 ends with O-Ren dead and Bill learning the Bride knows nothing of her daughter. At the House of Blue Leaves, the Bride cuts off the arm of O-Ren's lawyer Sofie Fatale, kills the teenage bodyguard Gogo Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama), and fights through the Crazy 88 gang. She duels O-Ren in the snowy garden and slices off the top of her head. She leaves Sofie alive to tell Bill. In the final line, Bill asks Sofie whether the Bride knows her daughter is alive, setting up Volume 2.

Post-credits scenes

No. Kill Bill: Volume 1 has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 08 · 2004 · Film

Kill Bill: Volume 2 recap

Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004) continues the Bride's revenge as she goes after the last two Deadly Vipers and then Bill himself. Her next target is Bill's brother Budd (Michael Madsen), now a bouncer living in a trailer, who brings her down with a shotgun blast of rock salt and buries her alive. A flashback shows her harsh training under the kung fu master Pai Mei (Gordon Liu), whose lessons let her punch her way out of the coffin. Budd sells her sword to the one-eyed assassin Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), who kills him with a black mamba hidden in the money. Elle then reveals the Bride's name, Beatrix Kiddo, and the two fight in the trailer. Beatrix tracks Bill to Mexico and discovers their daughter B.B. alive and four years old. The chapter structure continues from Volume 1, which it directly follows. Tarantino wrote and directed both halves as a single production, and he counts them as his fourth film.

How Kill Bill: Volume 2 ends

Kill Bill: Volume 2 ends with Bill dead and Beatrix driving away with B.B. Beatrix tears out Elle's remaining eye and leaves her blind in the trailer with the snake. At Bill's house, she spends an evening with her daughter, then Bill drugs her with truth serum and she explains she left to give B.B. a different life. They fight, and she hits him with Pai Mei's Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique. Bill calmly takes five steps and dies. In a motel bathroom Beatrix weeps with happiness. Tarantino has talked about a third volume for years without making it.

No. 09 · 2007 · Film

Death Proof recap

Death Proof (2007) follows a scarred stuntman who stalks young women in Texas and Tennessee and kills them with a car built to survive crashes. In Austin, radio DJ "Jungle" Julia Lucai (Sydney Tamiia Poitier) and her friends Arlene (Vanessa Ferlito) and Shanna spend a night drinking, while Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) watches. He offers their acquaintance Pam (Rose McGowan) a ride, kills her by slamming his brakes, then drives head-on into the friends' car. Because he was sober and they were drunk, the Texas Ranger on the case cannot charge him. Fourteen months later in Tennessee, he picks out new targets: makeup artist Abernathy (Rosario Dawson), stunt driver Kim (Tracie Thoms), actress Lee (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and stuntwoman Zoë Bell, playing herself, who wants to ride the hood of a white 1970 Dodge Challenger. Tarantino wrote, shot and directed it as half of the double feature Grindhouse with Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror. His fifth feature, it follows the Kill Bill volumes.

How Death Proof ends

Death Proof ends with the three women beating Stuntman Mike to death on a country road. He rams the Challenger during Zoë's hood ride and throws her off, but Kim shoots him in the arm and he flees. Zoë turns out to be unhurt, and the women give chase, ramming him until his car flips. They drag him out and beat him, the last blow knocking him dead, and the words The End appear. The standalone cut runs longer than the version shown in Grindhouse.

Post-credits scenes

No. Death Proof has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 10 · 2009 · Film

Inglourious Basterds recap

Inglourious Basterds (2009) follows two plots to kill Nazi leaders at a Paris premiere, one by Jewish American commandos and one by the cinema's Jewish owner. In 1941, SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) finds a Jewish family hidden under a French farmhouse; only Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) escapes. Three years later, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) leads the Basterds, who scalp German soldiers, including Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth) and the German defector Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger). Shosanna, running a cinema under a false name, attracts the war hero Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), who moves the premiere of his propaganda film to her theatre. The British send Lieutenant Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) to meet the actress and double agent Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) in a tavern basement. Tarantino wrote and directed it in chapters, and Waltz won an Oscar. It follows Death Proof as his sixth feature.

How Inglourious Basterds ends

Inglourious Basterds ends with Hitler dead in a burning cinema and Raine carving a swastika into Landa's forehead. Landa strangles von Hammersmark and arrests Raine, then trades the plot for his own safety. Zoller and Shosanna shoot each other in the projection booth; her filmed face tells the audience they will die at the hands of a Jew as her projectionist sets the nitrate film alight. Donowitz and Omar Ulmer shoot Hitler and Goebbels, and the bombs go off. Raine, delivered by Landa, marks him for life and admires his own handiwork. The story breaks openly from real history.

Post-credits scenes

No. Inglourious Basterds has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 11 · 2012 · Film

Django Unchained recap

Django Unchained (2012) follows an enslaved man freed by a German bounty hunter who teams up with him to rescue his wife from a Mississippi plantation. In Texas in 1858, Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a former dentist turned bounty hunter, frees Django (Jamie Foxx) because he can identify three wanted brothers. After they collect the bounty, Schultz trains him as a partner through the winter and agrees to help find his wife Broomhilda von Shaft (Kerry Washington). She is owned by Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), whose Candyland plantation stages fights to the death between enslaved men. Posing as buyers of a fighter, the two plan to purchase Broomhilda on the side, but Candie's head house servant Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson) sees through it. The title borrows from Sergio Corbucci's 1966 Western Django. Tarantino wrote and directed it, winning the screenplay Oscar, and Waltz won again. His seventh feature, it follows Inglourious Basterds.

How Django Unchained ends

Django Unchained ends with Django blowing up the Candyland mansion and riding away with Broomhilda. At dinner, Candie forces Schultz to pay in full and demands a handshake; Schultz shoots him instead and is killed. Django surrenders when Broomhilda is threatened and is sold to a mining company, but tricks his guards with a bounty handbill and escapes. Back at Candyland, he kills the remaining household, including Candie's sister, shoots Stephen in the knees, and lights the dynamite. Broomhilda watches him make his horse dance before they leave.

Post-credits scenes

Yes. A short post-credits scene shows one of the enslaved men from the mining company cage asking who Django was.

No. 12 · 2015 · Film

The Hateful Eight recap

The Hateful Eight (2015) traps eight strangers, one a prisoner bound for the gallows, in a Wyoming stagecoach lodge during a blizzard after the Civil War. Bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) is taking "Crazy" Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to hang in Red Rock. On the road he picks up Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a Black Union veteran turned bounty hunter who carries a letter from Abraham Lincoln, and Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), a Confederate raider's son who says he is the new sheriff. At Minnie's Haberdashery they find Bob (Demián Bichir), who says he is minding the place, the hangman Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), the cowboy Joe Gage (Michael Madsen) and the old Confederate general Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern). Ruth suspects someone is there to free Daisy. Ennio Morricone won an Oscar for the score. Tarantino wrote and directed it as his eighth feature, following Django Unchained.

How The Hateful Eight ends

The Hateful Eight ends with Warren and Mannix dying together after hanging Daisy. Someone poisons the coffee and Ruth dies; Warren works out that Bob is lying and kills him, and a man hidden in the cellar shoots Warren. A flashback shows Daisy's gang killed Minnie and her staff that morning, and that the hidden man is her brother Jody (Channing Tatum). Warren kills Jody, Mobray and Gage, and Mannix rejects Daisy's offer to switch sides. The two wounded men hang her from the rafters, and Mannix reads aloud the Lincoln letter, which Warren forged.

Post-credits scenes

No. The Hateful Eight has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 13 · 2019 · Film

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood recap

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) follows a fading TV Western star and his stunt double through Los Angeles in 1969, as the Manson Family lurks nearby. Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) is reduced to guest villain parts, and his agent Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino) pushes him toward spaghetti Westerns in Italy. Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), his stunt double and driver, cannot find work because of a fight with Bruce Lee and rumours that he killed his wife. Rick's new neighbours on Cielo Drive are Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), who watches herself in a film at a local cinema. Cliff gives a hitchhiker a ride to Spahn Ranch, where the Manson followers live, while Rick struggles and then shines on the set of Lancer. Six months later he returns from Italy with a new wife. Pitt won an Oscar for the role. Tarantino wrote and directed it, his ninth feature, following The Hateful Eight; he published a novelisation in 2021.

How Once Upon a Time in Hollywood ends

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood ends with the Manson killers dying at Rick's house and Sharon Tate inviting him up to hers. On August 8, 1969, Rick yells at the followers parked on the street, and they decide to kill him instead of the people next door. Cliff, high on an acid cigarette, and his dog Brandy fight them off; Cliff is stabbed, and Rick burns the last attacker with a flamethrower from a film. As Cliff goes to hospital, Jay Sebring and Tate invite Rick through the gate, an ending that breaks from the real murders.

Post-credits scenes

Yes. A mid-credits scene shows Rick Dalton filming a cigarette advertisement.